rickey taylor

hooking up separate amp

How do you hook up a separate amp to a 6.1 channel a/v receiver.Do you just run the speaker cables from receiver to the amp then to the speakers. Or do you run the amp to the receiver then to the speakers?And do the 6 channel amps cost much THANKS

Bill Lucas

You would use the preouts from the receiver and connect to the inputs on the amplifier using regular RCA connections. If you connect with speaker wire you WILL blow something up. Never, ever use speaker wire to connect to anything but speakers. Speaker wire is not an interconnect. 5 and 7 channel amplifiers start around $1000 and go up from there.

RobWil

Not sure if you meant connecting amp to receiver w/ speaker wires or not.
Like Bill said though, if you want to run a separate amp for your front L/R channels for instance you would connect the pre-outs for the front L/R channels on the receiver to the line-in inputs on the amp using audio interconnects of some sort, and then just run the speaker wires from the amp to speakers. There would be no speaker wires attached at the receiver for the front L/R speakers, if that's what you meant.

rickey taylor

SORRY i don't know anything about this separate amp thing. MY receiver is a sony str de985 it has jacks for a 2nd room is that where i would hook up a 2nd amp. THANKS

RobWil

From what I can tell, your unit does not support adding amp for front L/R channels. If it did, on the back of the receiver you would have a set of RCA jacks labeled front L and R. I think you only have jacks for subwoofer and for rear 6th channel. But I can't say 100%...every spec sheet I can find on this seems to skirt around the issue, so that tells me , no .....it doesn't.

rickey taylor

ROB THANKS FOR TRYING. IT DOES HAVE A R/L OUT. BUT WOULDN'T THAT ONLY GIVE 2CHANNELS HOW DO YOU GET ALL 6 CHANNELS AMPLIFIED

david stark

I've just had a look at the sony site and unfortunately I can't see any pics of the back of that sony which would help immensely.

From looking at the technical specs it looks like you only have pre-outs for a sub and surround back. If this is the case I think you could well be out of luck.

If it does support having external amps then on the back of the amp you would have 2 complete sets of outputs, 1 at speaker level (all the red and black connections you probably have your speakers connected to at the moment) and another set of RCA jacks (same as for the sub out you should have).

RobWil

Rickey,
The 'R/L outs' would have to be under the set of jacks labeled "pre-out". I'm not sure your knowledge level so I'll mention that you're liable to have lots of jacks labeled 'R/L out' but the ones you're lookng for should be labeled "pre-out".
Some receivers do not have a full set of pre-outs for every channel and some don't have any at all. Find the section of jacks labeled "pre-out" and if you have pre-outs for all six channels you should find something like this: (The "O"'s are the jacks)

PRE-OUT
R L
FRONT O O
SUB O O CENTER
SURR O O

RobWil

Crap! My spacing gets messed up when I save and I don't know how to do it any other way

RobWil

PRE-OUT
R L
O O FRONT
O O SUB/CENTER
O O SURR

That's a little better

RobWil

That's what I suspect also from looking at the specs. If you had pre-outs for all channels I'm sure they wouldn't hesitate to point it out. Looks like they're being a little sneaky on purpose.