newbie questions about zone 2 and controlling other speakers in the house

Posted by: audvid

newbie questions about zone 2 and controlling other speakers in the house - 05/06/05 05:37 PM

Hopefully, any day now, I'll receive word from Outlaw about the purchase of a 990. I also plan to purchase a 755.

I currently have an older Yamaha receiver that I've been using for HT and stereo music. It has two sets of speaker outputs called "A" and "B". My 5 HT speakers are connected to the "A" section. I have speaker wire going from the "B" section to a small box (can't remember product name) that allows me to run two other sets of stereo speakers from it. If I push the section "B" button on the front of the Yamaha receiver the other speakers in different parts of the house play music that's coming from the CD player or tuner, etc.

The question is how do I make this happen with the 990? Do I run a couple of PCA cables from the "zone 2 out" of the 990 to the Yamaha and leave the speaker wires in the "B" section of the Yamaha as they are today and they will continue to function as they do now?

Will the signal just pass through the Yamaha with the Yamaha not really controlling anything?

Are there other options that would enable me to remove the Yamaha from the picture?
Posted by: audvid

Re: newbie questions about zone 2 and controlling other speakers in the house - 05/06/05 05:51 PM

The Yamaha is a model RX-V995
Posted by: audvid

Re: newbie questions about zone 2 and controlling other speakers in the house - 05/06/05 06:01 PM

The speaker selector is a Niles SS-4. Very basic.
Posted by: gonk

Re: newbie questions about zone 2 and controlling other speakers in the house - 05/06/05 06:16 PM

You could remove the Yamaha from the picture by connecting the zone 2 output to a small stereo amp, which could then continue to the switch box. Some amps like that may even have an A/B switch like your Yamaha that could let you directly connect the speakers to the A and B outputs and switch them at the amp. eliminating the switch box.

You could remove the switch box by connecting zone 2 to an input on the Yamaha (in which case, you would have two volume controls - the 990's zone 2 control and the Yamaha's control - so you'd want to set one at a convenient position and use the other control) and connecting the two sets of speakers to the Yamaha's A and B outputs.
Posted by: tekdredger

Re: newbie questions about zone 2 and controlling other speakers in the house - 05/06/05 06:34 PM

The "features" tab on the 990 page indicate that the zone 2 outputs have fixed OR variable outputs.
Posted by: audvid

Re: newbie questions about zone 2 and controlling other speakers in the house - 05/07/05 11:23 PM

One of the things I'm struggling with is where to plug the cables into the Yamaha coming from the 990's zone 2. I've poured over the Y's manual and I don't see anything that would be the likely plugs to use.

Can anyone give me an idea of what to look for?

The manual does illustrate input jacks coming from a tape deck or recorder. Is this where I would plug the zone 2 cables in to?
Posted by: gonk

Re: newbie questions about zone 2 and controlling other speakers in the house - 05/07/05 11:42 PM

You can use any analog audio input for this - just pick an input (CD, VCR, TV, whatever) and leave the Yamaha set on that input.
Posted by: audvid

Re: newbie questions about zone 2 and controlling other speakers in the house - 05/08/05 12:51 AM

Thanks for the help
Posted by: curegeorg

Re: newbie questions about zone 2 and controlling other speakers in the house - 05/08/05 09:22 AM

if you are going to use a receiver for your second zone, would it not be easier to just use it solely? i mean by not running the 990 through it. surely your sources have multiple outputs, plus you could get digital quality instead of being forced into analog. i dont know your setup or locations, but seems like to me that using the receiver seperately would be wiser.
Posted by: audvid

Re: newbie questions about zone 2 and controlling other speakers in the house - 05/09/05 04:30 PM

curegeorg, I hadn't thought of that. It's mainly the CD player that would be played through all the speakers. So the optical cable goes to one device and the two RCAs go to other.

Having never considered this before, I guess you're saying that the source (CD player) doesn't care if it's feeding two different devices (pre/pro and receiver)simultaneously?