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

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!

I'm guessing from the OPs description that it's not an issue as long as they are not both sending a signal that it's two amplifiers connected in parallel and not a bi-amp setup.

I have a home theater receiver and Pathos integrated connected to my speakers in parallel, but I have an intermediate toggle switch in the speakers cables so that only one amplifier can send a signal to the speakers at any given time.  The custom switch even has a resistor to provide protection during the switch since it was first used with an all tube amplifier that needed a continuous load.

Not the best practice, the unused amp becomes part of the circuit the working amp is driving. Power is feed back into that amp. Some amps don't like that.