Help with Tri amp hookup

[E-Stat]

and now I am struggling to figure out what to do.

I see two possibilities:

1. You have tri-amped speakers using an active crossover to drive three separate drivers in your pair of speakers. Preamp drives crossover which has separate outputs for bass amp, midrange amp and treble amp.

2. You have three separate amplifiers for a multichannel system. Your AV preamp/receiver has separate outputs for left, right, center, rear left, rear right (also back left and back right if 7.1). If a receiver, there may be jumpers to the internal amplifiers in place.

rw

[Markep]

Linn AV 5140 speakers have an optional card ,which I have, that makes the speakers "Aktiv". The cards in the speakers are matched with corresponding cards in each of the three amps, and thus one amp each matches up with the tweeters, mids and woofers. The cards bypass the speakers normal crossovers. Unfortunately, I left behind the prior pre-amp/receiver, as part of my house sale, so I have now ended up with a system I don't know how to get to work again.

Hopefully someboody can point me in the right direction.

[E-Stat]

The cards in the speakers are matched with corresponding cards in each of the three amps, and thus one amp each matches up with the tweeters, mids and woofers.

Ok, so that is the first scenario. Your active crossover is the series of cards. Each amp will need output from the preamp and the speaker leads from each amp will go into the appropriate set of terminals in the back of the speaker. As dingus suggested, you can use RCA splitters to provide separate feeds for each amp. If you're unsure as to which amp drives which driver, you can always hook them up one at a time to get the right frequency range match.

Good luck!

rw

[Markep]

Thanks E stat. The Amps are marked, so I do know which one goes with each set of drivers. With respect to the splitters, I will need 2 of them, splitting the split signal again and leaving one side of the second splitter open. Does it matter which of the amps gets the "first split" , so to speak, and which gets the last ?

[E-Stat]

Does it matter which of the amps gets the "first split" , so to speak, and which gets the last ?

No, but there is a relevant consideration when using this approach. The preamp's output sees the combined input impedance of the three amplifiers which lowers the value. You need to be careful about choosing a preamp which can handle such a load.

rw

[Markep]

Hmm. The preamp that I did have driving the 3 Linn amps was a Rotel surround sound preamp. I left the Rotel with the house to service the surround, and I have a 15 year old Luxman pre amp that I am thinking about using with the Linns, but I don't want to hook it up and find out the hard way if it cant handle the load. How can I tell if the pre amp can handle the load ? If I buy a new pre amp, is there any particular spec I could look for to tell what it can handle ?

[E-Stat]

How can I tell if the pre amp can handle the load ? If I buy a new pre amp, is there any particular spec I could look for to tell what it can handle ?

Ideally, you want a very low output impedance to drive a low impedance amplifier load (say 20k ohms). It's not something that would damage the older unit - the sound would lose some dynamics and roll off the top a bit.

rw