Multi-room hookup of AVR, Amp, and speakers

[JiminSTL]

Need advice. I am “helping” a friend with some audio decisions and equipment. He knows less than I do. Might those of you who likely know more than I do offer your ideas? Surely will appreciate it.

The situation:

• He will be buying a new AVR as the/one of the signal and power sources for his several areas that he desires to provide speaker output to. He will be buying speakers, too.
• Does not want to “over-spend” on the AVR with features/capabilities he does not need, but knows he will have to spend whatever it takes for his preferences
• He has (minimally) 2 zones he wants to serve: the main HT area, and an adjoining office w/ L/R front speakers
• He has another potential zone on his deck (2 speakers) to get output to, and possibly another similar area that would be served with a L/R setup. Of course, he could “solve” this situation by purchasing a 3-zone or 4-zone capable AVR. But they can be much more expensive. Further, getting speaker wire from the main AVR to the potential zone 3 or 4 presents significant logistical difficulties.

 

Might this be a workable and reasonable solution:

• Get a good 2 zone capable AVR, and wire directly to the desired speaker output
• Make sure this AVR has “pre-out” RCA jacks, which could then run red and white RCA cables to an accessible location to use the present AVR (Yamaha HTR-5750) as the amp to receive the signal inputs (it is likely that he could get the RCA cables to the downline amp more easily than trying to get speaker wire directly to the potential zone 3 and 4 speakers)
• Use the Zone A/B capabilities of the Yamaha HTR-5750 to get the signals to the desired zone 3 and 4
• AM UNCERTAIN which plugs on the back of the 5750 would receive the RCA cable from the main AVR

 

Or, I have it all wrong for a number of reasons, and better ways of accomplishing his objectives are . . . .

Thanks, all, for your help!

[Scrappydue]

Hey Jim. Sounds to me like if it's hard to run speaker wire to other zones it would be just as hard to run long rca's as well? Why not just power other zones with current receiver. Separate setups basically. Not sure how he is wanting to play music. Good cheap way if he uses Apple anything for music is he can buy an Apple TV and just stream to AirPlay and hook one to all receivers and label each one individually. Pick and choose right from the phone which one you wanna stream to and they turn on automatically and full control right their from your iDevice.

[JiminSTL]

Hey, Scrappy.  Been a while.

 

Re my friend, a couple of things:  1) his is a non-Apple house, and 2) I think (don't know with absolute certainty) that he could run a 50' RCA red/white cable from the AVR he intends to buy to the location of the re-purposed and relocated existing Yamaha HTR-5750.  Then run speaker wires to the 3rd zone (on his deck), and possibly to a 4th zone (L/R speakers only each)--for occasional use.

 

Does that make sense?

[JiminSTL]

Might there be another possibility?  Would a speaker selector be a possibility for the 2-channel speakers that may come about in what I referred to as Zone 3 and Zone 4?

 

I presume that the audio source going to the selector would be the source of the output channel of the main AVR?