I thought that I'd posted this yesterday, but my cable modem's grumpy...

The benefit of the pair of 200's would be giving your C-9's more power to work with without buying that power for the other five speakers. It would also leave you with two channels on the 7100 that cold be used for other purposes, if that was any use to you.

You are correct on your wiring -- the left and right channel pre-amp outputs from the 950 would go to the 200's, and the 200's would feed the C-9's. The center, surrounds, and surround backs would connect to the 7100, and those speakers would be fed from the 7100. Two channels on the 7100 would be unused, which is fine. Those two channels could be connected to the zone 2 outputs of the 950 and then be used to power speakers elsewhere in the house, or they could be left unused. As you said, the speakers are blind -- they don't know how they get their power.

14ga should be fine for your speaker wire. That's what I have to my surrounds at the moment.

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