Hi,
I am trying to set up a zone 2 on my AV receiver. I have speaker output RCA jacks for Speaker A and Speaker B and a front switch to toggle between the two. How do I set up an audio input that will go only to Speaker B when it is activated? There is only audio in for DVD, VCR, CD, etc and not specifically to Speaker B.
i.e. I would like a separate input to go to Speaker A and another input source to go to Speaker B.

I need to know because I have a VCD with 2 languages playing simultaneously - one on the L speaker track, one on the R. I would like to set up Speaker A to only play the R audio output from the DVD player and Speaker B to play only the L audio output from the DVD player. This way, I can use the front toggle to either listen to the first or second language and not both simultaneously. I know that sound will only come out of 1 speaker at a time with this setup.

I'm just confused about this. Please help!

Quote:

---

I would like a separate input to go to Speaker A and another input source to go to Speaker B.

---

I'm not totally sure I understand what you want to do, but let's go with this:

The audio output speaker set is selected with the toggle switch.

There is one pair of amplifiers in your stereo receiver. The amplifiers amplify whatever goes into into the system -- sound from DVD, VCR, CD, etc. That sound is routed to the output toggle switch and from there, it will go to the speakers that are selected by the output speaker set toggle switch. So far, you can't do what you want to do.

You do have two amplifiers in your receiver -- one for the left channel and one for the right. You could put an external switch on the inputs and use a "Y" adapter to feed the signal from the left into both inputs and, when you flip the switch, the signal coming from the right would go into both inputs.

Something like this will work.

http://www.hdtvhookup.com/2wayauviswse.html

If you connect it with a "Y"-adapter

http://www.cablesnmor.com/rca-y-cables.aspx

(You can get these all over the place).

Thanks Perito. That is helpful to know.
I'm still confused about something -
Basically the story is like this: the sound system used to be set up so that when one hit Speaker A on the front panel, only Mandarin would come out of the R speaker only. When Speaker B was toggled, only Cantonese would come out of the L speaker only.
Then someone fiddled with it and now I have both languages coming out simultaneously from the R speaker when I hit Speaker A and none when I hit Speaker B.

I did research and found that VCDs have both languages simultaneously, one to R audio out and one to L audio out.

I'm just trying to restore the system to what it was before but I can't figure out where to plug in the RCA jacks from the VCD player.
I think theoretically it was set up so that the R speaker is attached to Speaker A on the receiver and the L speaker to Speaker B. Then the R audio out from the VCD player was hooked up to go only to Speaker A and the L audio out was hooked up only to go to Speaker B.

I just can't figure out how on the receiver to plug in my audio out jacks from the VCD so that I can do this. i.e. there is no label that says "audio input that outputs to speaker A only" and "audio input that goes to Speaker B only"

There's probably something about the system that I don't understand. This sounds like the balance is being changed from left to right. I'm afraid that unless I could see the system, I couldn't figure it out without a lot more information.

Thanks so much Perito for all your help and effort - I really do appreciate it a lot.

I guess the simplest way I could phrase this is
How do you program a receiver so that for example, an input from the CD player plays out of Speaker A only and an input from the DVD player plays only out of Speaker B when you toggle with the front panel A/B switch?

I hope that makes sense. If not, please don't trouble yourself too much - I can play around with the system for a while and see what I figure out.
Thanks!

If a 2 zone system, it should work.

Does sound like its in the balance, left for 1 language and right for second language, I may be missing something.

If a 2 zone system, it should work.

I think it's a 2 zone system since it has a separate front switch for speaker A and B but I'm not sure how I can make sure it's a 2 zone system.

Does sound like its in the balance, left for 1 language and right for second language, I may be missing something.

It's not balance - it's a really strange system with VCDs where the sound is full strength 1 language on R and full strength 2nd language on L. I tried to just use balance to switch R vs. L but unfortunately the balance, even when completely turned to the R or L, still doesn't knock out the 2nd language from playing. You still hear both languages but it's more 80-20%.

I currently sort of figured out how to do this. I plugged the R speaker out into the Video in on the back of the AV receiver and the L speaker out into the CD in on the back of the AV receiver. Thus, when I hit "Video" mode on the front of the AV receiver, it only plays the R speaker and when I switch to "CD" it only plays the L speaker. It's not perfect as only 1 speaker works at a time but at least I don't hear 2 languages at once.

Thanks!

Thanks Perito. That is helpful to know.
I'm still confused about something -
Basically the story is like this: the sound system used to be set up so that when one hit Speaker A on the front panel, only Mandarin would come out of the R speaker only. When Speaker B was toggled, only Cantonese would come out of the L speaker only.
Then someone fiddled with it and now I have both languages coming out simultaneously from the R speaker when I hit Speaker A and none when I hit Speaker B.

I did research and found that VCDs have both languages simultaneously, one to R audio out and one to L audio out.

I'm just trying to restore the system to what it was before but I can't figure out where to plug in the RCA jacks from the VCD player.
I think theoretically it was set up so that the R speaker is attached to Speaker A on the receiver and the L speaker to Speaker B. Then the R audio out from the VCD player was hooked up to go only to Speaker A and the L audio out was hooked up only to go to Speaker B.

I just can't figure out how on the receiver to plug in my audio out jacks from the VCD so that I can do this. i.e. there is no label that says "audio input that outputs to speaker A only" and "audio input that goes to Speaker B only