Home Cinema / Hi-Fi Question

[andy3781]

Hi, just been wondering in a bid to free up some space and a bit of cash if its at all possible to buy some kind of speaker switching device that wont impair quality and is quite cheap at the same time... My problem basically is that i have a Pioneer THX AV Amp for home cinema and a Rotel pre-power combination for music. The AV amp is great for films obviously but not so good with the music and the same with the rotel great with music but being two channel not going to be any good with movies. So at the moment i've got 6 speakers for the av amp in the room and a further 2 floorstanders that go to the 2 channel Rotel. So i thought i could maybe get rid of the two main satellite speakers and sub from the equation that are hooked up to the av amp and sell them and use the two remaining floorstanders that are hooked up to the Rotel as my two main front left and right in my 5.1 av set up. But to do this im going to need to be able to switch between the two amp. Does anyone know of anyone who does this sort of thing and whether its going to impair the signal quality.

Cheers in advance
Andy

[DavidY]

Does the Rotel pre-power have a Unity Gain input? and does the Pioneer have pre-outputs? If it does just feed left/right pre output from the Pioneer into this input and select it when using Home Cinema.

If not feed the left/right pre output from the Pioneer into the Aux on the Rotel. Set the Rotel volume control to halfway (12 o'clock) and recalibrate the AV system.

Much better solutions than using speaker switchers, and you get the benefit of the better amp driving the better speakers.

However if your Pioneer does not have pre-outs then you are in the realm of speaker switchers, look at QED products.

davidy

[Graham E]

I used to run almost exactly that setup - I had a Pio xx59 (utterly st at music) partnered with Rotel pre power. Since the 10 series re I had didn't have an AV input, I just used 12 o clcock on the Rotel when watching movies, and set the gains on the Pio for that. As I remember, at 12 o clock, it meant that all the relative volumes were reasonably close, and all negative numbers, with the centre on 0.

[Saintjsmythe]

ffs he is using a pre/power combo, of course that's going to have preouts and power in.
Andy, you will need to ditch the Rotel pre and run Pioneer left/right main pre outs into the Rotel power amp. Hook up main speakers to power amp and away you go.

Essentially you are just replacing your Rotel pre amp with the internal Pioneer pre amp.

[Graham E]

Saintjsmythe said:

ffs he is using a pre/power combo, of course that's going to have preouts and power in.
Andy, you will need to ditch the Rotel pre and run Pioneer left/right main pre outs into the Rotel power amp. Hook up main speakers to power amp and away you go.

Essentially you are just replacing your Rotel pre amp with the internal Pioneer pre amp.

Don't ever do this. Unless your pioneer is different to my old one, you'll just stop listening to music forever. Bloody horrible thing that 859 was.

[only me]

I do exactly what "david y" suggests with a myryad pre amp and power amp and a yamaha av amp, ie use the yamaha preouts for front left and right into the myryad pre amp aux/video input and put the myryad volume to half way and control it with the Yamaha av amp works very well for surround and when I listen to music switch of yamaha and use as normal.

Hope that helps

[Saintjsmythe]

I think running a signal through two pre amps is worse than running through just the Pioneer pre. Its stripping away more of an already fragile signal. What pioneer THX amp have you got Andy and how much music do you listen too? I've used the AV/power amp combo many times and can't say I've noticed a huge drop in quality.

Edited by Saintjsmythe on Thursday 20th May 12:47

[Mr_Yogi]

Running the AV amp pre-out's through a stereo pre-amp will do virtually nothing to degrade the quality of a movie soundtrack, while feeding a decent stereo source through an AV amp (even if only the pre amp stage) will make a difference, for the worst. Keeping the stereo sources separate from the AV amp will preserve their quality.

AV amps are not great with music, even the high end receivers have pretty pants pre-amps, while a decent stereo pre-amp should not have hardly any effect on the signal.

What DavidY suggests is the way to go

Just remember if your pre-amp doesn't have a unity gain input to return the volume to a sensible level after watching a movie. Otherwise you might get a nasty shock next time you listen to a CD

[andy3781]

Thanks for all the replys. The rotel combo is quite an old rb-960bx and matching pre-amp but still does the job and still sounds superb so really don't want to ditch the clean sound of that and confuse it by running it through in my opinion inferior electronics that are tuned for multi channel audio. The rotel doesn't have a unity gain control either. And the idea of trying to match volume levels with signals going through two amps seems a much more complicated exercise than a simple passive switch control that has a definate off and on button for each amp. I see it as just a case of me being lazy and not wanting to swap banana plugs from one and amp to the other. I listen to music as much as I watch films, so it isn't really a case of one dominates the other. What sort of switcher would I be looking for from QED?price? Thanks

[only me]

the volume level of "David Y" suggestion is no big deal as your av amp will sort it and use your rotel as a power amp.

I recomend you dont right it of as I feel your front sound stage will gain from it and it will solve your problem.

I have done this and it does work well.

[DavidY]

Use the volume method rather than the switcher for a couple of reasons:-

1) The better amp is driving the better speakers
2) There is less chance of blowing an amplifier up by accidently shorting the speaker outputs
3) You already have the necessary equipment and don't need to buy anything else

The Aux of the Rotel Pre will take next to nothing away from the signal, as most Aux inputs are very simple.

I used this method with a Yamaha AV Unit and a Naim Pre/Power on my front speakers to good effect. I've since upgraded and now run a Meridian SYstem which is good for music and movies, but in my experience you have to move quite a way up market to be good at 2 channel and 5 channel.

davidy

[OldSkoolRS]

DavidY said:

I've since upgraded and now run a Meridian SYstem which is good for music and movies, but in my experience you have to move quite a way up market to be good at 2 channel and 5 channel.

davidy

I recently upgraded from a Denon 2808 to a used Arcam AV9 processor, P35/3 and P1000 power amps. The 2 channel performance is way ahead of the Denon (even when I used the P35/3 as a power amp for the front speakers with the 2808's preouts). However I recently read that even the impressive (to my ears anyway) AV9 stereo performance is inferior to the Arcam C31 stereo preamp, so I'm tempted to go this route at some point as it has the AV bypass function, though my modest CD73T CD player is probably more the limiting factor here ( a stop gap waiting to see how the new Arcam BluRay works out as a universal player).

I've always like the look of the Meridian kit myself, but nothing was around on the used market at the time, hence I went the Arcam route.

[andy3781]

Hi all, got a bit bored earlier on this morning and decided to try "David y's" suggested way of hooking the amps up. Plugged a phono cable from pre-out on the pioneer to the aux input on the rotel, turned the volume to half way on the rotel and then played a blu ray to test... Basically all that appeared to becoming from the main speakers was a very slight sound just coming from the tweeters. However I still had the two satellite speakers that I was previously using as the main fronts still going through the pioneer, I did think that because I'd plugged into the preout for front L and R then it would cancel out that channel and just take the signal straight to the rotel. This wasn't the case and the satellite speakers were still working and I was getting very little volume from my floorstanders. Is this going to because the two satellites are still hooked up or have I done something or missed something out? I didn't bother taking the cables out from the satellites because it's a bit of pain the arse to get behind everything at the minute and just wanted to see what it sounded like before I started pulling everything out.

[DavidY]

You might need to tell it in the configuration which speakers are driven by the internal amps and which by the pre-outs

[Mr_Yogi]

DavidY said:

You might need to tell it in the configuration which speakers are driven by the internal amps and which by the pre-outs

This sounds like it, when I had my system setup this way, I had to tell my AVR (Yamaha) which speakers were connected and which were using the pre-outs via the set up menu.

It will also be a good idea to re-run the auto-setup with the mic/ or manual setup with a meter so you can setup the frount channel levels for the Rotel's volume at 12 'O' Clock, meaning the levels should always be correct for movies with the volume at that position.

[only me]

I have had several yamaha processors and av amps and never had to tell them I have used the pre outs so would be surprised if you do, but a test tone or mic set up is a must to get levels correct

[Atomic Gibbon]

Bigger issue:

Your sub sats will be set to a silly high crossover, prob 100hkz and up. Your full range hifi speakers need the crossover down at 60hz. This is probably why "only the tweeters are working".
If you re run the srtup, you need to disconnect the front l/r satelites - only need to take 1 wire out of each if it's an experiment. Just don't let the "spare" wire short against the amp, or another terminal.

Best of luck!

[Mr_Yogi]

only me said:

I have had several yamaha processors and av amps and never had to tell them I have used the pre outs so would be surprised if you do, but a test tone or mic set up is a must to get levels correct

It was a while ago now (RX-V650) but I'm sure when I combined my AV and stereo I had to enable the pre-outs for the main front channels.

[andy3781]

Cheers again to everyone for the help will give it a go again with setup menu!