I am going to use a speaker selector that has "A" and "B" inputs for amplification, so I can listen to different audio source material in different rooms. My main amp is also my home theater amp, which brings up a problem. If i want to drive some speakers with that amp that are not in the home theater, my amp does not have a switch to allow me too disengage the center and surround speakers, so they will continue to produce sound.

I could just hook up another speaker selector (which I own) and turn them on and off via this method, but since I'm not worried about a decline in the number of ohms (I'm not running two or more sets of speakers from the original ouput) can I just use some sort of cheap "kill" switch for each of the three speakers in question, simply turning them "off" (stopping the signal) when I'm using the amp for other rooms? Also, is there a way to do the same thing for the rca subwoofer cable so I could stop the signal when using the amp for non home theater application?

Seems like it should be straight forward, but just thought I'd double check. Thanks

What receiver do you have? I assume you don't have multi zone capability or your problem would already be solved without any speaker selectors.

Yamaha RX-V365. It has an A/B speaker switch, but that doesn't control the surrounds or the center channel, which remain "on" even if I swtich the main speakers off.

Aren't there processing settings that you can change to make it only play 2ch? If it's only playing through 2, the center will be off. Then when you toggle back to the A room you just switch that setting too.

I'll see if there are such settings. Until now, I have never found them. Thanks

Edit:

I think there are various settings, but the last thing I want is my wife and kids screwing around with them. There are four pre-set settings which I use for movies, sports, old VHS videos and music. The 5 channel music setting is quite nice and I don't want to give it up when I use the yamaha for music. I just assumed I could buy a switch that essentially disconnects the signal to the speaker when I wanted to do so (basically disconnecting one of the two wires but using a switch rather than doing it by hand.

Acording to the manual (pg-18) this is not true. It says all the other speakers are muted when speaker B is selected.

Your problem may be that you didn't set Speaker-B to be "other room" (see page 32). Once you do this in set-up once, you only have to use the front panel A/B switch and the main speakers should go off.

Thanks! I'll try it.