Second Zone Set-up

[rabbit_ears]

I'm gutting a kitchen at the end of the month and my wife's concession for me doing the work is to allow me to put some music in the kitchen and outside. i'm putting a pair of Sonance S623TR's in the kitchen and a pair of Boston Voyager 6's outside. i running both pairs off the second zone of my Onkyo 805.
I was planning on running 14/4 speaker wire from the receiver to an in-wall speaker selector (Niles AB-2D) and from there to a pair of in-wall volume controls (Niles VCS100). i've recently been told that neither of these in-wall devices are very efficient and i'll be lucky to end up with 10 watts of the original 130 watts reaching the speakers. how true is this? is there another alternative without adding another amp?
I had a guy try to talk me into an RF remote and while that will give me more component functionality it won't allow me turn off individual sets of speakers or give me independent volume control for each set of speakers.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

 

[OttoMatic]

I run a second zone to my family room and my patio. Since they are both on the same zone, the volume scales together. They are in parallel, and don't seem to present a difficult load to the old receiver that powers them. I don't generally use them at high volume, so the lower impedance is less of a problem than if I were to play loudly.

I use an RF remote and I'm not sure how I could live without it. Good choice if you're going that way.

I use an in-wall volume control, probably similar to the ones you're considering. This is run to the speakers on the patio only. I'm therefore able to reduce their volume with respect to the ones that are in parallel with them. Of course, for there to be volume on the patio, there must also be volume in the family room (the other half of "zone 2"). This works just fine for us.

I would not worry about the volume control sucking out your power. FWIW, I'm using a passive volume control from Radio Shack, and have never had a problem with volume when I wanted it.

How loud do you think you'll play this second zone?

 

[bandphan]

10 watts is loud running the two sets off of the zone amp has limitations itself. niles makes good products and thats thir core buisness, multizone. the rf is a good idea in general, but wont help with you volume control for two sets of speakers as 1 zone

 

[tricube]

aton digital speaker selectors and rf remotes

There is a new product made by Aton which is a division of Elan Systems. the make digital speaker slectors with rf remotes that will control the volume of two pair of speakers in the same zone indep of each other. It is a really cool product. You send the two amplified channels into the switch and it controls the volume while protecting the amp. really cool product.