Media Systems: Incorporating the TV and the HiFi - Smart Home Automation with Linux and Raspberry Pi - page 115

Wiring Looms
Wiring looms carry a powerful signal (pun intended!) via cables to drive various passive speakers around your house.
Consequently, we call this passive distribution . You should create one loom for each area of the house where the same
audio content is likely to be heard, because local control here is more difficult (unless you get speakers with a volume
control or want to hack one yourself ). In a room layout as that shown in Figure 3-1 , you have little privacy between
the living room and the dining area, so these would be on the same loom, as would the kitchen because you probably
want to pop in and out without missing the music or TV output. If an extension such as a sun room or den were added
to the rear of the house, by contrast, it would be considered a separate area with a different lifestyle purpose and
would not be on the same loom. Instead, any music in there should be provided over IP.
Figure 3-1. A standard downstairs plan
The first component in a wiring loom is the main power amplifier, taking its input from the switch box we covered
previously. Normally, this will drive one set of speakers, although some amplifiers provide extra outputs for additional
sets. It's rare to have more than two and even rarer to have more than a couple of rooms on the same loom, so you
don't often need any more equipment.
In those cases in which you need more outputs, you can add a speaker control box into the chain. This takes a
single speaker output and splits it into many. These additional speaker cables can be run into the other rooms and
wired directly into other speakers without the need for power. This is the main advantage of this approach; namely,
the cables are easier to run (the holes are smaller because there are no bulky plugs on the end), and there's no need
for power sockets nearby, enabling you to add music to the bathroom where media players would not be practical
or possible.