Can EA-1 power two zones?

[mod220]

I wired my house years ago during renovation with plans to do C4 everywhere.  But decided to go SmartThings route.  Overall been happy but my Logitech Harmony Elite remotes are driving my family crazy, so thinking of doing C4 in basement and then based off that, may extend to the house.   It's a big undertaking to do the whole house, so I'd like to start small.   The room is as follows:

8 Caseta light switches

TV w/ AVR 7.2 setup = Zone 1

two ceiling speakers = zone 2

I keep reading EA-1 only does one audio stream, but not sure if I can do the same audio stream to two zones, or, if it only does one zone?

I don't need to control all the other lights, locks, etc., from this room, so I think EA-1 should suffice?

[brekfastb]

Ea-1 has limited control ports and only hdmi out for audio. I would be looking at an EA-3 for a proper setup


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[mstafford388]

The other thing you need to double check is if your AVR can down-convert the audio coming through the HDMI for zone2.  Most can't, so in that case you'd need an audio extractor and those things generally suck.  

[mod220]

AVR is Denon AVR-2400, not sure if that would work?

[Elvis]

It is supposed to work.

[Elvis]

If the two zones are close by and you'll be listening to the same source, use Denon's all-zone stereo mode. Works like a champ.

[mod220]

Zone 2 is the same room, one end of the room is a 7.2 setup and the other end of room is a pool table with two ceiling speakers.  My receiver will use both zones to power Zone 1 (7.2), so I was thinking of a Russound amp or something else to power Zone 2.   I don't necessarily need two different audio at once, rooms to small, but I would like to be able to control Zone 1, or Zone 2, or both...can EA-1 do that?  sorry, noob here!

[Elvis]

2 minutes ago, mod220 said:

Zone 2 is the same room, one end of the room is a 7.2 setup and the other end of room is a pool table with two ceiling speakers.  My receiver will use both zones to power Zone 1 (7.2), so I was thinking of a Russound amp or something else to power Zone 2.   I don't necessarily need two different audio at once, rooms to small, but I would like to be able to control Zone 1, or Zone 2, or both...can EA-1 do that?  sorry, noob here!

I saw that you had 7.2 so yes, you need to use the pre-out of the Denon to go to a separate amp to power the Zone 2 speakers. And yes, the EA-1 should handle the control okay. 

I did this temporarily with my Denon 3300. I ran the Zone 2 pre-out to an old Technics 2 channel amp. The Denon acted as the pre-amp, and fully controlled by a C4 HC-250.

[mod220]

3 minutes ago, Elvis said:

I saw that you had 7.2 so yes, you need to use the pre-out of the Denon to go to a separate amp to power the Zone 2 speakers. And yes, the EA-1 should handle the control okay. 

I did this temporarily with my Denon 3300. I ran the Zone 2 pre-out to an old Technics 2 channel amp. The Denon acted as the pre-amp, and fully controlled by a C4 HC-250.

great, thanks!   I'm also confused at how much the EA-1 can power?  It seems very subjective, how do you know how many locks, lights, thermostats, etc. the controller can handle?  I've searched, and read, and watched videos, yet there does not seem to be any science, or quantitative metric to use, other than EA-5 is bigger than EA-3, which is bigger than EA-1...

[Elvis]

14 minutes ago, mod220 said:

great, thanks!   I'm also confused at how much the EA-1 can power?  It seems very subjective, how do you know how many locks, lights, thermostats, etc. the controller can handle?  I've searched, and read, and watched videos, yet there does not seem to be any science, or quantitative metric to use, other than EA-5 is bigger than EA-3, which is bigger than EA-1...

To my knowledge the hard limitation of the EA-1 is processing power, one stream, plus the limitation of physical ports. The main limitation is processing power. A dealer might explain it better, but my old dealer said: EA-1 is for on screen display of a secondary TV, EA-3 is entry level (in his book), EA-5 was for either a big house or user that needed more than 3 simultaneous streams. I started with an HC-250 and then moved up to an EA-3 and used the HC-250 on the second TV for OSD. Now with OS3, you can't have an HC-250 in the same project so when I finish setting up the home theater, I'll need an EA-1 if I want an OSD on that room. @Cyknight and others would be better to respond to this question than me. They're the experts.

If you intend to grow your system, and get an EA-3 or EA-5 later, then the EA-1 will still give you an OSD on one TV.

As far as controlling your lights, there is no limitation on the EA-1 that I know of. You might need a Lutron SmartBridge Pro if you don't already have it so you can integrate the lights you have. That's what I do and it works flawlessly.

https://www.control4.com/solutions/products/controllers

Edited September 29, 2020 by Elvis
Added link

[mod220]

3 minutes ago, Elvis said:

To my knowledge the hard limitation of the EA-1 is processing power, one stream, plus the limitation of physical ports. The main limitation is processing power. A dealer might explain it better, but my old dealer said: EA-1 is for on screen display of a secondary TV, EA-3 is entry level (in his book), EA-5 was for either a big house or user that needed more than 3 simultaneous streams. I started with an HC-250 and then moved up to an EA-3 and used the HC-250 on the second TV for OSD. Now with OS3, you can't have an HC-250 in the same project so when I finish setting up the home theater, I'll need an EA-1 if I want an OSD on that room. @Cyknight and others would be better to respond to this question than me. They're the experts.

If you intend to grow your system, and get an EA-3 or EA-5 later, then the EA-1 will still give you an OSD on one TV.

As far as controlling your lights, there is no limitation on the EA-1 that I know of. You might need a Lutron SmartBridge Pro if you don't already have it so you can integrate the lights you have. That's what I do and it works flawlessly.

https://www.control4.com/solutions/products/controllers

Thanks!   My local C4 rep told me to do a EA-5 as the main (family room), EA-1 in theatre, and EA-1 in master bedroom.   basically one for each primary TV.  But I have yet to see how anyone quantifies which master controller is needed.   

[SMHarman]

EA3 is perfectly adequate for an average home build. Constraints in the 1 and 3 are audio streams.

 

EA1 can send the commands for multiple rooms. The challenge here is if the driver for your AVR does all this. As others have said "it should work". But that should is about the feed and control of zone 2.

 

Another alternative is an HC800 as director and 4 audio outs and then an EA1 for OSD.

 

If yiu don't need OSD then an 800 will suffice until it goes EOL.

 

 

[mod220]

3 minutes ago, SMHarman said:

EA3 is perfectly adequate for an average home build. Constraints in the 1 and 3 are audio streams.

 

EA1 can send the commands for multiple rooms. The challenge here is if the driver for your AVR does all this. As others have said "it should work". But that should is about the feed and control of zone 2.

 

Another alternative is an HC800 as director and 4 audio outs and then an EA1 for OSD.

 

If yiu don't need OSD then an 800 will suffice until it goes EOL.

Thanks, the "shoulds" and subjectivity are so hard to understand, should be finite!  LOL   Regarding audio streams, if the EA-5 is the master, and 2 EA-1 are added, does that get me 7 streams or 5 is the max?

 

 

[Cyknight]

5 minutes ago, mod220 said:

Thanks!   My local C4 rep told me to do a EA-5 as the main (family room), EA-1 in theatre, and EA-1 in master bedroom.   basically one for each primary TV.  But I have yet to see how anyone quantifies which master controller is needed.   

Problem is that quantification is not that easy.

Your dealer is following 'standard' C4 protocol - one EA per TV. One EA per 'onscreen' location.

What is needed processing power wise, depends a lot on the setup. 3rd party drivers, complex programming and so on, so you can't 'blanket' state you need controller xx for this size of a house, this many tv/audio zones etc. It's just not that simple.

Lighting also comes into play - there ARE infact limitation on how much lighting a single controller can handle, though it's less about the type of controller as any single controllers ability to connect zigbee devices. This is not a hard limit, but total zigbee devices should not top 75, regardless of what (single) controller you have - more devices should see more controllers added (including CA-1's) to spread the load on that.

 

Basically, a single Theatre setup is an EA1 though if you have 1 or two added zones of just local TVs that's not an issue, anything more with audio should be EA3, EA5 I would suggest on anything over 8 zones of audio as the more efficient way of adding streams.

Add i/o extenders for added control points, add EA1 or CA1 for more zigbee.

Large houses get a CA-10 as a main controller, likely an EA5 to deal with audio streams, CA-1's for large zigbee setups.

 

But there's a lot of other reasons to go with controller xx or yy in certain setups - one basic example is if you're using (a fair bit of) 3rd party lighting, the tracking of that likely means an EA-5 is recommended at least.

[Cyknight]

Just now, mod220 said:

if the EA-5 is the master, and 2 EA-1 are added, does that get me 7 streams or 5 is the max?

Technically yes - you would have 7 HOWEVER HDMI streams are NOT recommended for whole home audio as syncing between HDMI and other outputs is not without problems.

No issues USING HDMI for a local surround zone if you don't expect to be using it in any 'party' mode on the same source though.

[Cyknight]

MAX amount of streams is not really set, though I think more than 10 would not be wise - there are also limitations on certain services that can handle streams - ie SXM only allows one stream per account, Spotify has a cap based on subscriptions etc - Spotify Connect in general cannot have more than 11 driver instances off the top of my head.

[zaphod]

Are you sure that you need that many unique streams?  If they are all playing the same music then that is only one stream.

[Cyknight]

1 minute ago, zaphod said:

Are you sure that you need that many unique streams?  If they are all playing the same music then that is only one stream.

Good point - one stream is one UNIQUE stream (Station, song). Doesn't mean you can only listen in one zone at a time.

[mod220]

Just now, Cyknight said:

Technically yes - you would have 7 HOWEVER HDMI streams are NOT recommended for whole home audio as syncing between HDMI and other outputs is not without problems.

No issues USING HDMI for a local surround zone if you don't expect to be using it in any 'party' mode on the same source though.

Here's what I have now for audio, poor mans HEOS setup, I needed AVRs and figured HEOS was included and I got two HEOS zones for $3-400, not $500/amp, so HEOS is basically free for me

AVR 2400 - Zone 1 = 5.1 Family Room, Zone 2 = 2 speakers in kitchen  (EA - 5 would go here)

AVR 1400 -Zone 1 = backyard speakers, Zone 2= Living Room speakers 

AVR 1400 -Zone 1= Master bed w/ TV, Zone 2 = Master bath (EA - 1 would go here)

I did not do a central location "home run" setup, so each AVR is in the room.   This is 6 audio zones, plus the two new ones in the basement mentioned above, but I really only have five "unique" streams needed as the 8 audio zones are really five separate areas (master bed/bath, family room/kitchen, theatre/pool table, living room, back yard)

 

[mod220]

My hesitation to go C4 a few years ago is knowing the world is going cloud, and hardware is a relic, but I guess for now this is the C4 option.   Any talk of the EA line getting upgraded or do you anticipate these will be "new" for a few more years?  Best part of SmartThings is I lose $59 if hardware dies, not $3-5k like C4!

This pretty random but two of my AVRs above share a cabinet.   They have unique names but when I use my Harmony remote now, the signal is the same, so both AVRs turn on and off, even thought I only want one on/off.  So annoying.  this is due to the IR blaster, but is there a way to control the AVRs w/ WIFI only and avoid this problem with C4?

[zaphod]

I personally kind of like having ceiling speakers that are centrally connected, in addition to an AVR in rooms with TVs. The reason for that is that the centralization makes it easier and it also facilitiates announcements which don't really work with an AVR since by the amp powers on and is ready to process sound it is too late. Although centralization for me is somewhat distributed - I have an EA3 in my office connected to a 4 zone C4 matrix amp that powers office, living room, dining room and hall, in addition to an HC800 in my main rack connected to a bunch or other rooms.  And I have an 8 zone matrix amp in my kitchen connected to two zones in my kitchen and will also connect this to my deck, hot tub area, gym, etc.

[Cyknight]

Don't take this the wrong way - but you're looking at a patch work setup.

Do the AVR's support HDMI audio out to zone 2?

If you want the abiity to have seperate things running in the living and back yard, you'll need an EA3 there for sure.

 

System wise from what you're saying, and EA3 would be enough to run the system as such.

[zaphod]

3 minutes ago, mod220 said:

My hesitation to go C4 a few years ago is knowing the world is going cloud, and hardware is a relic, but I guess for now this is the C4 option.   Any talk of the EA line getting upgraded or do you anticipate these will be "new" for a few more years?  Best part of SmartThings is I lose $59 if hardware dies, not $3-5k like C4!

This pretty random but two of my AVRs above share a cabinet.   They have unique names but when I use my Harmony remote now, the signal is the same, so both AVRs turn on and off, even thought I only want one on/off.  So annoying.  this is due to the IR blaster, but is there a way to control the AVRs w/ WIFI only and avoid this problem with C4?

I know what you mean and that some what makes distributed AV less attractrive, but you can't have an Amp in the cloud. 

[mod220]

16 minutes ago, Cyknight said:

Don't take this the wrong way - but you're looking at a patch work setup.

Do the AVR's support HDMI audio out to zone 2?

If you want the abiity to have seperate things running in the living and back yard, you'll need an EA3 there for sure.

 

System wise from what you're saying, and EA3 would be enough to run the system as such.

no offense taken, like I said, I had to buy 3 AVRs for 3 TVs, and they each had 2 zone HEOS, so I got 6 zones of streaming audio for free, no complaints.   

So here is what it would like like complete:

Basement - EA1, 2 audio zones (contiguous)

Level 1 - EA3 - 3 "unique" audio zones (family/kitchen + living room + backyard)

Level 2 - EA 1, 2 zones contiguous

As far as total power, I have four Yale locks, 8 Reolink cameras (C4 compatible?), and 60 Lutron Caseta switches...EA-3 good to handle that?   

[mod220]

16 minutes ago, zaphod said:

I know what you mean and that some what makes distributed AV less attractrive, but you can't have an Amp in the cloud. 

just seems like all processing could be in the cloud, and you had amps for power and tablet/voice/remote for control in the home.   seems like a far better model.  C4 could ditch the hardware and become a SaaS business like every other company...