As far as I know a simple manual A/B speaker selector box should be a very simple device mechanically/electrically speaking... a pair of conductive input contacts that physically slide from one pair of outputting contacts to another pair depending on which way you have the switch.
And yet every single one I've come across so far has a power rating between 100 watts per channel and 250 watts per channel... some even have minimum resistance ratings of 4ohms???
Maybe these things don't work like I thought they worked... maybe they're more complicated?
Here's the thing. I've got the main L&R channel of my Emotiva 5 channel amp that I'd like to send to an A/B speaker selector box. If I set it on 'A' then the L&R channel play as part of my home theater. If select B then the power is diverted to a speaker cable power distribution block and then distributed to several pairs of speakers I have all over the house.
The problem with this is that
-100 watts is nowhere near enough to play several pairs of speakers as loud as I want to during a party.
-250 watts may be close to enough for most circumstances, but my XPA 5 is rated at 450 watts RMS per channel at 4 ohms when only 2 channels are being driven, so I'd be really limiting my potential/headroom. Even so, the limit still concerns me, and the only one I've found that's 250 watts is also pretty expensive ($150-200) and has 4 pairs of outputs when I only need 2.
-The very fact that these things have limits in the first place has me wondering how they might be limiting or otherwise affecting the quality of sound getting to my speakers down the line.
I don't play the whole house system that often so if I have to I'll just manually swap the speaker wires when I need to swap off and then eventually buy a dedicated 2 channel amp... but for the sake of convenience and saving money I figured this would be a cheap and easy solution.
Anyone have any suggestions here?
And yet every single one I've come across so far has a power rating between 100 watts per channel and 250 watts per channel... some even have minimum resistance ratings of 4ohms???
Maybe these things don't work like I thought they worked... maybe they're more complicated?
Here's the thing. I've got the main L&R channel of my Emotiva 5 channel amp that I'd like to send to an A/B speaker selector box. If I set it on 'A' then the L&R channel play as part of my home theater. If select B then the power is diverted to a speaker cable power distribution block and then distributed to several pairs of speakers I have all over the house.
The problem with this is that
-100 watts is nowhere near enough to play several pairs of speakers as loud as I want to during a party.
-250 watts may be close to enough for most circumstances, but my XPA 5 is rated at 450 watts RMS per channel at 4 ohms when only 2 channels are being driven, so I'd be really limiting my potential/headroom. Even so, the limit still concerns me, and the only one I've found that's 250 watts is also pretty expensive ($150-200) and has 4 pairs of outputs when I only need 2.
-The very fact that these things have limits in the first place has me wondering how they might be limiting or otherwise affecting the quality of sound getting to my speakers down the line.
I don't play the whole house system that often so if I have to I'll just manually swap the speaker wires when I need to swap off and then eventually buy a dedicated 2 channel amp... but for the sake of convenience and saving money I figured this would be a cheap and easy solution.
Anyone have any suggestions here?
