Bal Wrote:I am having trouble clarifying the best practices with CQC for whole home audio.
Thanks!
A few more random thoughts:
I may be in the minority, but I decided to not do a centralized approach for music. I used multiple local locations (like closets..I ran power and cat6 to all potential sonos locations like top shelves of closets).
Here's why:
1. Traditionally (when I was planning my system) Sonos has "liked" to be distributed. That is because if you have or plan on using the sonos hand-held controllers, they need a box to talk to (they can't just talk to your WAP). If you have a big house and stick all the zps in the head end room, you lose the ability to use that elegant piece of hardware. That said, they have just discontinued the hand-held sonos controller since sales are dropping in favor of using sonos-controller on phones.
2. (see my other post in this thread on line-in) I was planning for lots of line-in to local zps. So I thought shorter run (from bedside to bedroom closet instead of to central room) was better for RCA.
3. And this was the important reason for me. It sounds better! Before finalizing my plan, I did A/B tests using two identical sonos, playing same music simultaneously, that were connected via a/b switch to a single pair of nice speakers. The only difference was that one sonos zp was connected via a 150 foot run of speaker wire, the other via a 10 foot run of speaker wire. I'm pretty sure it was 16-gauge (though I ended up using 14 for house wire and the problem would not have been as large with 16). The sound difference was astounding. The difference was much bigger than a/b tests of bit rate or a/b tests of better amp vs sonos. The reason of course is that, electrically, resistance is linearly proportion to run length. This won't matter if you are using 14 gauge in small house with <75 foot runs. But I had some runs I knew would be close to 200 feet, so this mattered to me. You say you are having 12 zones, so i'm guessing your house is big-ish. If so, it might be a consideration. Listen for yourself.
If you do a hybrid system where you need to be centralized, this point is moot.
I also took a don't-reinvent-the-wheel approach. The controller on the sonos is so good, I don't want to replicate it. I think of CQC as my coarse on/off switch for sonos in an area, but leave all fine tuning to the handheld controller. And I didn't want to have the sonos experience be behind the experience of volume/zone control of a second system (b&w or other). You could probably save some money that way, but I wanted ultimate flexibility and local sources.
My primary use for cqc integration for sonos is: walk into a room, hit button on lutron keypad, cqc receives that, and have pre-determined station come on to a pre-defined level. Hitting the button again will mute or pause. All fine- tuning beyond that (station, grouping, zone-level volume) I'm happy to do on phone (via sonos app) or via one of my two cr200 (sonos hardware controller about the size of a phone).
Sonos can handle up to 32 zone players and each of those could be playing a different stream.
I wanted to use cat6 (not wireless) for all my sonos zps; I did not want to rely on wireless. This (wired approach) CAN cause problems on bigger setups. It did on mine and it took a while to sort out. I needed new switch to solve the problem. The problem is rare, but my first choice of switch was unlucky. It has to do with if/how the switch handles STP. The topic is well covered on sonos boards, just a heads-up.
Good luck
