Two amps into one pair of speakers


This is a newb question, but my friend has two integrated amps hooked up to his speakers, one McIntosh and a Prima Luna. One is connected with banana plugs and the other with spades. He said this will cause no problems as long as they are not both sending signal at the same time. Is this true. It just seems a little strange to me.

TaterMike

mfinch

Does his speakers have separate binding posts to send signal to different parts of the speaker? For instance, many speakers have four binding posts in the back. A positive and negative for the woofers, and a positive and negative for the midrange and tweeters. If this is the case, then your friend is bi-amping his speakers. Typically one would want to ensure proper level matching through independent volume controls, or at least one should be able to gain match one amp to the other.

if your friend is using two amplifiers to hook up to the same set of binding posts, he shouldn’t as it could surge the amps, his speakers, and potentially his circuit/house. 

That is pretty dangerous if someone accidently turns one amp on while the other is also on. It will happen one day.

I have a preamp that outputs to 2 amps which are connected to 2 systems, a 2-channel and a headphone amp. I also make sure only one amp is on at anytime, however, I will not have a blowup if I accidently have both turned on. That has happened a few times.

 

i had a mcintosh speaker that you could connect 2 amps to it! 1 amp powered the woofer and the other powered the mid and highs!