Any experience with Y-interconnects?

Almarg, Thank you very much for the info,

Postscript- Signal Cable is building a set of custom "splitter" cables for me to address the issue. Will eliminate a couple of connections that would have been necessary with a standard Y-interconnect. Frank at Signal Cable came up with the idea after I asked him to make a pair of Y-interconnects. Any of you using a Y-interconnect may want to contact Frank. This solution eliminates any potential sonic degradation from an extra connection.
Al- thanks for the input. FYI, I use the MastersounD as my main amp, not the Rowland, so I use RCA terminations. The MastersounD does not have XLR connections.

Hi Ozzy,

No problem at all in your situation. My statement about the capacitance of the cable to the sub affecting the signal to the main power amp applies only to the situation where either a y-adapter is used off of a single output of the preamp, or the two cables are connected to two output jacks on the preamp that are connected together internally within the preamp.

The XP10, as you indicated, has separate buffers for the xlr and rca outputs, which means that there are separate driver stages for each set of outputs. That eliminates the possibility of interaction of the sub cable with the signal to the main power amp.

Also, I note that the XP10 has an output impedance of 200 ohms unbalanced, and 1000 ohms on each leg of the balanced output. While the 1000 ohms is somewhat high, that is still most likely low enough to avoid perceivable treble rolloff for a cable length of 10 feet. If the cable capacitance is EXTREMELY high, say 150 picofarads (pf) per foot, you might get an attenuation at 20kHz in the vicinity of 1db, which I think would be imperceptible to just about all of us. For more typical cable capacitances, there would be no effect whatsoever.

The 20 foot length to the sub benefits from the lower 200 ohm unbalanced output impedance, and upper treble rolloff doesn't matter anyway on the signal to the sub. So you are doubly ok there.

Bottom line: No problem!

Regards,
-- Al

Almarg,

My Pass Labs Preamp (XP-10) has both Balanced and unbalanced outputs. Each are said to be able to be used at the same time because the outputs are buffered.(whatever that means)
Anyway, the balanced goes to my Pass Labs X350.5 Amp and the unbalanced goes to 2 powered JL Audio subs.
The sub interconnects are maybe 20 feet each. The Balanced cable that goes to my Pass Labs Amp is 10 feet.

Thats is a lot of wire, will this present a problem as you stated above?

I have disconnected the 2 interconnects that were going to the subs and everything seemed to sound the same, but now you got me wondering...

Two points:

1)It looks like the Ayon has both rca and xlr outputs, with a switch to select which one is used (so apparently you cannot use both simultaneously). I assume you'll want to use the xlr outputs, since your Rowland amp and the sub both have balanced inputs. XLR y-adapter cables are readily available, including some inexpensive pro-oriented ones at B&H Photo Video.

2)If your cables are particularly long, they should be chosen to have low capacitance. The capacitances of BOTH the cable to the sub and the cable to the power amp will affect the signal going to the power amp. If the total of those capacitances is too high, a slight upper treble rolloff may be introduced into the signal going to the power amp, due to interaction of that total capacitance with the Ayon's output impedance (which is specified as 300 ohms, not extremely high but not negligible either). That will be true for balanced cabling as well as unbalanced cabling.

Regards,
-- Al

Thanks! Looks like the CD-5 is a go. Anyone want a pristine EAR 868 full function preamp? Look for the ad shortly.

I have used good quality Y adaptors I had made by Audio Quest and XLO when bi-amping and they work well.

Splitting the preamp output isn't a problem. Adapters like these are the simplest solution.

It'll work fine.