2. amps-preamps
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Four Speakers one Amp - Help with this dilemna

I Bought a counterpoint 220 Amp and a counterpoint 3.1 pre-amp many many years ago... I have been auditioning speakers for awhile now and really love the musicality of the Sonus Faber Cremonas - both the floor standing and the auditors. I am considering all four. I have had some problems with the counterpoint, and am possible looking to replace this also. I very much have a budget and am trying to be somewhat of a good consumer. Is there a way I can use one preamp with two amps and control each pair seperately? I am thinking in many directions. Perhaps I will want to incorporate video at some point. Right now I want the floor standers in the living room and the auditors in the dining room. I have thought about the krell integrated. I know I can plug in a processor later for surround sound, and now I could use a pre-amp/power amp combination (perhaps my counterpoint stuff) attached to the krell to have seperate volume controls for both sets if I choose to play both sets at the same time. Could I do this with one pre-amp and two amps? Also my distance from the stereo cabinet to the speakers is going to be probitive. One of my speakers will be at least 40 ft away. How is this going to affect the sound. Seems like it would have problems being in phase and coherent after such a long stretch.. Anyway comments? Suggestions? Thank-you
audiotumbler
s7horton
1,077 posts
 
I'm not sure I can answer all your questions, but I'll cover some of them. You can use one pre amp with two amplifiers, but you have to have the right pre amp. It must have two sets of pre outputs. One for each amplifier. Then, if you want to control each amplifier separately, you'll have to find amplifiers with built in gain controls. This will offer a volume change at two places. One at the pre amp, and one more at the amplifier. A good example of amplifiers that can do this is the older parasound line. Every one of their amplifiers from a couple years a go has one gain per channel. (Usually 2 per amplifier). That would be the complicated way to go.

Any easier way to go might be to find an integrated with a set of pre out puts. And run the amplifier off the pre amp. You'll want to make sure the power of each amplifier is somewhat similar, otherwise you could have very different volume levels from each set of speakers.
audiotumbler OP
10 posts
 
I assume if I ran a pre-amp out of the integrated such as with the new Krell integrated amp; My preamp would then control my second set of speakers. Integrated controlling the volume of one, and the pre-amp controlling the volume of the other. I assume with this set up I could control each individually. The other alternative I thought of was buying four auditors and then adding one sub. I am going to go back and compare the auditors with the floor standing cremonas and see the difference. Surely I could run all four auditors off of one AMP. With this scenario I could possible buy a used Krell and add a tubed pre-amp to ease things up a bit... Any comments?

Thanks for your response. I still have an old Crown that had volume controls on both sides. You do not see that arrangement much anymore. :) If I was looking for that arrangement I'm afraid I would really be limiting myself..
s7horton
1,077 posts
 
I'm not real sure if the integrateds out now have a variable output or not. It would make sense to me that it would be controlable with the volume pot of the integrated. I was thinking of using the integrated as the pre amp. Then use the integrated as the first power amp and add a second power amp. Another way to go would be split the source signal and run that to two inegrateds. That way, you'll have the same sound all around. That and you'll be able to control each speaker separately. That's the route I would most likely go if I were in your position.
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