Several receivers on the market have dropped the speakers A & B switches in favor of adding the 6.1 or 7.1 surround capability. I have additional speakers in other rooms, but don't want to have them on all the time. The few line switching units I've seen were lacking post or banana type cable connections, but used the standard pinch type connections. After spending good money on quality receiver and speakers with expensive connectors it would be a shame to put a weak link in the audio chain. Any suggestions?

Go out and buy an inexpensive second receiver or integrated amp. Then connect an extra tape loop output from your main receiver to the second receiver. Connect the multi-room system to it, and then use the Record out feature of your main receiver to control the source.

An added bonus to this is it will allow you to watch a movie in full surround, and let others listen to a CD in the remote rooms.

You don't need to spend a lot of money on this piece...just get a basic unit (even an older used one will often fit the bill)

In many cases, I have used the old surround receiver for this when I have upgraded my clients system. The client can then still use the gear they have, but get the new technology they desire.

Any questions, let me know...Derek

Derek is right on the money. By adding a second amplifier to the system you solve the fundamental problem of the remote speakers not being able to be played any louder than the theater speakers. Also many of today's surround receivers have multi-source low level outputs that perform essentialy the same as the record outs, but in most cases are IR remote controlable. Also, I had been curios about the electronics in speaker selector/impeadance matching boxes. After dissasembling several of them I was surprised to find a printed ciurcut board connecting a non-inductive load resistor to switches for each pair in parallel. The cleanest path would be to buy two non-inductive load resistors, use point to point wiring to tie all of your positive and negative speaker leads together, insert the load resisters in-line on the two positive leads, thus eliminating the cheap connectors and switches all together.(this assumes you have a volume control for each pair of speakers) Because power works exponentially, many pairs of speakers used for background level listening will consume only a few watts of power. Radio Shack sells a 20watt 8ohm non-inductive load resister for a couple of bucks. If, however, you tend to crank the remote speakers these may not be sufficient. You'll know if they get hot.