Two Room Set-up

[mblack3]

Hello and thanks in advance for your help and advice!

So the situation we are in is as follows:

We have two rooms with 4 speakers in each (total of 8). We also have two cable boxes, 4 monitors, two receivers and an Apple TV gizmo.

With various hdmi cables and splitters, we have the video set up to the monitors so that two different channels can be watched or one on all four, no problem there.

However, we want flexibility with the audio. At times, we are playing music through the Apple TV (off a cell phone) and at other times, we are watching TV with the audio from cable box and the other silent. Thats all fine just using the one receiver.

What we would like to accomplish, however, is be able to have music through the Apple TV, for example, playing in one room and the TV in the other, or be able to control volume levels in each room, etc.

In other words, if I have this understood right (my brain is all flustered after working with this all day) is that we want 4 speakers hooked up to Receiver A, 4 to Receiver B. We would like Receiver A, then, to feed audio inputs to Receiver B so that one could select what is heard on each without having to try and split each device's input to go to each and all that. We have tons of R/W cables and would just rather "connect" the two if that makes sense.

So would it be possible to "connect" these two so that with every device (including the future blu-ray and xbox's and whatever else) feeding into Receiver A, Receiver B could then select which one it want to play?

Does this make sense???

I can try to clarify if needed...thanks so much!!!

[StevenSurprenant]

Something along these lines? The Multi-Zone Feature in Home Theater and Stereo Receivers (http://hometheater.about.com/od/audiocomponents/a/multizoneinfo.htm)

[mblack3]

Something along these lines? The Multi-Zone Feature in Home Theater and Stereo Receivers (http://hometheater.about.com/od/audiocomponents/a/multizoneinfo.htm)


Yeah I think so...

[mblack3]

This is the main receiver we have:

Receiver | A/V Receiver | Stereo Receiver | AVR | TX-SR575 | Onkyo USA (http://www.onkyousa.com/Products/model.php?m=TX-SR575&class=Receiver)

Is it possible to accomplish this multi-zone thing with this?

[StevenSurprenant]

I'm not absolutely sure, but I don't think your receiver allows Multi room source selection. I think it just duplicates whats playing in the main system.

I did look at my receiver (Yamaha) instructions and it does allow using different sources in different rooms. It also gives the option of just sending the signal to another amp or using the receivers amp to power speakers in a different zone.

I'm pretty sure that Onkyo has receivers that will do what you want.

Maybe someone else knows for sure? Anyone?

[StevenSurprenant]

Another thing...

If you do get this set up, you will probably need an IR extender to allow control of some of your sources from the "other" room.

[mblack3]

Well looking at the back of the receiver earlier today, I don't see anything that marks Zones...just out for tape.

Would there be a way to accomplish this with the A/B thing?

[StevenSurprenant]

I looked at the manual for your receiver and I don't think it handles zones. In fact, it seems that the only thing it allows you to do is to use the surround back speakers as a way to pipe sound to another room (page 6 of the manual). There is one cravat and that is it will not send any sound to these speakers unless you hook up your components via analog inputs to the receiver. That is really odd. Speaker switch B engages these speaker terminals, otherwise the receiver uses them as back surround. (This is also shown on page 6)

Looking at your remote, I don't see any way to adjust the volume of the "B" speakers independently of your main speakers. I'm not sure about this.

There is another possible solution and that is to use your tape output to send audio to another receiver in the other room. This might allow you to not have to connect your components through analog?

Either way, you cannot listen to different sources in different rooms.

The bottom line is that you will need a different receiver to accomplish what you want or add an outboard switching device.

I looked at my receiver (as an example) and it allows different sources to be sent to different zones, either by way of speaker outputs or line level outputs. There are other receivers that can also send video to different zones, mine cannot.

I hope this helps. I wish I had better news.

[mblack3]

I looked at the manual for your receiver and I don't think it handles zones. In fact, it seems that the only thing it allows you to do is to use the surround back speakers as a way to pipe sound to another room (page 6 of the manual). There is one cravat and that is it will not send any sound to these speakers unless you hook up your components via analog inputs to the receiver. That is really odd. Speaker switch B engages these speaker terminals, otherwise the receiver uses them as back surround. (This is also shown on page 6)

Looking at your remote, I don't see any way to adjust the volume of the "B" speakers independently of your main speakers. I'm not sure about this.

There is another possible solution and that is to use your tape output to send audio to another receiver in the other room. This might allow you to not have to connect your components through analog?

Either way, you cannot listen to different sources in different rooms.

The bottom line is that you will need a different receiver to accomplish what you want or add an outboard switching device.

I looked at my receiver (as an example) and it allows different sources to be sent to different zones, either by way of speaker outputs or line level outputs. There are other receivers that can also send video to different zones, mine cannot.

I hope this helps. I wish I had better news.

grrrr..... Thanks anyways, that is what I ended up figuring out (I think) but it always helps to have someone explain it to me.