1 AVR to power 2 systems?

[Matt O'Brien]

Basically I have a Denon AVR-X2300W 2xMission m74 speakers and a cruddy little Sub. It's a basic, but okay setup for what I want, mainly for watching stuff in my bedroom, even the TV it's on is just the cheapest, biggest TV I could find at the time (about a month ago) a Bush 55" 1080p, again nothing special and quite bog standard, but I'm not looking to break any records for The best setup of 2017 I just wanted something "O.K" for my room with a decent size screen.

Anyway the above is perfect for my needs, works fine, however as I am sure you're all aware of the X2300W and most AVR's, it's capable of 7 channels and currently I'm only using 2.

This whole thing is going to take a little explaining so bear with me please!

What I want to do is plug in another speaker from a channel I am not currently using (and probably wont ever in the current setup) so rear left surround and run a cable to my bathroom, that way when I have a bath/shower I can play some music through the AV and have it playing in the bathroom. Now before you mention it, because I know a lot of you will "Why not just get a Bluetooth speaker" I had thought about it, but if I could get this way to work, I would find it personally more useful, no need to mess about pairing the device, taking it out of the room to charge every now and again, actually having to pay probably a few hundred pounds for something of good quality.

My initial idea was that I would just unplug my normal speakers every morning and plug the speaker going into the bathroom in, however I know for a fact I just won't do that, it'll get old very quickly.

So I dived into the settings of the Denon and found that there is a setting for "All channel stereo" which basically does what it says on the tin, sends the same signal to every channel, great means I can now power the "rear left surround" which is actually bathroom speaker #1 from the AV, then another setting which is very useful is "Channel levels" where you can give DB boost or reduction on each channel, this is where I thought I had my solution, turn all of the other channels down, that way it'll only play through the bathroom speaker.
I should mention these settings are per input, so let's say this is through bluetooth, the channel settings don't get changed for HDMI, which again is ideal.

The issue is, I can only give a -12DB to each channel meaning that the speakers in my bedroom still fire off when the one in the bathroom is on, not too loud but loud enough for me to not want to turn the speaker volume up due to the speaker in the bathroom being weaker.

The next issue is that when I am actually watching a show on the system, i've done a similar but reverse, turned the bathroom speaker to -12DB and left the other two as normal, on an average volume I watch a show/film at, the speaker in the bathroom is still audible, it's not terribly loud and quite honestly it's not that big of a deal, it would just be nice if I could set it to be off rather than -12DB...

That sort of sums up my entire issue, I would like to turn off certain channels when the input is different, it saves settings based on the input currently, just not quite the settings I want.

Also it appears the "All channel surround" setting get's forgotten at power down, does anyone know why this is?

I literally played with this last night at 1am, so there is a high possibility that you're all going to call me silly and it's a very easy thing to accomplish, however I feel like I am just trying to do something obscure and it's never going to work exactly how I want.

Last little side question, have any of you played about with the firmware of the Denon? If it isnt too much of a pain to adjust it I have no issues playing with the firmware - Just a thought that came to me so google might be of help here

Any help/advice you can give me would be appreciated.

 

[Psycho Sonny]

you need a multi zone capable amp.

you would plug zone 2 speakers into the designated zone 2 outputs.

it can be done with most decent yamaha amps

 

[NotAGolf]

Would the zone 2 feature on the Denon work in this scenario? I toyed with it for a while having speakers in the kitchen running off zone 2 (surround back L/R). I think you're limited by what inputs you can use on zone 2 if you don't want it to play in zone 1 though.

In the end I found it too much of a faff switching around with inputs and playing with the remote/apps and just went for a Sonos instead.

 

[Matt O'Brien]

*snip*

*snip*

Interesting, there is the zone 2 feature, I should probably do some reading, I had absolutely no idea what it was used for, as far as audio and audio equipment goes I have decent knowledge with headphones and that's about as far as it goes.

I had looked at the sonos prior to even getting this audio system, eventually I would love to have a house wide sound system that plays the same songs throughout the house! I am a long way off doing that though, and the sonos are quite expensive for what they are.

This solution at the moment is a temporary one, and it's quite fun to play about with ideas, the speakers I am using are some old cheap ones I don't care if they get damaged with the steam ect.

I will have a read up about the zone 2!

 

[Psycho Sonny]

basically you create 2 zones.

usually on a 7.1 amp you can have a 5.1 system say in your living room. then a 2.0 setup in your kitchen. you can then either feed them different sources or the same source.

so you can watch a movie in the living room and play music in the kitchen. or have music playing in both living room and kitchen.

it's very eay to setup and do. especially if your avr comes with a phone app.

 

[Matt O'Brien]

basically you create 2 zones.

usually on a 7.1 amp you can have a 5.1 system say in your living room. then a 2.0 setup in your kitchen. you can then either feed them different sources or the same source.

so you can watch a movie in the living room and play music in the kitchen. or have music playing in both living room and kitchen.

it's very eay to setup and do. especially if your avr comes with a phone app.

Awesome! Can't wait to get home and have another play now, that's exactly what I wanted to do.

 

[Psycho Sonny]

Awesome! Can't wait to get home and have another play now, that's exactly what I wanted to do.

just check the back of the amp and make sure you have your 2.0 connected to the outputs defined as zone 2. then you will need to go into options/settings within the amp and tell it what you have done.

 

[Matt O'Brien]

just check the back of the amp and make sure you have your 2.0 connected to the outputs defined as zone 2. then you will need to go into options/settings within the amp and tell it what you have done.

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