Solved! Need AVR receiver to power 4 identical speakers.

[School Techster]

The setup is a large weight lifting room. All they want is some loud music, don't care about 5.2, 7.2 etc. but want bells and whistles such as Bluetooth, Airplay2, etc. Stereo is all that is needed, but need to push stereo through two sets of large Kenwood speakers. There are good prices on Denon AVR-S750H (2019) right now. Can I put two speakers on L/R front and put two more on back surround and reassign as a full power L/R set without frying the receiver? I can't seem to find any specific talk and the manuals seem vague about it. Here's a look at the back panel. The rear surround sound speark jackers say "assignable"
https://assets.denon.com/assets/images/productimages/AVRS750H/D_S750_gallery_3_na.jpg

 

[americanaudiophile]

You can connect the speakers to the front and surround channels and select the multichannel stereo mode. That will send stereo to both front and surround channels.
No need to reassign the channels.
Be aware that the power rating on the receiver is 75 watts per channel in stereo into 6 ohm speakers. The 165 watt spec is for only 1 channel playing with a lot of distortion and no bass.
They don't give a spec for 7 channels (or 4 channels in your case) playing at the same time so the receiver may only put out 35-40 watts per channel with four channels playing. That may not be enough depending on how efficient the speakers are.
The Denon DRA-800H is more like what you are looking for and should have more power than the AVR.

 

[School Techster]

Thank you. I wasn't sure what to look for and this helps greatly. The 4 speakers on an A/B switch is what is in place now. In fact, it is a Yamaha RX-495 that is probably 20 years old, lol. I just assumed no one made a stereo receiver any mor. The higher price of the Denon is intimidating, but I like that it seems to have the latest specs for Apple, HDMI, etc. Might be a budget breaker for the teacher.
I looked up Yamaha R-N303 which seems to have similar specs and is $200 cheaper. However, Yamaha only lists Airplay, but not Airplay 2.
Do you have any sense of which brand will hold up better to abuse by students and staff? They will playing music LOUD, instructional DVDs, CDs, connecting to external Miracast device, AppleTV and sometimes hot-plugging to 1/8" stereo jack to RCA auxillary on receiver.