Setup for Three Pairs Speakers, One Source?

WKRP

I am getting my kitchen redone and while everything is open, I have run wiring for what will be three pairs of speakers, one pair in the kitchen, one pair in the dining room, and one pair for the deck (outdoors). I would love anyone's help on the following. My goal is to be able to drive these three pairs of speakers from a single receiver, using only a single audio source (I have no need for multi-source as the rooms are all adjoining).

One thought I have is to pick up a relatively inexpensive 5.1 5x100W receiver with A and B speaker options. I would hook up my deck speakers to the Speaker B connectors. I would hook up my dining room speakers to the Speaker A front surround speaker pair and my kitchen speakers to the Speaker A rear surround speaker pair. The center channel goes unused. I would like to be able to run either just Speaker A (which feeds both the kitchen & dining room), just Speaker B (deck), or all at once - Speaker A+B (kitchen, dining room, deck).

I would run the Speaker A in a 5-channel stereo mode so that both the front (dining room) and rear (kitchen) pairs would have the same output, power, etc. Also, all of my speakers are rated at 100W, 8ohm.

My two main concerns/questions: One, how much receiver wattage (assuming 5x100W should be fine) would I need to power all three speakers? Two, what impedance issues might I face by running both Speaker A+B at the same time? My assumption was that those speakers outs were independently powered, however a friend told me that some speakers split the signal line (parallel circuit) so that running both A+B would result in a 4ohm impedance which may overwork the receiver so that it shuts down.

I am trying to make this setup as inexpensive as possible, so my preference would be to buy an inexpensive receiver that would do this - I am not interested in a multiple receiver setup (not enough room/cooling for two receivers in the location I am thinking), distribution amp, etc. Thanks in advance!

RuSsMaN

Forget the 5.1 receiver, you aren't going to able to utilize all the channels like you want to. Get as good a 2ch receiver as you can, and an impedance matching speaker selector box. This is a box that will allow you to switch on and off which pairs of speakers you want to run, just 1 pair, or all 3 - and maintain an acceptable impedance load for your receiver. Some manufacturers call it a 'protection' circuit.

For background music, 80w continuous, high current power will be MORE than enough with 88db efficient or higher speakers.

I used a setup like this when I first moved into my current house a few years ago, and it worked great.

Cheers,
Russ

Edit - you can use a 'good' multichannel receiver, you'll just be using the main 2 channels ***

WKRP

RuSsMaN, Thanks for the quick response - it aligns with some advice I received on another forum. The speaker switcher I am looking at is a Russound (assuming no relation between you and this company) SS-4 (http://www.russound.com/ss4.2.htm) which can be had for $89. Now I just need to find a solid, yet cheap 4ohm receiver (perhaps mission impossible) that can drive my three pairs of 8ohm speakers as it appears that I will need that combination in order to drive a signal to all three pairs of speakers at once (read this in the Russound PDF user manual under Section 4) without triggering any protection shutoffs. If you have any other recommendations on speaker switcher brands, receivers, etc. I would be interested in hearing what you have to say. I already have a pair of Polk RC80i and a pair of RC85i speakers and am leaning towards the Atrium55 pair for my deck, so I believe I am in good shape with the speakers - just need to figure out the receiver and switcher. Thanks again.

Serendipity

I'd also recommend a good 2 channel receiver instead of a multichannel receiver. I've tried this with an Onkyo TX-SR500 in "All Channel Stereo" mode and I felt the sound quality was not as good as a 2-channel Adcom I used later.

rtart

Have you thought about a multizone/multi source system? Russound, Niles and others make them. Take a look on eBay for a Russound CA4.4 system. they can be had for around $500 sometimes, and have lots of capability.