Tunes in your master bathroom will help you soak your stress away.

If music is high on your list of things that make life worth living, then you naturally want to enjoy your tunes as frequently as possible. A Hi-Fi or home theater system in your den is a terrific starting point. But let's be honest. How often do you have time to sit and listen to music in the den?

Wouldn't it be great if you could connect the components in your den to speakers in your kitchen, bedrooms, master bathroom, and home office? You'd multiply your listening opportunities and maximize your investment in your audio components.

Whole-house music as an amenity, not an afterthought

If you think of music as a household amenity, like lights, plumbing or cable TV, it's clear that a well-planned, user-friendly multi-room audio system is in order. Unfortunately, planning and operating a multi-room audio system can get complicated, which may explain why so many homes don't have one.

Traditional analog multi-room audio systems rely upon a central receiver or amplifier to power the speakers in the outlying rooms. Often, the same receiver powers the main entertainment system, too. That can mean that once you get beyond a couple of extra rooms, a traditional multi-room system becomes daunting.

For example, without the proper precautions, adding several pairs of speakers can easily fry an amplifier. You can avoid amp meltdown by using a speaker selector or impedance-matching volume controls, but you'll probably sacrifice power, user-friendliness or both. Your sound quality can suffer, too.

For remote control of your music source components, you can add programmable keypads or an infrared repeater system. But now you're talking about a complex collection of system parts.

Installing such a system can be a bear, too. In addition to the hodgepodge of parts, you'll have to put a lot of bulky, expensive speaker wires inside your walls, plus the "control" cables for your keypads or IR repeaters. No wonder so many people give up on the idea of an integrated multi-room system and decide instead to scatter separate music systems about the house.

Enter an elegantly simple digital alternative called ZON (pronounced "zone," not "zahn"). Compared to a traditional multi-room set-up, the easy-to-operate ZON system involves far fewer pieces and uses much less wire, mostly CAT-5 computer networking cable that is lighter and less costly than in-wall speaker wire.

You can add zones by linking two or more routers.

ZON Audio comes from Oxmoor, an Alabama company whose credits include sound systems in IMAX theaters, Universal Studios and NBC studios. ZON Audio debuted in 2002 and was honored by the Consumer Electronics Association with a prestigious "Mark of Excellence Award" in 2003 and by CE Pro magazine with a "2003 High Impact Award." ZON also won CE Pro's "Innovator of the Year" award in 2003 beating out thousands of companies under consideration (including big-time brands like Microsoft and Sony).

The router

The heart of the ZON system is the ZR-98 router, which delivers electricity, audio signals, and control signals to and from the other system components. The ZR-98 installs in a utility room or service closet, out of sight and out of your way. It connects as many as nine music source inputs to ZAC-60 controller/amplifiers in four music zones.

What does that mean, exactly? It means you have a lot of flexibility. A "music zone" is an area you power and control with one or two ZAC-60s. It could be a single room, or it could be two. But you can only play one music source at a time in each zone.

The controller/amplifier

The ZAC-60 controller/amplifier is the real stroke of genius here. Its built-in 60-watt digital amplifier (30 watts x 2 RMS) puts the power in the same room (or zone) as the speakers. This eliminates the need to install hundreds of feet of speaker wire (which saves you money) and improves audio quality.

The ZAC-60 also incorporates an infrared receiver that passes remote control commands to music sources throughout the home. A built-in microphone enables system-wide paging as well as zone monitoring, ideal for listening in on a child's playroom or bedroom.

Don't be fooled by the scarcity of buttons on the ZAC-60. It can do as much as those scary, over-engineered keypads you see in many other whole house systems. For starters, it gives you volume control, source selection, tone, loudness, balance and some built-in equalization modes.

The integrated jog wheel and high-resolution dot matrix display give you a stylish and intuitive user interface. To access the ZAC-60's powerful features, simply press and briefly hold the jog wheel to view the functions menu. Turn the jog wheel left or right to view the menu of functions available. To select a particular function, briefly press the jog wheel.

The ability to control your music source components using the jog wheel comes with the installation of the optional ZIR-232 Device Commander module, which simply plugs into the router. It lets you control nearly all brands of stereo components through your ZAC-60s. If it doesn't already know the remote control codes for your components, it can easily learn them. The software that comes with the module lets you personalize the source control interface.

When it comes to looks, the ZAC-60s can blend in or stand out. If you want people to notice, the standard titanium finish is your best bet. If not, you can buy a white faceplate.

If you don't install the Device Commander module, or you'd rather not have to get out of your easy chair, you can control your music sources via the built-in infrared repeater system. A small remote control comes with each ZAC-60, but these are for the basic ZAC-60 functions only (power on/off, volume, muting, and source selection). To take full advantage of the IR repeater system, you'll need the remote for the music source component or, better yet, a separate universal remote.

Plenty of power

For something that's cool-running and small enough to fit in a compact wall-mount unit, the amp inside the ZAC-60 is surprisingly potent. Thirty watts per channel is less than you find in most receivers these days, but is as much or more than you can expect from many other multi-room alternatives. I tried it with some large floor-standing speakers. It had no trouble driving them. The sound was crisp, clean and detailed, with plenty of low-end punch. You won't achieve ear-splitting volume, but for the kind of listening that most people do around the house, the ZAC-60 delivers plenty of power.

Music source inputs where you need them

With the ZON system, you are free to locate music sources anywhere in your home. You're not limited to the components in your Hi-Fi stack. The ZIM-4 input module provides connections for analog or digital music components in a convenient Decora-sized wall outlet. The ZIM-4 features a 24-bit A/D converter, so even an analog signal travels digitally from its input to the speaker outputs. That means no noise and consistently great sound quality.

If you have several components in the same location, ZIM-4 modules can be conveniently mounted side-by-side in a multi-gang wall plate. Each ZIM-4 can only feed one music signal at a time into the system. If you plug one analog and one digital music source into a ZIM-4, and both are turned on, it will play the digital source only. If you turn the digital source off, you can listen to the analog source. Like the ZAC-60, the ZIM-4 is available in a variety of colors.

Think of a ZON system as an investment in your home

The best time to think about installing a ZON system is before your house is built or renovated. It's not inexpensive, but you could say that it's reasonably priced when compared to upscale kitchen appliances or other taken-for-granted amenities, such as air conditioning or plumbing. Because the ZON system is built-in, like your plumbing and electricity, you can even roll it into your mortgage for a few extra dollars a month. It will increase the resale value of your home and provide you with a lot of pleasure in the meantime.

Of course, you can also "retrofit" a ZON system into an existing home, and the fact that it uses mostly CAT-5 cable makes the installation a bit easier. You only need a small amount of speaker wire, to run from your ZAC-60s to the speakers nearby.

New home or old, a ZON Audio system makes multi-room music much simpler, from the planning, to the installation, to your daily use of the system.