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.