My very elderly neighbor has a mid-oughts system that her late husband had installed that includes ceiling speakers in three rooms that she says they enjoyed for years "but not since before Harvey" (2017) and the veritable UN of components: a Sony DVD player, Samsung CD player, Toshiba TV and Panasonic tuner. Only the audio in her relatively new TV is working. Everything looks fairly good on the outside although I know that can be deceiving and it's all old school, nothing wireless.
I sat on the floor for two hours this morning using routing logic and process of elimination to try to find the zone outputs for the ceiling speakers and to even just get the surround sound to work for the TV and CD player but all I could manage was to get the AM/FM tuner to work. I'm not at all optimistic about the ceiling speakers (flood damage, ants, squirrels, mice?) but it would be nice see what else I can manage. The TV and cable inputs work fine and the DVD and CD unit face displays show progress data when I activate those but I can't get them to play together.
My best guess is that somebody impatiently installed the new TV and selected some type of override that nullified the rest of the system but that might be my gigantic ignorance square-dancing with my bruised ego. Any advice is welcome. Thanks.