It happens but you are very capable of getting it all back together again. I would have been in hog heaven and made a day of it. I love rewiring it all.
I would recommend giving some of those wires a bit of slack and suggest going with just HDMI cables whenever possible to do so. I remember the nightmare of having several devices with component video cables and using the 7.1 EXT. IN.
To make your life a bit easier if the 7706 has an issue, there is this feature.
manuals.marantz.com
I think I will do that when I am satisfied everything is working correctly.
All the HDMI ports are in use.
I do have one component connections, as one of my best demo discs is an a SACD with circular drumming. HDMi puts the signal on the wrong surrounds. But I don't use that pre BD disc player much.
The only analog connections I have are from the switch bus which handles all the disc and tape equipment.
Then there is the Quad FM 4. Thought sounds much better then the very lossy MP3 public radio stream over the DAW.
Then I do have a VCR for when needed that has analog audio and a composite video connection.
The DAW from the RME connects via optical and my old Marantz CD player connects via RCA coax digital. CDs are strange, some will play on certain players and not others.
Most of the wiring is to amps. There are 18 power amp channels from that unit.
The main speakers are triamped, the center bi-amped and the rear surround are biamped. The side surround and four ceiling height speaker have one amp channel each.
So for the mains, the mid and top end take a channel each via RCA. The center has one RCA connection for the main coax speaker and one balanced XLR connection to a modified Shure SR 106 for the variable BSC to the fill driver. Each bass line has an RCA connection to the amps for the lower driver, and then the upper driver has a mixer circuit the uses the right and left RCAs and the balanced XLR outs. The upper of the two bass drivers receives the sub signal plus a blended circuit via two modified Shure SR 106 crossovers for the BSC signal, this goes to a buffer amp and an adjustable circuit and mixer for the variable BSC and sub for the mains upper of the two bass drivers. The variable controls are in my rack mounted amp controller that controls the power amp turn on 27 volt relays. The variable control for the center is also in that unit and the control for the bass drivers of the rear surrounds.
The amps from the rear surround are connected from the rear surround XLRs to a two channel Crown VFX-2 variable crossover. This has been upgraded by me to more modern ICs.
This crossover is set at 180 Hz and with outputs to the Quad 909 bass amp, there is a level control in the amp controller. This crossover point is set at where the BSC needs to start and balance with the top end. The Crown high pass goes to another Quad 909. The mains are powered by three Quad 909 amps, the center by one, the side surrounds by one and the rear surrounds by two Quad 909s. The height speakers are powered by two Quad 405-2s
The variable BSC is a game changer. I and others have found the correct BSC is room and speaker location dependent, and "one size" far from fits all.
Correctly setting BSC by instruments and listening I have found is crucial to getting a proper balance of sound in the room. I should state that the surrounds although passive have a two position switch to give two levels of BSC. The heights being in the ceiling need no BSC.
When I moved rooms with the last move, the BSC settings are vastly different between the rooms. In my view most of these so called 'room correction' systems are actually reacting to variations in BSC between rooms. They don't do it as well as controlling it at the bass driver input. These programs tend to interfere with the natural listening distance effect on FR to the detriment of natural sound. So this explains why I don't use room correction and don't need it.
So the majority of the wiring is for the connections from the AVP to the active crossovers and power amps.
