02.07.09
Whole House Audio using ABUS
Ever since we moved into our new house I’ve wanted to be able to listen to music throughout the home. There’s something nice about walking upstairs from my office and hearing the same song playing in the kitchen. Now, there are several ways to accomplish this. You can pull speaker wire everywhere and put an amp in one room. This creates issues with matching imedience and means leaving an amplifier turned on 24/7.
At first I plugged my Airport Expres (with Airtunes!) into an FM modulator and used FM radios. This is nice, except for the sound quality isn’t great. Also you need to leave the volume in iTunes set right in the middle. Too low and the radio will be full of static. Too high and the signal distorts. This means you can’t adjust the volume throughout the house from iTunes, but instead must adjust it on each radio.
Enter ABUS. ABUS is a standard for sending audio, power, and IR over CAT5 cable. I have plenty of that. It’s cheap. It’s designed to pull through walls (not all speaker cable is). At first look, ABUS seems expensive. But when you relize what you’re getting in the kit, it’s quite reasonable. Finding second-hand equipment also helps.
ABUS is designed around three components. A hub goes in a central location, just like an Ethernet hub. Your main audio source(s) plug into the hub. At the other end of the CAT5 cable is a small (single-gang) volume control. Finally, speaker cable goes the short distance from the volume control to your (in-wall) speakers. The amplifier is built into each volume control.
I decided on using the single-source Harman/Kardon ABH4 hub. This supports up to 4 locations out of the box. Expansion packs can be added to power additional volume controls.
Stay tuned for more information about the ABUS system as I’ve installed it.