The *Proper* way to go about what you are trying to do here is a DSP unit with dedicated outputs to multiple amps. better break out a book on Ohms Law before you get into this venutre. You're getting into some tricky territory here for a novice AV guy, speakers with different impedance and multi amp systems are going to require you to know what you are doing at least to some degree. My recommendations are to give the AR's their own amp and leave it at that. Remember, the AR is a power hungry 4 ohm load and the rest are of a higher impedance and, most likely, much more sensitive. You can use any other "line level" inputs such as tuner, tape in, aux but forget about the phono input.īe careful about the speaker selectors. IOW, it'll sound like drek and possibly damage the preamp. You'll overdrive it and it applies an inverse RIAA curve to whatever is fed into it. You NEVER want to use a phono input for anything but a magnetic phono cartridge. That would be ok, right (I hope - just as long as I get an integrated amp that can handle 4 ohm speakers and have lots of wpc)? With the quote above in mind, it seems like I could run a pair of RCA cables form my receiver, to the phono input of the integrated amp and that would work fine, right?Īlso, from the integrated amp, I'd like my signal out to go to a Niles speaker selector with volume control to power various speakers hooked up throughout my house: 1 set being the 4-ohm AR-3a's, the other sets would be 8-ohm, nothing fancy speakers. What I've been looking at are "integrated amps". i'e, whatever goes into the inputs is exactly what goes out of the tape monitor. Some receivers and integrated amps have the ability to separate the preamp section from the power amp, either by jumpers or other methods, therebuy allowing more powerful amps to be inserted into the circuit to replace, not augment, the internal power amp.Īlso, keep in mind that a "tape out" is a zero gain output. While we're at it, a receiver is an integrated amp with a tuner in the same box. Some do have gain controls but they are the minority and, in many cases, sources may not have enough output to drive them to the extent of their abilities.Īn integrated amp combines both of the above in one box. This brings us to the power amp, which is just a "black box" with one pair of inputs and one set of speaker outputs. The output of these needs to be fed to a power amp to be able to drive a speaker A pre-amp has source selection, tone controls., tape monitors, and all the goodies you're used to seeing on these things.