[KyleT]

Basically I have a Rotel 1090 upstairs in a 'server closet' in my house that gets a feed from a music server and connects to a speaker power distribution block from there going all over my house to 8 different pairs of speakers.

In some rooms I'd like to have those speakers able to play from the whole-house system or play local audio as well, which would obviously have to be sent by a local receiver. So my question is, are there any receivers out there that have a passive powered input that would accept a powered speaker cable and give me the option to switch to that input and supply power to the same speakers without the receiver's amp sitting in between?

I'm guessing this probably doesn't exist, but even if it doesn't maybe you guys could give me a rec on a 'switch box' of sorts that would allow me to switch between the whole house amp and the receiver as the powered input to my speakers.

I bought some 'auto switching' boxes on ebay that gave priority to one input if it sensed power but those things were junk... constantly auto switching to the other input when I fed the primary input too much power.

Any ideas there? Something cheap and reliable would be great. Auto switching would be nice but only if it's not going to be junk like the last ones I had (sorry, I forget the brand).

[chuckg]

You can convert a speaker-level signal to a line-level signal using two cheap resistors from the Shack.

Here's one circuit: Speaker signal to line level

Or buy one: Speaker Level to Line Level Audio Converters - HomeTech Solutions

One caveat if you build the circuit listed above- you really don't want to connect the "speaker ground" directly to the input of your local receiver. The speaker ground is not grounded, and the input is. This will cause a real problem for your whole-house receiver. Use an isolation transformer between the little circuit above and the whole-house receiver (on the speaker out)

I don't know if the expensive box listed second there is isolated....so buyer beware!

[JohnRice]

I think there may be speaker switching boxes which allow you to choose between two different speaker level sources, and send the chosen signal to the speakers. Same result, slightly different method. Of course, such a thing would be very easy to make yourself. Some sort of electrical switch which would send the chosen input to the speakers and send the other to a suitable resistor.