Preamplifier sound Quality impact in home theatre bypass

Listen with and without in your HT listening and decide for yourself with your equipment vs relying on someone else's personal result

+1 @facten I’d be more concerned about burning all those tubes for HT.

+1 @soix but to each his own 

You can just listen with and without 

I have been doing it for years, and haven’t had anything call attention to it. I watch a few concert videos in 5.1 and find the music to sound just as good as when I played the same discs on my old Ayer C5xe that played DVD. 

I consider HT a step or 2 below 2 channel and wouldn't worry about a pass thru on your preamp,  all that should be in the signal path is some wire and a selector switch.  Assuming you chose a preamp with good switches, it shouldn't affect HT.

A better solution, that I use, is to have an amp built with 2 inputs so HT pre-out goes directly to the amp.

Jerry

I have a Mc class D bypassing into Mc AB and definitely have not experienced any sound degradation at all.  Granted I have good cabling throughout my entire gear + on the sub.   

It depends on the tube pre and the path the signal is taking for HT Bypass. 

In many of the designs I've seen, the HT Bypass is the equivalent of putting an RCA female to female adapter between two RCA pairs. Wouldn't bother me unless you noticed a change running with and without. 

McIntosh Integrated Amps and Preamps have a really slick pass through.  I set my Dad's MA8950 with an Anthem MRX 540 and it is seamless integration 

The MRX's trigger out goes to Mac's control trigger input and when you turn the MRX on it puts the Mac in Pass-through.  It's just using the MA8950 amps,  with the MRX doing volume and powering the centers and rears. 

I have a Rogue preamp I use with HT bypass. The AVR plugs into specific HT bypass RCA ports, which are only activated with the Rogue OFF. Therefore no effect on tubes, and unless the HT relay switch is defective, no impact on sound. A simple pass through. 

I’m going to have to agree with carlsbad2 on this one. I have a Parasound pre amp with theater bi-pass and never looked at it the same way as my 2 channel audio system.  Only a bi-pass for convenience…Everyone’s ears hear what they hear 

I've never had an issue.  Usually it's a straight wire bypass.

Never really noticed a difference. Used to use it with moon, now use it with a Sudgen preamp. I would need to test it out, but the Sugden is on standby when HT bypass in in use. 

if there’s tubes involved it probably goes through the tube circuits on the preamp even when it’s in bypass.