Entertainment Center: TVs, Stereos, VCRs and DVDs - Multi-zone Home Theater Question

Hi:
We will be purchasing a home theater receiver with multi-zone capability. I understand this to mean that the home theater group could be occupied, while the whole-house speakers could be playing music.

My question: If I want the rear speakers in the home-theater setup to have the option of playing the same music sent through the whole-house speakers, what would be the setup? I'm guessing the following might work, but I'm hoping the get assurance from others. By the way all speakers in the house have impedence-matching volume controls. Here goes:
speakers -> impedence-matching vol control -> A/B switch with A going to home theater connections and B going to 2nd zone on the receiver.

Thanks for any information.

You shouldn't need the switch. If you want all of the speakers to hear the same source, the receiver can send it to all of the zones. Front speakers & sub included, but that shouldn't be a problem because you wouldn't want two different sources playing in the same room.

Which model are you looking at? There are two different schemes they use. Scheme 1 is a 7.1 system that uses surround 6 & 7 to feed the whole house. That means you'll only have 5.1 surround in the main room when the rest of the house is active. Scheme 2 gives you 5.1 or 7.1 plus additional zone outputs.

In some cases, the amplifiers (speaker outputs) for the extra zones are built in to the receiver. In others, all you get is an RCA output jack for the extra zone(s), and you'll need external amplifiers to feed the house.

Thanks for the response. Currently I'm looking at the Onkyo TX-SR605.

I'm sorry, but I'm a bit confused. Do I understand that if we want music in all rooms, the receiver will send output to all of the home theater speakers as well as the whole-house speakers?

Thanks.

It can if you choose to send, say, CD audio to all zones. Or you can choose DVD in the media room and another source in Zone 2. It has a built-in amp for Zone 2 plus a line out for that zone, so you can use an outboard amp if you want.