Help Please. Setting up a great set of speakers with two amps, one for stereo, one for 5.1, how to do it?

[admin_exported]

Hello All and help!!

I have for years used a Sony 5.1 surround sound amp to run my home cinema and CD stereo music, to a pair of Eltax floorstanders, so I stwich from DVD, to CD and back again. The 5.1 is great, but the stereo has not been wonderful. I have now bought myself another full stereo system (Camabridge Audio AMP(2 channel only), CD and some fantastic Wharfedale floorstanders(biwired). The sound is great for the stereo, very happy ... but .... I want to use these floorstanders as my front speakers for the surround sound. How should I wire them up and is it safe to do this?

The Cambridge amp is biwired to the speakers, at the moment the Sony 5.1 is single wired to my old Eltax floorstanders, therefore I have two sets of speakers side by side, it does not look good! Can I simple run a set of speaker cables from my Sony 5.1 amp to the terminals on the Wharfedales, so that essentially, the speakers are connected to two different amps. I guess I'll have to make sure that these amps are not both on and feeding at the same time? Is this dangerous to the speakers? Or should I disconnect the cables into the speakers from one amp, when I want to listern to the other?

Just to add to the complication, the Wharfedales are biwired to the Stereo amp (Cambridge), so if I was connecting the 5.1 (Sony) amp, would I have to biwire this amp too?

Sorry, long question, but I'm a bit scared to have ago in case I blow something! Thanks in advance. Oz

 

[John Duncan]

The crux of the question is whether your Sony has pre-outs. Which model is it? And which Cambridge do you have?

 

[Sorreltiger]

Whatever you do, don't connect the two amps by speaker cables - you will blow at least one of them. As JD has said, you can connect a stereo amp to an AV amp, so that it takes responsibility for the front two channels when you listen in 5.1. There are previous threads on here describing how to set this up. As JD says, the AV amp must have pre-outs in order to send the signal for those front channels to the stereo amp.

 

[Anonymous]

Hi John, thanks for the quick reply. Yes, the Sony has Pre outs, it is a SONY STR DB940 and the Stereo AMP is a Canbridge Azur 640A. From other replies it seems that this has been covered before (I'm not surprised really!) Could you instruct me what to do next please, or send me the link? Many thanks.

 

[Sorreltiger]

Best bet is to search the forums for "pre-outs". You'll find everything you need

 

[John Duncan]

Most recent discussions is here, the first post of which is quite a succinct description of what you need to do.