Multiple preamps, single amp?

Greetings. Slowly moving my listening setup from “consumer” to “something more”. (hoping you’ll release the new AN-series speakers soon).

As the days go on, I appreciate listening to 2ch material much more often than 5ch material, and want to invest in a “better” Preamp. (Stellar or BHK, etc). The constraint is that I STILL would like to be able to listen to 5ch material from time to time.

If I had an amplifier that had both Balanced and Un-Balanced inputs, and ONLY powered on one of the two preamps at a time… could I use a single amp/speaker combo without introducing issues? Or do I need to fully federate each of the setups, due to ground multipath issues and such?

Goal: “Enjoy high end 2ch, while somehow being able to do multi-ch program material with a single set of speakers.”

Thanks in advance,
-Rich

Both the PS Audio preamps have what is called Home Theater Bypass. This feature solves your conundrum without the dangerous practice of connecting two preamps to one set of amplifier inputs.

Connecting two preamps to one amp can cause several issues up to and including damaging one of the components.

Some power amps have a switch on the back of the unit to switch between balance and RCA. I was using both a phono preamp with it’s own volume on the RCA and a line stage preamp on the balance with absolutely no problem. When you switch on one, it just disconnects the other input on the power amp. I can have both preamps on at the same time and it doesn’t matter. I sometimes compare my lp’s with my cd’s by leaving everything on and just switching from the back of the power amp.

Go the Home Theater bypass route. My W4S preamp and Anthem MRX AVR work together this way. Multi channel AMP and AVR are used in both setups.

Very good hlg3, this was basically the solution I did not realize had already been solved! waymanchen11, thanks for the input. I was/am aware of those selector switches, but really do not want to go crawling around back of my stack every time I want to “change” the config. The “HT Passthru” seems like the obvious solution. (even by name). :slight_smile: