Quality Question - Home Audio

[06Hardrocker]

First I apologize because this is probably not the place to be asking this question. However, it was the first place that came to mind!

I am building a house and planning to include some in the wall speakers in various rooms. To control these speakers I am planning on using some dimmer switches commonly used for mood lighting. Looks like the standard rating on these is 600W with a few in the 1000W range so I am not worried about cooking one of these hummers. My only concern is what one of these switches might do to the sound quality.

Anyone every tried this or know of any problems I might run into? I would run radio/cd's etc, no need for extraordinary quality. Just don't want crackle and pops or squealing. Bad comes to worse I can just get one and try it out!

 

[geekEE]

That's not going to work at all. Dimmers for lights only work at line voltage (120VAC in the US) and they work by turning the power on and off quickly every half cycle. So, if you could somehow make it work, it would make the sound horrible!

There are plenty of in-wall volume controls made specifically for what you want to do. A quick Google search turned up this:

http://www.hometech.com/audio/volume.html

http://www.smarthome.com/8250.html

and quite a few others.