if I use a new preamp for all 2 channel music, and send the stereo preamp to an AVR which is connected to a 5 channel amp will there be a loss in quality going through the AVR to the amplifier?
Looking at an RC-1590 to connect to RSX-1057 which connects to the RMB-1075
All Rotel components speakers are B&W 7 series 704s HTM7 center and 705s surrounds.
Seems stupid to ask and cruchfield online chat person said not at all just verifying. Thanks my first post ever here.
I think the Crutchfield rep is correct in saying that running the pre-pro through your AVR will not cause ab
audible loss of quality! However, the real question is will it result in an audible improvement, and the answer is no, you are just adding any additional noise from the Pre-pro to whatever noise your AVR adds to the signal. Good quality vintage electronics from the 70's had already gotten distortions well below audible limits, so any decent audio company such as Rotel will still be inaudible even if you compound the sources of distortion.
The AVR is equal in sound to their flagship 2 channel preamp? This seems odd? Not better DAC etc..... also HDMI connections will be added the AVR is simply Video switching hdmi 1.1
High quality DACs were in production in the 80's! We all know how much more processing power you can buy today for much less than what it cost in the 80's. Today's inexpensive DAC's as used in AVR's by decent companies (such as Rotel) do an excellent job. There are super-duper DAC's that incorporate some type of theoretical improvement(s) over a less expensive option, but when you start considering how audible the difference is, it is like arguing over which supercar is faster when you will only be driving it inside your subdivision with a 25 mph limit!
So using RCA splitters for a 2 channel system to share the same amplifier might be the best option.
That is a difficult question to answer, but I would generally say "don't do this"!
Difficult, because it depends on the unique design of your gear.
The reason is the signal from your 2 channel pre-pro will not only be going to the amp, but it will also be going to he AVR.
I did this (not exactly the same setup, but close enough) once and discovered that if I turned on the unused unit it seemed to work fine (I did not notice sound quality issues). However, if I left the unused unit off, the signal apparently went into the unpowered unit, got all garbled, and the signal fed to the amp was distorted. This was Marantz geear, and I suspect your Rotel pre-outs will also have some way of not allowing a signal going into it and getting jumbled up, but no guarantees!
If you want to improve your sound, you should be looking at changing speakers or adding room treatments! Speakers and room acoustics have far more effect on sound quality than the difference between a mid-level AVR and a top-level pre-pro (assuming all amps are properly able to drive your speakers without audible distortion/clipping)!
