[Anthony Moore]

So I'm not an HT newbie and Ive setup the multi-zone on my Denon 3802, but I need a little advice on a bigger project.

My dad is building his own home, and wants some help setting up an audio system through the house....but doesnt really want to pay someone else to do it. (i think if we couldnt do it ourselves he wouldnt do it at all). Too expensive. Plus we have a best buy discount for the speakers.

He doesnt want anything too complicated though. We want to have a 5.1 living room and 5 other stereo zones. It would be nice to be able to listen to 2 diff sources (one in main living room and one source for all the others), but its not a necessary. And nothing too fancy in the rooms, just a volume knob.

I figure I could use a 2 source receiver. One will be Zone A hooked to the living room 5.1 setup. That would be simple. The other source will somehow need to be filtered out to all the other rooms. How would I go about best setting this up? It is also not necessary to be able to switch the B source from the other 5 zones. I know we will need to change the source for zone B at the receiver itself. (Unless there's a cheap system out there that would be easy to setup thats not too expensive [i know some of those wall panels are expensive])

Will there be an amp "pre-out" on the back of the receiver that I would connect a 10 channel amp to that would run with speaker wire to the other rooms?

Any good receiver and/or amp you can recommend?

Thanks for your advice and please let me know if you think im missing something.

My parents are not audiophiles, so they dont need the best/most expensive stuff..but I wanna make sure itll last.

Anthony

[Wayne A. Pflughaupt]

Quote:

I figure I could use a 2 source receiver. One will be Zone A hooked to the living room 5.1 setup. That would be simple. The other source will somehow need to be filtered out to all the other rooms. How would I go about best setting this up?

I’m glad you figured out that you don’t need 6 independent zones! A “Zone” is basically somewhere where you want an independent source to play. Thus, in your situation, a 2-zone receiver will do. All you’ll need is one that allows the second zone to play a different source than the main zone. Lots of receivers these days will do it, and most manufacturers have their owners manuals on-line, so you can look at them to make sure the one you’re interested in has second-source capability.

Quote:

Will there be an amp "pre-out" on the back of the receiver that I would connect a 10 channel amp to that would run with speaker wire to the other rooms?

It’s not a hard feature to find these days. Again, most manufacture’s websites have rear-panel pictures and/or owners manuals available so you can check. What you really want is one with pre-outs for the second zone. You won’t get the second-source feature from the main pre-outputs.

Quote:

Any good receiver and/or amp you can recommend?

Yamaha, Denon, Marantz, Onkyo, Pioneer etc. are all good brands. However, if the folks are new to this kind of stuff, you’ll want something that’s really user friendly. IMO Yamaha is very user friendly.

Regards,
Wayne A. Pflughaupt

[Anthony Moore]

Thank you.

Can anyone recommend a good bang-for-your-buck 10-channel amp?

[Andrew Pezzo]

http://www.htd.com/12channelamp.html

Runs about $600 - $650. I dont know of any other out there with this many channels for that price. Of course I havent really looked either.

[John Garcia]

You don't actually need a 10 channel amp, especially if you won't be using demanding speakers. You might be able to get away with a 4 or 6 ch amp. I installed a SINGLE amp to power 3 zones with an impedance matching switch. The switch protects the speakers and does the distribution and allows volume control in specific zones and the ability to turn on/off various zones (though only at the switch itself, and not remote controlled). Using impedance matching volume controls in each zone can also work this way, and may be the easiest for what you are trying to do. The number of channels and how much power will be directly driven by what speakers you choose.

Only the least expensive receivers these days don't have preamp outputs, so that should not be a problem at all, and all that do should have at least 2 zone capability these days.

Note also that Zone 2 will only be capable of stereo analog sources - no digital, unless you spring for a more upscale model, and then we are talking about potentially quite a bit more funds.