Preamp out to line in?


Moved house, and now my home theatre and audiophile system are in the same room. So I want to play the home theatre through the good speakers.

The home theatre has a decent Marantz receiver, NR1606, which has L/R preamp out RCA sockets. The audiophile system has a decent Parasound preamp, Halo P 6, with lots of unused inputs. Can I run the Marantz preamp out to the Parasound line in? In which case both volume controls would be active… any danger of damaging the Parasound input circuitry?

I guess the other alternative is to wire both the Marantz and power-amp directly to the speakers.  I use ordinary 12ga copper wire, so it'd be a bit thick and unwieldy. I guess I could splice the 12ga and use Y-shaped wires. Would 2 pairs of amplifier posts being in the circuit damage either the amps or the sound? Or, I could get/build a speaker-cable switch?

What I *really* need is an audiophile-grade receiver/preamp with just line outs…

Others must have faced this problem… searching didn't turn up anything that looks just like this.

Ag insider logo xs@2xtimbray

You can run the pre-out for the front channels of the Marantz into a line level input on your Parasound.  If the Parasound doesn't have a theatre pass through, you'll need to find a position on the volume knob of the Parasound that works with the level of the other channels on your home theatre receiver.  When you run home theatre, you'll have to set the volume of the Parasound at that volume position and use the Marantz to adjust the home theatre volume.

I basically do that myself except my LTA preamp has a HT mode that locks the volume level at a certain level.  I use the channel level adjustments on my surround receiver to get all of the levels to match.

The Halo P6 has dedicated inputs for a HT processor/receiver. Look on the back for "Home Theater Bypass Input"

The bypass mode disables the Halo’s volume control and keeps everything in place for the HT receiver/processor.  This is necessary to ensure the channel balance remains correct. 

The P7, a very nice preamp, had 7.1 channels of input for HT and would let you keep the preamp volume control.

Hey @erik_squires thanks a heap, I feel like I just got a Christmas present. I'd been pondering for days how to do this and as soon as I ask, there's the right answer! It's even got a connection for the sub!