Hey guys

I have been wanting to get a B&O surround setup happening for a fair while, but could not justify the cost of their processor, but the other day i stumbled upon the NAD T175 HD surround preamp, witch sells for 3500$ in australia, vs 19000$ for the B&O processor.

My Plan was to use my existing beolab 8000's as front left and right, and get a pair of 4000's to be the surrounds.

From reading other posts, it sounds like the beolabs will work fine with a line input from a preamp, but some people had been having problems with speakers intermittently turning on and off after long silences in tv, i assume this would be most prevalent with the 4000's as rear surround speakers as the surround track is often unused for parts of a movie.

The solution i have dreamed up was to use the 12v trigger output on the nad, to flick a relay, supplying 5v to pin 4 of the power link cable.

Has anyone done anything like this before?

My other question is, would it sound strange if i used a non b&o speaker as the center channel? I was looking at the monitor audio silver series, and powering this with a mono power amp as it is passive.

Cheers