> The whole point of the receiver is so that you specifically
> do not have to do a remotely-controlled multi-room system.

Yes. But I don't want to have a receiver in my dining room (it looks nice, but not that nice...unless I could rip it apart and fit it inside the wall...hmmm....) Plus, in some cases (like, say, when I have dinner guests) I'd want the same music playing in the living room, dining room, and kitchen -- can't do that (or at least not well) except with a stronger amp, fed from the basement.

In the bedroom, or next to my computer, or in the exercise room, it's fine being there as a Rio, but in the "public" spaces, I don't want it there, both for visual reasons and so that I can feed multiple rooms at once.

If I could directly control a receiver in each room, and also control an output matrix ("send this song to these rooms," or, alternately, "play that room's music in here"), then I'd have something. As it is, I'm expecting to have a simple 4-way source / volume control in each room, and have four different Rios streaming different playlists (maybe two from MP3 and two from MP3-converted off-air FM, via yet another piece of hardware I don't yet have), and I can then listen to any number of these four sources in as many different rooms as I like, simultaneously and perfectly in synch ('cause they're all from the same analog output).

Does that make more sense? Or is there some other way to do it that I've missed?