Can EA-1 power two zones?

[mod220]

6 hours ago, Elvis said:

Nonsense. An EA-1 can "control" multiple zones, regardless of the room. Therefore, an EA-1 can "control" two zones in one room.

I thought the consensus here is this was untrue, EA-1 cannot control two zones running the same sound concurrently?

[msgreenf]

You aren't going to get what you need from this thread. You need a real verbal conversation with a dealer.

Sent from my Pixel 3a XL using Tapatalk

[eggzlot]

40 minutes ago, mod220 said:

I never meant “power” as in power like an AVR, I meant power as in “control,” processing capability, etc.

well it can "control" 2 rooms

[mod220]

1 hour ago, msgreenf said:

You aren't going to get what you need from this thread. You need a real verbal conversation with a dealer.

Sent from my Pixel 3a XL using Tapatalk
 

I have a call w/ him today

53 minutes ago, eggzlot said:

well it can "control" 2 rooms

but not if the 2 "rooms," are zones 1 and 2 on the same AVR?

[therockhr]

This is my system with multiple zones being controlled by a single EA-1.

[mod220]

3 minutes ago, therockhr said:

This is my system with multiple zones being controlled by a single EA-1.

Thanks!   Fairly similiar to mine, how did you make that drawing?    I really wish my installer ran everything to basement rack, and we didn't break it all up.  How do you control all the speakers that go to the Russound MCA-C5?  Having a single Sonos connect, I assume you have one stream that they all would share?

[mod220]

6 minutes ago, therockhr said:

This is my system with multiple zones being controlled by a single EA-1.

Here's my poor man's AV setup sketch...

AV Zones.pdf

[therockhr]

2 minutes ago, mod220 said:

Thanks!   Fairly similiar to mine, how did you make that drawing?    I really wish my installer ran everything to basement rack, and we didn't break it all up.  How do you control all the speakers that go to the Russound MCA-C5?  Having a single Sonos connect, I assume you have one stream that they all would share?

I did the drawing in Visio.

The EA-1 controls the Russound via a driver. In the Control4 software you bind the connections of rooms to the Russound zones.

Yes, the Sonos Connect is shared via 3 connections; the optical to the Great Room AVR, the digital coax to the Den AVR and the analog output to the Russound. All these zones share that same stream. I dont have the need to play different music in different rooms. Im fine with 1 stream.

[RAV]

2 hours ago, mod220 said:

I thought the consensus here is this was untrue, EA-1 cannot control two zones running the same sound concurrently?

You keep confusing control vs streams.

Any of the processors can control an almost unlimited number of devices, there's nothing in software that says you've reached your limit you can't add anything more, the software would let you design a giant system on an EA1. But your system isn't going to perform at all if the processor is too small. A small processor will be slow, sluggish, and likely lockup often, system being unresponsive, memory and processor over driven, bad experience. No different than running a video game or design software on a cheap laptop.

Each controller also has a different number of PHYSICAL audio outputs (streams). CA have none, EA-1 one, EA-3 three, EA-5 five.

Need more streams, bigger EA.
More devices in the project, bigger EA  (or for the large systems a CA10 with redundancy and processing powerhouse)

[Elvis]

48 minutes ago, mod220 said:

Here's my poor man's AV setup sketch...

AV Zones.pdfUnavailable

Your PDF shows "unavailable" -- not sure why.

8 minutes ago, RAV said:

You keep confusing control vs streams.

^^^^This.

[eggzlot]

2 hours ago, mod220 said:

I have a call w/ him today

but not if the 2 "rooms," are zones 1 and 2 on the same AVR?

If the avr driver supports both zones then I don’t see why not

has nothing to do with an ea1

[therockhr]

ea-1-performance-comparison-rev-a.pdfSince it hasnt been posted in awhile here is the EA performance chart (also includes HC controllers). Note that the EA-1 and EA-3 are the same except for the dedicated audio streams.

[Elvis]

3 hours ago, mod220 said:

I have a call w/ him today

Excellent! Be ready and even have a "picture" what you want, even if a sketch on a napkin. Include your budget.

[mod220]

For some reason I can’t upload my diagram, so I printed and took a pic, hopefully this will work

[Elvis]

1 hour ago, mod220 said:

For some reason I can’t upload my diagram, so I printed and took a pic, hopefully this will work

I can see that just fine. 

I would add sources to it, assuming there are external sources for any or all of the AVRs. Any gaming consoles? Roku? AppleTV? etc. 

And if the AVRs are Denon with HEOS, I'd confirm with Denon/dealer how you can play one AVR source on another AVR via HEOS. (Big question mark over bottom righthand output box.)

[DWRobinson]

I just have to say, I read this thread over lunch today and very much enjoyed it. It reminded me of the dogs on Funniest Home Videos chasing their tales.

I certainly can’t add any professional help, but my pic is my original system from 09’. It has grown to 24 individual audio zones and 10 individual video zones. We have 7.4 in the theater room, 5.1 in the master bedroom, 20+ cameras, lighting, remote blinds, keypads, sprinkler, etc. Lots of drivers and lots of programming. We have a CA-10 because I wanted it, though dealer said it wasn’t necessary. CA-10 is running the director and HC-800 is running zigbee, audio, IR, security interface, etc. So two “controllers” for 24 zones as I believe you are calling them. We have many areas with multiple “zones” within them and it is not a problem.

As for the OSD, we never use this, thus all the additional controllers were not needed.

 

Also, seems like a good spot to say thanks to all the pros that help out and give advice on these forums.

 

[Cyknight]

One thing to correct - you can CERTAINLY have OSD running and play audio over HDMI at the same time - 100% if the zone playing music also has the OSD, but it will get wonky when you try and stream music to zone2 on an amp, and use osd on zone1. The reasoning for this is buried in how C4 selects audio paths etc - it's just not designed to operate in the setup described here, so pushing that too far past it's design can create weird behaviour.

 

Ah two things I suppose. While EA1 and EA3 have LARGELY the same specs (ie same processor) - the separate audio chip in the EA3 is not there to allow stereo/coax connections - it actually takes over all audio processing, creating headroom on the main processor to run the system. Essentially this DOES make the EA3 a 'more powerful controller', even if it's processor is the same (think using a computer and the CPU's built-in video processing vs using an external graphics card)