silly question time - splitting a preamp out ?

[donberry]

I am pretty sure I can do this, better safe then sorry though.
I am in the mood to experiment and want to try playing 2 pair of speakers to see how they sound together. One pair are very power hungry, so I want to put them on a separate amp, but my preamp only has one set of outputs. There should not be a problem getting a rca jack splitter and hooking up 2 power amps to the pre should there ?
I would guess as it is outputs, it should not cause any problems, but want to make sure.
I am going to need 2 amps as one pair are the Ohm Walsh 2 and the other are a pair of HPM-150. The HPM are pretty efficient, the Ohm Walsh are anything but efficient. I would control the output to the speakers on the power amps themselves. just curious if I could possibly get the airy highs of the Ohm to go along with the dynamics of the HPM-150...

[gamve]

You might end up with some serious impedance mismatch issues doing this with severely rolled off top and bottom end frequencies. I have tried doing a similar thing but biamping or triamping with separate amps for the bass, mid and highs. This works well but only if the pre amp output is matched to the input impedance of the power amps. Have heard of running multiple sets of full range speakers but usually they are identical speakers. I don't understand what the benefits would be in running multiple speakers of differing efficiencies. Cant see the point of multiples of both crossover and phase distortion. I suppose It is not going to hurt much to try...but honestly I think it will sound dreadful.

[stuwee]

Hi donberry, am I correct in this?

You have 1 pre-amp, 2 amps, 2 pairs of speakers?
Your amps can handle the impedence loads of the speakers you're matching them to? And the amps both have output level controls?

If yes then. you can y-split the signal. You will most likely lower the output voltage of the pre-amp signal, so you will have to turn the amp outputs up more than a straight in connection. This may make the signal noisier and possibly raise the distortion.

As long as your Pre is a high quality unit, you shouln't have to worry about damage to anything. Always use caution with this situations and never leave the room the amps are in! Possible fire hazard *devil* magic smoke bad!

I have a SAE P102 preamp, it has dual outputs and output meters for matching levels. Works great for what you're trying to accomplish, Wardsweb (Luther) on AK & MartinLogan forums has more info on his fabulous SAE website on other dual output SAE preamps.

[Socal Sam]

RCA Y splitter from the preamp to two amps is fine.