I moved into a new house that has ceiling speakers in 5 rooms (2 speakers each room) and 2 outdoor speakers. In the basement there is a speaker cable junction box that says Sonance - A Division of Dana Innovations (see picture). All of the rooms & outdoors have dimmer switches to increase/decrease the sound volume. Upstairs there are 4 pairs of speaker wires coming out of the wall that I have hooked up to a Onkyo Ht-rc160 (see picture). One pair says Rear Right, one Rear left and the other is two pairs combined without a label. Downstairs there are five pairs of speaker wires labeled "LFR, LR, RR, CEN, RFR." I have 3 question:
1) The outdoor speakers are very, very quiet compared to the house speakers all running off the Onkyo receiver. What would cause this?
2) The Onkyo receiver gets very hot in the cabinet and also its my only receiver which I need for my TV. What would be a cheap replacement for it and can I connect it to the Sonance box downstairs so it will not have the overheating issue? (I have a Google audio chromcast that I use for audio right now - see picture).
3) The downstairs speaker wires do not do anything. I have connected my receiver and also my speakers to them and nothing happens. Is there a good method to trace where these cables go?
