I use Zone2 to drive 3 amps for other rooms in the house. I have Zone2 "rigged" to always play whatis inthe main zone (Zone2 set to "Video 3" and Video3 in connects to Pre-out). I do this because all of the remote area are pretty close to out main listening area (not to mention anything else would be WAY to complicated for my wife).

In the main zone, I have a Hsu VTF-3 sub; therefore, my mains are set to "small" and a crossover is set to around 60hz (I may have it at 40 -- not at home to check).

I have very little bass in the remote zones. I suspect it's either because:
(1) Pre-out goes through the crossover, or
(2) Zone 2 out goes through the crossover.

Can anyone confirm either #1 or #2? Also, any idea of how to get the bass back into those remote zones?

Ideas are appreciated -- thanks!

Zone 2 doesn't go through the crossover, but the preamp outputs that are feeding Video3 do. As long as you have zone 2 using an input fed from the 950's own outputs, you'll lose that bass.

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gonk -- Saloon Links | Pre/Pro Comparison Chart | 950 Review

I was afraid of that :-( Unfortunately, I can't think of any other practical way to tie zone 2 to the main zone source without using those pre-outs.

I think my only practical alternative is the lower the xover frequency...

It seems clear that you are doing something a bit out of the ordinary here, so maybe some more details would help give somebody around here an idea. You have three amps feeding the left/right data to separate remote zones. Are the zones always on? What sort of use are they being put to?

One idea that occurs to me is to use the tape loop output to feed Video3 -- it eliminates the main volume control (which may or may not be a good thing in your case) and bypasses all other processing (which would avoid the crossover problem you're having).

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gonk -- Saloon Links | Pre/Pro Comparison Chart | 950 Review

roberth,
Very clever routing scheme! One thing this rigging does is allow you to output digital only input signals to the remote zone.
Gonk's right about the crossover issues, but there is one more consideration working against you - 2ch stereo vs. multi-channel pre-outs. If you have the 950 set up to use a center channel the front left and right outs are not the same as left and right stereo. All the common signal in the front channels is routed to the center channel and this usually includes most of the bass information. I'm guessing this may be the case in your situation, with the center channel info missing the remaining left and right sound very thin and "karaoke" like. Try setting the 950 to stereo bypass mode and see how the remote zone sounds. You could also experiment with disabling the center channel in the speaker set-up menu, just to see how it affects things.

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Tekdredger

Gonk's posting made me realize that I mis-spoke on my original post. I have the TAPE LOOP (2 channel) going into VIDEO 3, not the pre-out (6 channel) as originally stated.

The three remote amps are daisy-chained from the Zone2 Out connection (they are Carver TFN-6B amps, so they have in and out for daisy chain). They are not on all of the time, but we do use them frequently enough to add music to some large rooms of our house. The architecture of our house is a buch of large open rooms, so it's not practical to have different sources in different rooms (hence rigging main zone and zone 2 together), but the rooms are too large to power with one set of speakers. I also like to keep the three remote zones at a fixed volume (usually lower than the main zone) -- that's why I'm going from the Zone2 out vs. just tapping the pre-out.

Just to test the hypothesis of the TAPE LOOP not going through xover, I'll daisy-chain the amps out of the TAPE LOOP. This would actually work fine for my application since (1) the remote zone control is only really needed for the 12V trigger to power on the 3 remote amps, and (2) the amp volume is controller locally through trim-knobs on the amps.

If TAPE LOOP doesn't go through the crossover, then this will work just fine.

As an aside, I can listen to all of the relevant sources in zone 2 since I run (begrudgingly) both optical [for main zone] and analog [for remote zone] from each input device. It's a bunch of extra cable, but no other good alternative.

Thanks for your input!