Here is the situation: I have a fairly large space (including living room, kitchen, dining room, tv area) which is pretty much all open plus a deck. Currently renovating and planning for audio. Number of speakers: Living room 6 , kitchen 2, dining 2, TV area 2, deck 2. I'd like on/off/volume control for different areas. I can't see playing different sources but I suppose that would be a feature.
Option 1) 1 Connect:amp per speaker pair. That's 7 x $500 = $3500
Option 2) 1 Connect for each area + multichannel amp. 3 Connects (living room, kitchen/dining/tv, and deck) plus something like the Russound D1650. That's 3 x $350 + $1000 = $2050 plus I get two extra channels or I could bridge to the outdoor speakers. The D1650 has screws for volume control on each speaker so I could fine tune before using Connect for volume control. I'd lose some of the savings in wiring and figuring out some 12V trigger workaround.
Thoughts?