Part One: Keeping up with technology demands new approaches when building homes And More: Versatility a key component in home theater design

This is the second of a four-part series on smart houses. Still to come: the smart kitchen and home office.

When Michael Sklack had his home built in Beaver County, he was particularly interested in surround-sound. He also wanted to be able to walk into any room and listen to music piped through quality speakers.

So Sklack had several rooms wired with conventional speaker cable and a Bose sound system installed.

"Quality of sound was important for me," he said. "I wanted the home theater experience, but I also wanted to be able to listen to music in different rooms. The speakers just sound better when they've been hard-wired."

But music to Sklack's ears isn't necessarily music to the rest of us. In an effort to keep up with the future, many people are purchasing home entertainment systems with little thought to the audio side of the equation. DVDs, CDs, MP3s and other devices are the music and video benchmarks by which consumers make decisions about their home entertainment needs. And yet, when they begin shopping for a home theater, they often get blinded by the video.

The late 1990s brought the emergence of the "smart house," which uses structured wiring to automate household operations and to bring voice, video and high-speed data transmission to every room. Whole-house audio is a popular add-on in many smart houses, but to a real audiophile, music on Category 5e wiring might not sound all that sweet.

	Steve Mellon, Post-Gazette Ralph Anderson of Greyfox Home Systems demonstrates the audio and video technology built into a house in Adams. Many people are purchasing homes completely wired with Cat 5e technology, which makes it easy to have all audio and computer technology operated under one system. Click photo for larger image.

"Home theaters have become such a buzz word that people think they want it even though they don't," said Michael Klein, owner of Let's Make Music in Shadyside.

"They have been told by friends and home builders that this is what they need, so they go out shopping for home entertainment systems but don't know what they are looking for."

Ultimately, the question should be: Do I want this to watch movies, or am I more interested in listening to music?

If the answer is music, then sound quality should be paramount -- and a great-sounding system that plays in one or two rooms is all you need.

Some of these newer systems can handle the range of sound effects in movie soundtracks but will make a recording like Miles Davis' "Kind of Blue" sound kind of harsh.

"They have to think about it very seriously," Klein continued. "It's no different than walking into a model home and inside there's a red sofa. You would have to ask, 'Do I want a red sofa?' "

Klein said that when customers walk into his store requesting information about a home theater system, one of the first questions he asks is how many movies they rent a year compared with the amount of music they listen to.

"Sometimes they tell me four or five movies, but then they tell me they are always listening to music. So I recommend they purchase a nice stereo system.

"A home theater system can be a great music system if it's designed properly, and if the person designing it understands what a two-channel system is supposed to sound like. How the components integrate is often as critical as the equipment itself."

A good system can even have room for your old reel-to-reel, eight-track player and turntable. Though mostly decommissioned, used as bookends or objects of nostalgia, this equipment still matters to a die-hard audiophile -- someone who appreciates and understands how music is supposed to sound and realizes that there's nothing better than listening to a classic jazz recording on vinyl.

While there's very little that can be done to effectively integrate the reel and turntable into a new whole-house audio system, there are ways to upgrade your older systems. So don't throw them away.

Take your old system and place it in your favorite listening room. Then, for about $600 a room, you can buy what is called a proprietary system, which includes a keypad and a pair of speakers. You can link the two systems by running an audio wire from the keypad system to the old system.

If you are entertaining, all you have to do is walk over to the old system and hit "auxiliary." The same music that is playing in the rest of the house will play in that room. But when you want to listen to "Kind of Blue" in privacy, just walk into the music room and play your old system the way you always have. The keypad system features multiple sources, including radio, iPod, satellite radio and a tape deck.

If you're still determined to purchase an entire home theater system, you can find great sound, but it will cost you.

Mark Zappala had a Sonnance system installed in his Sewickley house at a cost of roughly $7,500. The system has a keypad that works like a touch-screen remote. The pad controls all of the sources, including a tuner, satellite dish and iPod.

"It's a fabulous system," said Zappala. "What's already great is that it's user-friendly and intuitive. We were able to use it without any instructions."

Inside a model home at The Gables at Brickyard Hill in Adams, Ralph Anderson, vice president of sales and marketing at Greyfox Services, installed a four-room audio system with Cat 5e wiring at a cost of $1,800. The system features ceiling speakers, volume controls for each room and an audio distribution module in the network panel. Though it's fine for most people, it wouldn't do for music lovers like Klein.

"Music is a very emotional experience," he said. "These stupid systems people buy that pump music throughout every room in their house doesn't allow them to become attached. It sounds like a doctor's office."