I am putting in a whole house audio with 12 channel amp and A/V pre-amp with matrix switching. One room will have surround sound and the front/rear speakers will double for music when not used for video surround sound. The problem is my 12 channel amp is being used for 6 zones so I can't run all surround channels through it. Do I just split the speaker wire for the front/rear channel to feed my 12 channel for music and surround receiver for SS or do I need some kind of switcher? My pre-amp will ensure there is no signal coming from it when the surround sound receiver is being used.

By deffinition , whole house is STEREO sound.
If you go splitting speakers you will change the impedance of the load to your switcher, (you might let the smoke out of it) get a surround switcher.

Michael, correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like you're asking how to use the front/rear pairs for music when the surround sound is not in use.

All of the following assumes that the 12-channel amp is not being used in the surround system. If it is, get a 5- (or 6-) channel amp for just the surround system. It'll sound better and last longer (and so will the whole-house amp).

If I'm correct, the tedious way to do what you want is to figure out how to switch four speakers between two different sources. This calls for lots of wires, relays, headaches, and overloaded amps.

May I suggest another option:
Let the surround speakers stay attached to whatever is driving them while in surround use, and feed the whole-house signal into the A/V preamp/amp or receiver, using an aux. line-level input.

If the whole-house amp has no line-level feed through, you can try either Y-cords at the inputs, or speaker-to-line level adapters, such as used to connect external amps to car stereos that have no line outputs.

This way, you retain the 12 channels for their whole-house use, no speaker-level switching, and you can select whichever processing sounds best in that room, such as front/rear stereo, etc.

Larry
www.fineelectricco.com

Just go the easy route and use seperate gear for the entire house and home theater!!

Which is what Larry was basically saying. If you want to get fancier and do some control. Go with something that can share sources, like the AudioControl Director. Keeping the power sync with the house and surround system can be fun (tricky and painful to some, but fun to me)