Speaker On/Off Box for Receiver?

[el_guineo]

Hi all.

I have an older HK AVR-335 7.1 receiver that I want to use solely to play music in three contiguous but separate areas:

1. Living room - 2 speakers
2. Dining area - 3 speakers
3. Kitchen area - 2 speakers

I'd be spreading out the 7 speakers all throughout the apartment. I have a choice as to how to connect the speakers:

1. 5.1 method: 5-channel stereo, and the 2 others (kitchen) via Multi-Zone 2
2. 7.1 method: 7-channel stereo

I don't think it really matters which I choose, because what I'd like to do in the end is to be able to at my discretion select which of the above 3 areas will have music. For example, I may choose to have all three areas playing (default setting for the receiver in the 7-channel stereo mode), but I may also wish to only play area 1 (living room), and have the dining and kitchen areas silent.

Is there a product out there that's as simple as a small speaker switcher box that acts as a connector/terminator, and hook up that box between the speaker and receiver? I can't imagine something like this costing much, since its basically the equivalent of manually disconnecting the speakers that I don't want playing.

I believe I can manually go in to the receiver's OSD each time and mute the specific channels, but you can understand this would be very tedious, and also I won't have a monitor hooked up to the receiver.

Any input is appreciated!

 

[j_garcia]

Most receviers should have separate volume control for the main area and Zone 2 (I am not familiar with that H/K so I don't know if it does), so that should not be an issue having one playing in one area vs the other, but you could technically do something similar with a switch box. With a switch box, you aren't buying yourself much because they tend to only be in pairs so you would have to switch on or off 3-4 pairs of speakers at a time.

 

[el_guineo]

Yeah, the Zone 2 would work for 2 speakers... but I still would need a sort of "Zone 3" for an additional set of speakers.

A switcher doesn't really work, it would be overkill as I don't want to split the signal from the amp.

Still looking around the web... I have to think there's a simple on/off terminator device.