thanks painttoad, I believe i did not express myself clear enough..here is what i meant, If for now I go with a stereo amp for front L/R and the 2 surrounds and center still driven by the reciever I will have volume controll trough the reciever over all channels correct?...now let's assume that later on I want to add another multi channel (3 or 5)to the system will that then apply too? can I then only turn on the 2 channel amp to play music (stereo) and after that lets say watch a movie witj both amps on (all channels) without recalibration of the speaker...sorry all but kind of hard to put in words.

thanks