I've been conversing with Brent about the setup for some outside speakers and how to drive them. Looks like I need
- Area 1 needs 2 Pair of M3 Outdoor Speakers (already have them)to cover the entire back yard
- Area 2 and 3 each need a Pair of in celling speakers for two separate roofed deck areas

So I have 8 Speakers I need to drive, and at present I have only a Yami RX-A3000 (7.2ch) that is currently doing duty driving my Axiom 5.1 setup. I used to drive one pair of the Outdoor M3's with the spare 2 channels as a separate Second Zone and it was OK and I could control it via the Yami Android Application.

Brent recommended the Axiom Amp but I have a few questions about what would be the best configuration between the Yami and the Axiom Amp.

- Most of the time we use the inside HT 5.1
- I'd like to have all of the outside as a separate Second Zone but be able to switch ON/OFF each of the three areas independently. Sometime we need just background music on one of the decks, other times all going flat out in "Party Mode"

I figure the easiest setup would be to keep the current Yami Setup as is but feed it's Zone 2 to an 8ch Axiom Amp and put in some manual switches on the speaker cables to turn on/off the 3 desired outside areas.

The thing I don't like about this setup is my 8ch Axiom Amp would be sitting there doing nothing most of the time, which seems a waste.

I was then toying with if I could use the Axiom to drive at least the front 3 of my 5.1 setup and use the remaining Yami and Axiom channels to drive the outside speakers.... but this seems pretty complicated.

Any suggestions?

Thanks
Nathan

If it was me I'd upgrade to the RX-A3030 because it has the zones you need.
Between selling the 3000 and purchasing the 3030 you'd still save a few hundred bucks.