2. home-theater
  3. 156396-45461

Receiver working as pre-amp, TURNS OFF, whenever Second Zone/Speaker B goes loud

In my living room, I have a 9.1 Pioneer Elite Receiver (at the time, their top of the line, largest PSU version), as my Home Theatre, and my pre-amp for my 2-ch audio with a Classe’ amp.

It power 5.1 in one room, and 2-ch in another room. What’s happening is that whenever I am listening to music, or watching video, IF I have the second room/zone ON, and if I get the volume high to -20dB or higher, on LOUDER passage, the Amp shuts down! Doing the same with 2-ch (through the amp), or 5.1 (2 from Classe’ the other 3 from receiver), it has NO ISSUES! Could go 0dB or +5dB, over 100dB volume level.

Question is, what’s the main cause? First thought is that Amp does NOT have enough power to feed all channels, despite having supposedly 4 more channels to drive (as front channels have their own amp), or that the LONG WIRING to the other room speakers are causing some higher load, or other issue? Could it be speaker terminations? or what else could be causing this?

Thanks


alexb76

Showing 1 response by mapman

mapman's avatar
mapman
22,642 posts
 
Yes running two pair of speakers from most 2 channel amps concurrently puts the two in the circuit in parallel which lowers the impedance and that will make the amp tap out sooner. You might consider trying an external speaker switch. Good ones have built in circuitry to adjust impedance when multiple speakers are running concurrently.

I have 4 pairs of speakers in 4 different rooms running off my 2-channel system and use a Niles speaker switch for this purpose. I’ve never had an issue but then I never would even attempt to go full volume ever off a home amp with multiple speaker pairs attached just as a safety precaution.
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