Can I use separate amps for different sources but same speakers?

[analoguekid]

Hi everyone

In the Summer I purchased a nice vintage system of a Cambridge A&R A60 amp and a Rotel RP-3000. I also bought a Raumfeld Connector so that I could stream music from my home server plus Tidal/Spotify and have a system with feet in both the past and the now. I recently read about what great value the Monitor Audio A100 amp was and managed to get one even cheaper for £100. It's proving to be really great with the streaming part of my system. Obviously it has no phono amp built in so I'm wondering is it still possible to use the A60 to power the record player if I buy another set of speaker cables? That is can I use the different amps for different sources without swapping over cables everytime or blowing the speakers? In other words can I bi-amp separate sources whilst connected to the same speakers?

Cheers

 

[matt49]

Hello and welcome to the forum!

In order not to blow stuff up, you'd have to disconnect one amp from the speakers while using the other one. There are switch boxes that'll do this for you. (Here's a very expensive well made German one.) Or you could make your own switch box from parts from Maplins, if you know what you're doing and are prepared to live with the consequences should things go wrong.

Personally, I wouldn't bother. I'd live with one amp.

 

[analoguekid]

Thought so. Thanks for replying Matt.

 

[splasher]

Depending on which variant of the A60 you have you might be able to use the A100 as a streamer only and connect the pre outs to the aux channel of the A60. Probably more sensibly, buy a £50 phono stage and connect it to the analogue in of the A100 and run both sources through that.

 

[tino]

You can use one of these... http://www.homehifi.co.uk/S/selector.htm