How can I connect and control my house's speakers?

Question

I purchased a house which has been set up with speakers. There are 4 in the living room (small, mounted in the wall corners) 2 in the dining room (in the ceiling) 4 in the kitchen (in the walls) and 2 in the master bedroom (in the ceiling.)

All of the wires leading to these speakers come out of the wall in the same place, in the living room. The previous owner had all the wires connected to their TV and sound system, but all that is gone now; all that is there are the wires with the ends stripped.

I know the speakers are functional, as they were playing music when I toured the home. The previous owner had a box with the TV which had buttons labelled "dining room" "kitchen" and so on, which allowed one to turn those speakers on or off, to control where the music would play.

I do not know much at all about wiring up sound systems. What do I need to do/get/have in order to connect and control all these speakers, like the previous owner did?

Answer 1

You need a "speaker selector" with impedance matching built in. You also need a stereo amplifier to drive the speakers.

If you are going to put a TV where the speaker wires are, you could get a surround receiver with a "zone 2" powered output, and use that for amplification to the speaker selector.

You could also get a distributed audio system such as Russound, Netstreams, Nuvo, Speakercraft, etc... This would give you the most functionallity, but it will cost the most too.

Answer 2

You could get a stereo receiver and one of these:

http://www.crutchfield.com/App/Product/I...

(4 pair speaker selection system)