Well, maybe I'm a naysayer in the group, but I have found the Zone 2 capability to be sufficient for my needs.

When we remodeled the house 9 years ago, I installed in-wall or in-ceiling speakers in 4 rooms; kitchen, dining room, living room and front 'study'. Since then, I also installed two sets of Bose 151 outdoor speakers (yes...I know....BOSE!?) on the deck and patio.

Each room, even outdoors, had it's own Niles volume control, and all cables terminated at an Adcom 6-speaker connector, which was in turn connected to the "B" button on my NAD 2400THX amp. So...if we wanted the sound that was playing from the two channel preamp (that the Outlaw replaced), you mashed the "B" button and listened in the rest of the house.

With the 950, I connected the Zone 2 outs to two channels (30W each) in my second NAD 906 amp, and that output to the Adcom speaker selector. Bammo...instant Zone 2, with "master" volume at the 950, but individual volume in each room and outdoors.

It was nice the other day; kids watching TV in the family room; me listening to CDs outside.

The operation is a bit funky, but I found that you 'remember' that the first punch of "multi" on the remote allows you to turn on/off the zone, and the second punch of "multi" allows you to step through sources. Just press 'next' (or whatever it's labeled on the remote) until you get out of Zone 2 what you want.

I agree; it would have been nice to engineer a bit more intuitive Zone 2 remote control, but for my purposes, it is adequate.