Need Advice - Whole House Speaker (4 pairs)

[JPro1173]

Good Morning,

I'm an extreme novice, so please bear with me. I purchased a new construction home and had whole-house ceiling speakers installed. The setup includes 4 pairs of speakers in various rooms along with a volume control for each room. The wiring is routed to our office. The panel the builder installed for the speaker jacks only has 4 banana plug inputs.

I'm looking for some help on a few things:

1. Does the 4 plug panel seem correct? It seemed odd to me that 4 pairs of speakers would route to only 4 outputs, but again, I'm new to this.

2. I really just wanted to use a basic receiver with an iPod jack that I could use to play music through the whole house. Is there a standalone receiver that would work for this purpose without adding a switch or amplifier to the mix?

3. I've looked for references to explain the wiring to a receiver for this type of setup but haven't had much luck. Given the way the panel is wired, it looks like I'd use a banana plug for the wall, but would I then need to split the other end of the wire when connecting to the receiver? Perhaps this depends on whether the receiver accepts banana plugs and whether the panel is correct to begin with?

I apologize for any lack of clarity and appreciate any direction that can be provided. Thanks for bearing with me.

Best,

J

 

[americanaudiophile]

Eight loudspeakers would normally require a plus & minus for each speaker. The volume control in each room may be an impedance matching type which was set to compensate for the speakers being run in parallel. That is why there are only 4 terminals (2 for all the lefts and 2 for all the rights). If that is what was done then you can use a stereo receiver with at least 50 - 100 watts per channel.
You can connect your ipod to it with a cable or dock.
You would need speaker wire with a banana at one end and bare wire at the other. If the receiver will accept banana plugs you could use them but you don't need to.
I would make sure that the controls are impedance matching because if they are not and you connect the receiver it might be damaged.