Using Pass-Through of Tube Preamp to Acheive HT

Hopefully I can word this correctly and not sound completely incompetent. I finally saved up and have my dream stereo tube setup (McIntosh MC275 and C2500) for vinyl delight. I am researching how I can utilize my FR & FL connected to that setup as the fronts for my HT setup (center channel and sub, no surrounds) using the pass-through feature of the C2500. I am using balanced interconnects with the tube gear. Fronts are Klipsch RF-5s. Center is Klipsch RC-35, sub is SVS 25-31PC. I have a Marantz NR1403 receiver with SW, FR & FL preouts (unbalanced) and regular center channel speaker connection. Can I use balanced in one part of the system and unbalanced in the other? I have looked into AV Processors such as the Marantz AV8801 or 7005 that would solve the bal/unbal issue, but those do not (as far as I can tell) have a speaker connection for a center channel. I would be very interested to know how others would go about accomplishing this project. Thanks for reading.

Yes, you can use balanced and unbalanced together. My system is fully balanced except for my DAC which is singled ended. So I use XLR's for every thing except my DAC and phono preamp.

To use the HT bypass you connect the front channel preamp out (low level outputs) of your AV receiver to a preamp input of you preamp which goes to the front channel speakers that are connected to the 2ch preamp. The other channels-center and rears are driven by the AVR. Same goes for the sub out.

I use to use this configuration with my Adcom AVR and AVA 2ch preamp. Now I have a separate set of speakers for home theater.

Thank you. I think the Marantz I have will work for what I need right now. When it comes time to upgrade the receiver/processor, I'll revisit this again.

I just realized that my Oppo BDP-105 Blu-Ray player has balanced outputs that I can send to the preamp bal inputs. It even has an HDMI Input that I can use for the DirecTV/Cable. I would be sacrificing the center and the sub for now, but this will be a very clean setup.

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Originally Posted by Gimes

Thank you. I think the Marantz I have will work for what I need right now. When it comes time to upgrade the receiver/processor, I'll revisit this again.

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That Marantz will work. It has front channel preamp out that you can send to the Mac preamp and utilize the HT bypass.

Another option is to use a speaker selector switch for you front channels. You can hook it up in reverse. I set of speakers to 2 amps.

DPS-1 | Switching Systems | Niles Audio

If your amp is tube, why waste tube life on HT? Also, although your pass through set up might work technically, I wouldn't recommend it. I tried HT pass through with Conrad Johnson, I think my center and rears were using Arcam amp at the time, the difference in sound characters between the two amps drove me crazy. What I do now is basically have two systems that share the front L/R but I physically switch the speaker cables at the back of the speaker to what ever system I want to use. You could do this just use the receiver for all your surround duty then switch bac to the Mac for stereo. This isn't a big deal using cables with banana plugs, a quick switch.

You bring up some good points, Peabody. I had previously thought about using two sets of speaker cables. That might be the way to go. I watch a good bit of TV, and it would be a waste to be using tube life that whole time. Thats not what I bought the Mac stuff for, after all.

This was part of the reason I am glad so far that I went with a solid state preamp for my setup so I could do pass through without worrying about tube life wasted. Nothing against tubes as I have thought since then about them as a preamp solution but I still would not like running HT through a tube pre.

My AVA preamp has tubes but the HT bypass does not require the AVA preamp to be on. You flip a switch and it totally by passes all the electronics and passes the signal through. I would suspect that many work that way.

In any event, that Niles switcher is the way to go if you want 2 amps to drive 1 set of speakers.

If the power amp is tube you have to consider that as well.

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Originally Posted by Mr Peabody

If the power amp is tube you have to consider that as well.

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Bingo. Even if I'm not using the tubes of the preamp with the bypass, the power amp will be ON and tubes being used. For this reason, I'm going with two sets of cables.