EA3 vs EA5?

[eggzlot]

8 minutes ago, mod220 said:

Thanks for the link, I’ll have to study to learn more about a lot of the technology.  In general, does adding EA1’s to an EA3 add horsepower, or simply put a GUI on additional screens?   I wish I could just get three EA1’s and be done, as I’ll never need to control an area away from room I’m in.   but I read that isn’t possible you need a EA3 or EA5 for multi room?

 

My basement is not finished yet so worst case I get an EA3 in main area (family room) and if it’s undersized I move that to basement when done and end up with EA5 in family room, EA3 in basement and EA1 in master 

Do you have any idea how many IRs, Rs232 or relays you need?  I think you may be looking at this wrong.  I’m no dealer so can’t say I’m an expert here.  I think one unit acts as the zigbee server hence if you have a multiroom set up an EA3 or EA5 is advised.  You need to make sure you have strong zigbee coverage.  

And don’t forget about your network.   What is your router?  Switch?  APs?

[livitup]

Thanks for the link, I’ll have to study to learn more about a lot of the technology.  In general, does adding EA1’s to an EA3 add horsepower, or simply put a GUI on additional screens?   I wish I could just get three EA1’s and be done, as I’ll never need to control an area away from room I’m in.   but I read that isn’t possible you need a EA3 or EA5 for multi room?

 

Additional controllers do not increase “horsepower”. One controller in every project is running the “director” process. It has all the drivers installed on it, has all the programming on it, and manages the system. Extra controllers add on-screen displays, audio streams, I/O ports, and (optionally) extend the Zigbee network through additional Zigbee access points and Zigbee servers.

 

EA-1 used to be limited to single room, single controller projects, but that limitation was removed in the latest OS release. It is still not recommended to use 3+ EA-1s due to the director situation mentioned above.

[RyanE]

As mentioned up-thread, the main difference between the EA-3 and EA-5 is the number of audio zones.  One important thing I didn't notice up-thread is that one of those audio streams is on HDMI on all EA-series controllers.

That is, if you get an EA3, you have *2* independent audio streams, in addition to one on the HDMI output.

An EA1 *only* has a single audio stream, on it's HDMI output.  You can't easily add additional audio zones by adding an EA1.

An EA5 has *4* independent audio streams, plus one HDMI.  If you're doing whole-home audio, you can't typically use the HDMI output's audio to go into an audio switch, you need to use the other audio outputs.

The reason independent audio streams are important is that you can only listen to as many different sources simultaneously as you have audio streams available.

i.e. if you have 4 people in the house, each listening to their *own* individual audio stream (from any of the streaming audio providers Control4 supports natively), each one would require an audio output from one or more controllers.  This does not depend on the audio distribution setup.  Your audio distribution setup can be going to many more zones, but those zones will only have audio streams if they are available from the controllers.

In my house, I have 12ish audio zones, an HC800 and an EA-5.  I can have any of those zones playing streams, a total of 6 streams simultaneously (2 on the HC800, 4 on the EA-5). 

RyanE

 

P.S.  I don't think anyone has mentioned the Triad One, which is an amplified zone of audio, with it's own stream built-in.  It *can* be used to add streams to a Control4 system, although it's typically used to create a 'remote' zone, that doesn't have speaker wiring run to it.

 

[SMHarman]

Maybe I missed it but how many people live in this home.

Generally you need about as many audio outputs as residents. Nobody is really listening to two things at once. Though may have TV on mute somewhere and music on also - which would be two steams but one is HDMI.

[therockhr]

14 hours ago, RyanE said:

As mentioned up-thread, the main difference between the EA-3 and EA-5 is the number of audio zones.  One important thing I didn't notice up-thread is that one of those audio streams is on HDMI on all EA-series controllers.

I would assume then that there isn't that much difference between the EA-1 and these controllers as well, correct? If I am not using Control4 for any audio, then I should see very little difference in performance between the controllers, right?

I just upgraded from a HC-250 to a EA-1 and it seems to be working well.

[Cyknight]

Hmm. Know that the EA5 does have a better processor than the EA3, as well as dual audio chips vs a single in the EA3 (EA1 doesn't have a dedicated audio chip).

 

There ARE differences between the 3 models

 

 

[therockhr]

16 minutes ago, Cyknight said:

Hmm. Know that the EA5 does have a better processor than the EA3, as well as dual audio chips vs a single in the EA3 (EA1 doesn't have a dedicated audio chip).

 

There ARE differences between the 3 models

 

 

Yes, but it seems the main differences around the models are IO and audio. In terms of processing power, the EA-1 and EA-3 seem to be identical and the EA-5 has a little better processor.

I see a lot of times people on here say "you need to get X controller because it has more horsepower". But in terms of technical specs, it appears that if you aren't using C4 audio or IO then there is very little difference between what the controllers will do.

That is why I said in another thread that the EA-1 is probably the best deal out there in home automation. You can get a control4 system for not much more than a single Harmony remote.

[Cyknight]

20 minutes ago, therockhr said:

Yes, but it seems the main differences around the models are IO and audio. In terms of processing power, the EA-1 and EA-3 seem to be identical and the EA-5 has a little better processor.

Yes and no. Even if not actually USING audio, the fact that the EA-1 does the audio processes on-board the CPU will cause some drain on available CPU power, and 1.2 vs 1.6 is is still a considerable increase.

Yes, you can do a lot with an EA-1 - but I'm advising caution here in to prevent the line of thought that an EA1 is just an EA5 with less i/o ports and can perform the same task/handle the same overall system size. It's not that simple.

[RyanE]

The main *feature* differences between the EA series controllers are IO and Audio Outputs.

There are obviously other differences including faster processors in the higher end models.

Yes, the EA-1 is a fantastic value for the money.  So is the EA-3 and the EA-5.

RyanE

 

[therockhr]

10 hours ago, Cyknight said:

Yes and no. Even if not actually USING audio, the fact that the EA-1 does the audio processes on-board the CPU will cause some drain on available CPU power, and 1.2 vs 1.6 is is still a considerable increase.

Yes, you can do a lot with an EA-1 - but I'm advising caution here in to prevent the line of thought that an EA1 is just an EA5 with less i/o ports and can perform the same task/handle the same overall system size. It's not that simple.

@RyanE mentioned about the audio from the HDMI not really being an independent stream. So question, does the dedicated audio processors on the EA-3 and EA-5 handle the HDMI audio or do they handle the HDMI audio the same as the EA-1?

[Cyknight]

2 hours ago, therockhr said:

@RyanE mentioned about the audio from the HDMI not really being an independent stream.

He what now? Not sure what he would mean by that. Not saying he didn't, or is in any way incorrect - but "does not compute, unexpected input" I could speculate about three ways to explain that sentence but if you could pinpoint where he said it I could perhaps make sense of it.

2 hours ago, therockhr said:

So question, does the dedicated audio processors on the EA-3 and EA-5 handle the HDMI audio or do they handle the HDMI audio the same as the EA-1?

I honestly couldn't tell you. I would suspect it/they likely do, but I'm not privy to that info specifically.

 

[RyanE]

4 hours ago, therockhr said:

@RyanE mentioned about the audio from the HDMI not really being an independent stream. So question, does the dedicated audio processors on the EA-3 and EA-5 handle the HDMI audio or do they handle the HDMI audio the same as the EA-1?

I think you may have misunderstood what I was trying say.

I was saying that the audio stream that is on the HDMI is difficult to use in multi-room audio, not that it's not an independent stream.

If my statement was unclear, I apologize.

Certainly the HDMI stream is independent of any other audio streams on the controller, but it's not output as a port (Stereo or Digital Audio) on the back of the controller, so it's more difficult to use as a multi-room audio source.

As far as whether the HDMI stream is handled by an audio processor, or by the main controller, unfortunately, I also don't know the answer to that offhand, and I'm on PTO.

RyanE

 

[Unsocialtoaster]

If you wanted to use an EA1 into a multo-room audio system, you would need an HDMI audio extractor, like this one: http://www.blustream.co.uk/hd11au/

They may introduce a slight delay into the audio during extraction and conversion from digital to analog, so it would not be possible to guarantee that it would be in-sync with other zones playing from analog audio sources (this could be negated by using an audio matrix which would then use the same input and connect internally to whichever zone outputs requested the stream).

[therockhr]

5 hours ago, RyanE said:

I think you may have misunderstood what I was trying say.

I was saying that the audio stream that is on the HDMI is difficult to use in multi-room audio, not that it's not an independent stream.

If my statement was unclear, I apologize.

Certainly the HDMI stream is independent of any other audio streams on the controller, but it's not output as a port (Stereo or Digital Audio) on the back of the controller, so it's more difficult to use as a multi-room audio source.

As far as whether the HDMI stream is handled by an audio processor, or by the main controller, unfortunately, I also don't know the answer to that offhand, and I'm on PTO.

RyanE

 

It was my fault. I did not make it clear what I was talking about. I was really just trying to find out if the HDMI audio from the controller used the same dedicated processor that the other audio outputs used.

If the dedicated audio processors on the EA-3 and EA-5 dont handle the HDMI audio and it is handled by the on-board CPU, then it is no different than the EA-1, no?

There are plenty of reasons why someone should buy the EA-3 and/or EA-5. The audio and IO ports are easily worth the extra cost if you do not already have audio or IO (not to mention the extra network ports and better wifi). But for someone like me who already has a Sonos connect for audio (my family only uses 1 streaming source) and already has GC iTach's for IO, then the EA-1 looks to be a good choice. I am pretty happy with it.

Thanks for the info.