Yamaha RX-V485 with MusicCast Technology Experience

[BraveSirRobbin]

My son recently purchased a home where the upstairs has built in ceiling speakers throughout with volume controls in each room, and this is replicated in the downstairs rooms as well. The only problem is, the previous owner landed the upstairs speakers in an upstairs closet and the downstairs speakers in a downstairs closet (in lieu of landing them all in one closet/area).

He wants to be able to stream from multiple sources including an echo show (upstairs) and an echo dot (downstairs) and would like the ability to broadcast throughout the home, or selected speakers. He has no interest in an audio distribution system (like Russound), a home theater PC, or re-wiring anything. He also has no problem manually pressing buttons on a speaker selector in the closet.

In looking into this (as I know little of this subject) I found the Yamaha RX-V485 receiver with musiccast technology that looked promising.

https://www.amazon.c...t/dp/B07CF9H3KW

The problem is, he would have to purchase two of these for each floor. I was thinking of wiring with a manual speaker selector/distribution system like this. This would give him the option of Bluetooth input, plus streaming from a variety of Internet music sources, plus being able to sync both receivers via musiccast, plus control of those receivers via their phones.

Any thoughts or suggestions on a better scheme?

I'm hoping to get him into HomeSeer (maybe a ZTroller at first). Will this plugin support this receiver?

Thanks,

BSR
Home Audio Setup.pdf

[kenm]

Hi BSR,

I recently purchased an RX-V483 (last year's model, I'll explain in a second) for a game room setup. I have it connected to a MusicCast WX-010 in my office and it works flawlessly. The only downside I've run into is that you have to listen to the same source on MusicCast as you do in the main listening room (i.e. the wired speakers) but you can turn off the main zone and only use MC. The other thing is you can't Airplay to the receiver and send it back out MusicCast. I understand that's fixed in the 485 model. Spotify Connect doesn't have that limitation. The sole reason I went with the 2017 model was because it supports Bluetooth headphones which is a feature removed from the 2018 model in favor of wireless surround speakers.

The one thing I'm not sure of (can't test) is whether or not you can cast from receiver to receiver? I'd email Yamaha support (or Crutchfield) and ask to make sure.

As far as purchasing 2x of them, a second 485 would actually be cheaper than a WXA-50 MusicCast amp assuming you can cast to it.

Too bad the original owner didn't think ahead and wire crosconnects between the closets.

Hope this helps,
Ken