Ok i hope you DIY'ers will know this.

Im about to purchase a cheapish Home cinema amp for my PC and i want to route the front speakers sound through my main hifi fronts. I know how to wire this up, but i am worried that leaving the front speaker outputs unloaded when the a/v amplifier is running may damage the unit. I had considered getting an amp switching unit from Maplins but i would rather not have one in my hifi system

So i was wondering if it was possible to just put some 10watt 10 ohm ceramic resitors there inplace of speakers. As there would be no singnal conencted to the front speakers source the amp should be silent on the front channels

Or is this not even nesscery. thanks for thoughts and I hope this is the right forum for this and thanks for the replies

[sounddog]

I (and I think lots of other people) have run AV amps (I had a Marantz SR5200) with no load on the front speakers due to using the pre-outs with a stereo amp. I think you're more likely to have problems if you use resistors in place of speakers.

Also, surely just connecting a speaker switching unit won't put any load on your AV amp - or did you mean to switch between the output on the fronts on AV amp and the output of the stereo amp - if this is the case, make sure the switch unit you get can only be A or B and doesn't have and A+B position.

QED do good silent speaker switches at reasonable price if you want to pursue that route - but you shouldn't have any problem just leaving the speaker outputs for the front on your AV amp open circuit.

Vikki

thanks thats what i wanted to know if it was ok to leave them unconected

The unit i was looking at was not a speaker selector but a source connector so allowing switching between different sources.

Ok allways best to check i think