Dual Room Listening Question...

[shawn474]

I have a 5.1 set-up in our downstairs living room (Yamaha RX-V995, Polk RM6005 sateliites, JBL EC35 center channel and Infinity BU-2 Subwoofer). When we moved into our house, the previous owner had pre-wired Polk In-wall speakers in the kitchen upstairs. My question is how do i hook these up to the receiver to listen to them independently of the downstairs system? There are many times my wife wants to listen to the stereo (they are in the kitchen) without having the downstairs speakers on and I can't figure out how to get the upstairs speakers to play while the downstairs speakers are off. I figure if I rig this up the right way it might inspire her to cook more often!!!

I thought it was just as simple as hooking up the upstairs speakers to the "B" speaker outputs and switching off the "A" speakers, but I still had sound coming out of the center channel and the surrounds.

Any suggestions are greatly appreciated. The manual for the receiver has some way to hook them up with a seperate amp, IR transmitter, etc., but mentions that there are "numerous" ways to achieve this. Hopefully one of you guys will have a suggestion that doesn't require me to spend much money.

[adam2434]

If you set your receiver to stereo vs. a surround mode and turn off the A speakers, you should get sound only through the B speakers. However, you may also need to set the sub to "no/off" or turn off its power, or else the sub may play. Or, setting the front speakers to "large" should also disable the sub in stereo mode, and will ensure that you get a full range signal to your kitchen speakers. I know this probably seems like a lot of setting changes just to listen to speakers in another room.

I'm not sure about your receiver's multiroom/source capabilities. If it does have multiroom/source capabilities, another approach would be to get an inexpensive stereo receiver or amp and connect it to the multiroom/source pre-outs on the receiver. Most newer receivers have multiroom/source capabilities that allow you to listen to a different source from the multiroom/source pre-outs. For example, you can run 5.1 from a DVD and listen to a CD on the speakers in the kitchen. Of course, you would need a separate DVD player and CD player for this.

Another thing to note, is that some receivers' multiroom/source only work with analog sources, not coax or optical digital sources. That's the case with my Pioneer Elite receiver. Thus, any source that I would want to play through the multiroom/source pre-outs needs to be connected to the receiver with analog stereo RCA cables.