I am about to purchase an A/V receiver and speakers to accompany a new TV in my living room. I also have speakers in my kitchen, dinning room and courtyard. I would like to be able to pipe music to those rooms from my living room where the wire connections are.
From my research, I have two options: 1) use a good multiroom (powered zone 2) a/v receiver, that can drive my TV and 5.1 speaker system in the living room and also pipe music to another set of speakers without the need for another amplifier (using a speaker selector, though); or 2) by a Home Theater in a Box system and a separate amp to pump music in the other rooms. The advantage of Option 1 is integration, less wires, but the cost of such a receiver is high and then to separately get speakers runs the cost up even more. Option 2 would be much cheaper, because the HTiaBox solution includes speakers, but then I have to get another amp and more wires to make sure all sources are connected to both the receiver and amplifier. I realize that the Home Theathre in a Box receivers may not be as good as the stand alone receiver, but I am not a huge audiophile, so good (not great) sound is okay with me. Any advice?
The route you take and the equipment you buy is very dependant on your budget. I have a 7-channel Aragon amp (2007) and have a 4-switch Niles speaker selector attached (not more than $150) to drive my kitchen speakers, my sunroom speakers, upstairs speakers, and my main surround system. Depending on how many of the buttons I push on the Niles speaker selector, I can run any combination of speakers--from the surround to all of them.
If you have efficient 8 ohm speakers around the house you will have no problem driving them with at least 100 watt per channel surround receiver or amp.