16 Favorite Multiroom Audio Systems

We are building a house and it is now pre-wired for 5 speakers in the family room (front left, center, right and rear left, right)and two on the back porch,and two in the garage.  What type of system do I need for this?  Does it require a 7.1 channel or a 9.1 channel - or other?
Please advise.
Thanks,
Scott

The most inexpensive solution is a 7.1 AVR with a powered zone 2. Basically those 2 rear surround channels that wouldn’t be used in the family room get re-assigned to power your sub-zones in the back porch and garage. If you can, prewire to a volume control location with the speaker wire as well as CAT5E wiring to each of the two distributed audio locations. By doing this, you can take care of impedance matching and add a level of control to your additional zones. The CAT5 allows even more control options beyond a volume control, if ever desired.

We tend to use Onkyo for this type of application, but reality is that any of the major contenders work fine.

You may also look at a true distributed audio system that is keypad driven. Then you could have 3 totally independent zones (the surround, plus 2) each of which is able to play independent source and volume. If this was the case, you would just need a 5.1 receiver for the family room (although most decent AVRs are going to be 7 channel nowadays.)

Isaac, thanks a lot for chiming in.