HELP! Bought house with whole home speakers

[johnbart]

The house we bought has whole home stereo speakers in most every room.
Which is great except the last owner took the amp and any other equipment used to drive the speakers.
He tells me the ONLY THING he had connected to them was a Denon DRA-297
https/usa.denon.com/us/product/hometheater/receivers/dra297
Each room has a Left and RIght speaker and a Elan VSE-100 control panel. (they can handle up to 100watts)
I’ve hooked up a kenwood amp and a denon 1507 (only using the L and R speaker connections)
But no go.
There are L(red&black) and R(red&black) female banana speaker plugs, and a RJ-45 light blue cable coming out the wall there the amp would be.
Looking at pictures on the web of the DRA-297, I can’t see any RJ ports anywhere.
I found used DRA-297’s on ebay-as Denon no longer makes them. But I wonder why my other amps don’t work?
Shouldn’t I be able to just connect any L/R stereo (of sufficient wattage) and get it to work?
Or is there some secondary pre-amp or something I’m missing?
Any ideas?

 

[americanaudiophile]

Here is a link to the manual for the Elan controllers.
http/www.elanportal.com/supportdocs/catalog/vol-im-vse100-series3.pdf
It shows a stand alone application with a power supply for the controllers. If you don't have the power supply it won't work.. You should be able to use any receiver or integrated amplifier.
The controllers have an impedance multiplying function so you can run the speakers in parallel to a stereo amp without an impedance matching speaker selector and not blow it up.