i bought an Onkyo TX-SR607 receiver a few months back and hooked it up to Tivo HD, BD, and HTPC all via HDMI, driving a 5.1 speaker system with the later intent of adding a couple of outdoor speakers for zone 2. had been relatively satisfied with the setup until i installed zone 2 speakers and discovered that only analog signals can be played on my zone 2 speakers - my goal had been to play MP3s on my HTPC to zone 2 via the HDMI connection. changed the HTPC audio connection to analog for the sake of getting it to work and very unhappy with the resulting music quality when driving my 5.1 setup - messing with DynamicEQ, equalizer, etc. has yielded nothing but frustration...
i started looking around for alternatives and noticed that many Denons sport a Front A/B speaker feature. i wonder if this would serve the same purpose as a zone 2 assuming i don't have the desire to drive both sets of speakers at the same time? say that my outdoor speakers are plugged into Front B and Front B is selected, are my subwoofer and surround speakers still being driven at that point? would be undesirable to have combination of outdoor speakers and indoor speakers being driven at the same time. would things like the crossover freq setting affect both front A and B?
at this point i'm looking for feedback on the above ideas or suggestions on what other brands/units i should be looking at to achieve my goals.
many thanks!
-dk-
