RCA signal amplifier

Any thought on using a signal amplifier over having an interconnect made to run 4 mono block amps and 2 stereo amps from one rca out. My concern is puting a $42.00 part in the mix of a really good system and potenialy very good cables( contemplating buying) that i don't have yet.

Does your pre not have multiple outputs? Sunfire TG-3 or 4?

You have two issues when driving multiple devices. One is loading. The second is sharing grounds.

Loading. In voltage transfer, the rule of thumb to avoid excessive loading and rolling off HF response is a 10:1 ratio. So if the output impedance is 200 ohms, then your max load you want to drive is 2000 ohms. Most devices you can find input impedance listed for, output impedance is sometimes hard to find out. If you are driving tube amps, then you're in luck as they are a very high load and that would help a lot.

Grounding. Ground should not be considered zero. If only it was! Currents flow through the ground side of circuits equal to the driven side. So all the slight impedances of connections and distances back to the common ground point mean there starts to be voltage above absolute zero. With the unfortunate design of unbalanced circuits and interconnects, all of sudden when we make connections we start effecting current flow which now has paths back through other components. Splitters do nothing to imped this and you are sharing current loops in undesirable ways.

A distribution amp helps in this problem giving an op-amp (and level control) to each output. Transformers break grounds and eliminate the ground sharing. But good ones are expensive.

You may get away with several splits as long as the loading doesn't become excessive. Don't do it if the combined load exceeds the 10:1 rule. Listen for high freq roll off and noise problems. You can try it with a batch of the one to two splitters but if it works ok, then replace them with better to avoid all those connections. Certainly make sure all are fed from the same power source! Do not have some getting their power from a different circuit.

Hope that helps some Gene!

Mark

Yes that did help. Thank you very much Mark.