What is the best way to add a 5:1 system

RR, your speaker switch should work fine. The only concern I would have is what it does to the sound quality of your MC202.

If Stereo is you main concern, I would purchase a surround receiver for listening to movies and save your equipment for stereo. It can get very expensive trying to do 5 channels of high quality sound just to watch movies.

Hey All,

Thanks for the continued information. I agree that the movie piece will be just fine with a quality 5:1 amp/pre. The speaker selector boxes I will be using will not be in the "protection mode" which means both, good generally unimpaired sound quality for the MC402, and concern given to insure good impedance match. How to utilize the existing speaker cables and the additional adds down the road without having to swap cables manually is still the on going question.

Thanx
RR

As a start you could get a 5.1 AVR with pre-outs and use the pre-outs connected to your C46 for the LR channels and use the amps in the AVR for the center and surrounds. If you want to upgrade the center, you could then add a monoblock for the center. Or add a 3 channel amp to drive the center and surrounds.

For casual use of a 5.1 system, having center and surround amps equal to your 402 is probably overkill. The AVR will not be close to the quality of the C46 so why should the amp be of the quality of the 406? Something like an ATI 180.3 would probably be fine as an add-on amp, unless you are going set up a high end movie system. Purists will say that everything needs to be matched, which is true if you are primarily watching movies or doing multi-channel music. But for a hybrid system with part time moving watching, having better quality LR is probably fine.

For example, I use Sonus Faber Cremona speakers with a Classe pre-amp and a Levinson 432 amp for stereo. For movies/TV I have an AVR with the center and surrounds driven by an ATI amp and the LR feed to my Classe pre-amp. My Classe has a HT bypass, but you can simulate that with your C46 by just knowing what level to set the C46 for moving watching. Just have to watch the levels so as to not accidently overload the sereo system when doing HT.

With a 7.1 AVR you might even be able to drive your outdoor speakers with zone 2 of a 7.1 AVR.

This type of hybrid system takes a little time to set up but can be very cost effective in the long run. A programmable remote with lots of macros can make it easy to run on the macros are set up.

Much of the above is right on the money. Using your processor in/outs and a surround sound reciever with pre outs should get you where you want too be down the road. At any rate, mostly wanted to add my congrats on your getting your new Mac gear. I finally got a Mac 6600, after wanting MaIntosh gear for thirty years. Even two channel for TV/movie is great, especially with a nice stereo system. You may not miss SS much. Happy Listening. Glen