My 6 yr old Denon receiver curled up in a ball and died over the weekend

I had my home theater installed when we built the house but I don't want to fork out the bucks this time and not even sure they did it right anyway

I have outside and bedroom speakers but was never able to play either w/o also playing the living room speakers pretty loudly

My questions are should I nab another Denon or do you have any recommendations?

The other is do I need to look for a specific feature that will allow me to play the
bedroom or outside speakers w/o having to use the living room speakers?

Thanks for your help!

How many speakers do you have in the living room? Most receivers have an A and B speaker choice, or play both.

many receivers have the option for multiple zones, so that shouldn't be too hard to track down. also, not sure if you have hdmi switching on your old reciever, but i find that's a nice feature if you have multiple hdmi video sources.

granted the 'best' receiver is pretty subjective, but i've come to prefer yamaha. -M

I'm a big fan of Onkyo, at least from a bang-for-the-buck standpoint.

I just bought one of their mid-range receivers about a year ago when I finally went all HD and needed to be able to route HDMI. I paid about $500 and the sound is fantastic. I have multi-room speakers plus a pair outdoors and can either run them all on the same source, or split them into separate sources (for example, the TV in the family room but the radio outdoors).

It's my second Onkyo and both have worked flawlessly.

If you do your research and buy through the Internet, you can get a great receiver will more features than you'll ever use for a good price.


BTW, stay away from Sony. I had one of their receivers and returned it because the sound just wasn't very good -- and it was a higher end unit. I replaced it with my first Onkyo and the difference was night-and-day.

Go either Onkyo or Yamaha. I spent about $400 for my Yamaha receiver and it came with full HDMI switching (everything else is plugged into the receiver and there is ONE hdmi cable going to my TV - One and only wire going to the television, which is great if you have it mounted) plus it comes with a microphone that you place in the optimal sitting area and it will run an optimizer program that will automatically set up all your speakers. I think it's great since it's a much more customized sound for your room. Oh, and it has 2 zones as well...

How many speakers do you have in the living room? Most receivers have an A and B speaker choice, or play both.

thanks for the input everyone

I have a 6 speaker surround system in the living room, 2 in the bedroom and 2 outside

If I buy a two zone can I set it up so the living room and bedroom play on one zone and the outside on the other? My main goal is to play tv or radio outside w/o the living room speakers.

Yes, you can separate your zones in that manner -- it's exactly how I do it.

Perfect

Crutchfield here I come

Thanks again

It's hard to beat the quality and value of an Onkyo. Just pick one of their THX-certified receivers and you are good. If you wanna be snobby then maybe look at Pioneer Elite and some of their competitors.

Also, you know there are some really great wireless speaker solutions available now days. Rocketfish makes an individual amp/transceiver combo unit that will turn any high-end speaker into a wireless speaker. They do not use crappy RF methods of the past... these units are based on digital wifi. The quality is good. Anyway if you are looking at setting up zones and outdoor speakers something like that might open up some opportunities that did not previously exist.