Pre-outs

[mobily]

Hello all,

I have been reading that rather than having 8 speakers dotted round your room (6 surround and 2 stereo) it might be best to use the pre-outs from your av amp.

Do all AV amps have pre-outs? Also what sort of connection is used to connect pre-outs to your CD player?

Is there any loss in sound quality doing it this method rather than having 2 completely different setups? Can the front 2 speakers carry music as well as movies adequately?

Cheers,

James

[MarkE19]

Not all AV receivers will have preouts!

The connections are as follows:
AV preouts (phono) to any spare HiFi amp input
CD (& all other HiFi equip) to HiFi amp
L/R speakers connected to HiFi amp only

When watching DVD's etc set HiFi amp to same input as the preourts from AV are plugged in to.
Volume of HiFi and AV should be preset to match
When listening to music leave AV switched off.

The above might cause a slight loss of quality for movies etc (as there are extra connections in the chain) but I have not noticed this on my setup. Use good quality leads to minimise this.

Mark.

[mobily]

I think I now have my head around this whole area.

Although many people would find a totally different music setup from an av setup preferable, I'm sure that size constraints of many peoples living rooms or bedrooms make this nigh on impossible. Unless you are fortunate enough to have movie room! /me dreams

Would the human ear be able to determine any difference in sound? And if people say yes they can is this due to a placebo effect or can a geniune sound difference be heard. I know that scientifically a loss in quality would occur but that means nothing if the human ear cannot hear that difference.

With the pre-out setup is it possible to replace the CD player with an SACD player and play SACD's in 5.1 channel using the speakers connect to the av amp?

Cheers,

James

[MarkE19]

Sometimes I think a separate room for music/AV would be nice, but then I just want to sit down in comfort and watch TV/DVD or listen to music. I don't want to be running from one room to another. Or go one better and have TV, DVD or music on while on these forums - all in the same room.

Loss of quality with a combined AV & HiFi system can occurr but it really depends on the quality of the equipment being used. With L/R speakers for AV being driven via a separate amp you are adding more links to the chain. If one or more of those links are poor then a drop in quality could well be heard. I'm lucky in that I can't detect any loss on my system.

SACD should be able to be added to this type of setup as long as you have the 6 channel analogue inputs on the AV amp. The player should have separate l&r sterio outs for a normal CD that can be connected to the HiFi amp.

Mark.