when reading this, assume all speakers are connected to amps.

well, until i get my sub out board, i'm stuck w/ using the rear outs as my subwoofer, and my front outs as the frontspeakers... no rears needed. i felt that i needed rears for fill, so i was thinking.... can i split the front out so it goes to the front and back?

well, i know i can, but should i? will that reduce the voltage to half? am i going to have to put my gains higher to let the front speakers stay at the current volume? will there be a lowering of quality (in which quality is the #1 goal for my system).

hope not too confusing.

I am doing this right now since my wire harness got moshed. both my front and rear speakers are fed from my rear output.

The sound has less punch, but doesn't sound too much quieter. I have not adjusted the gain. I plan to fix this this coming weekend.

Edit: I've been FAQ'd with this one before. See diagram #4 on the How do I run a subwoofer if the player doesn't have a subwoofer output? topic.

yeah, i saw that too. it shows to group the sub and rear speakers together.... doesnt really make sense because you need the most power going to your subs.

But the amp supplies the power. The empeg just provides a signal.

right... but will the power be stronger if the signal is 4v, as compared to 2v (thats what i assume happens)?

Unless I'm totally wrong (which is possible), that's what the gain on your amp is for.

I am pretty sure it would still be 4V to both. A splitter should just split the signal, which would mean the two amps are in parallel to the empeg. Therefore they would both still get the full voltage of 4V, just less current. Since the current doesnt really matter as the amp is not really drawing current, there should not really be too much effect. As far as having both your fronts and rears on one output, you can still control how much power goes to each (fade), but now you have to do it with your amp's gain instead of with the empeg.

I am pretty sure it would still be 4V to both. A splitter should just split the signal, which would mean the two amps are in parallel to the empeg. Therefore they would both still get the full voltage of 4V, just less current.

In reality you'll get about 3.96 (bogus number taken out of thin air) instead of 4V.
The exact difference depends on the output impedance of the empeg and the input impedance of the amps.

In the case of one amp you have the (ideal) voltage source of 4V voltage dividing over the empeg output impedance and the input impedance of the one amp.

Adding a Y-splitter and a second amp will change this to a voltage division over the empeg output impedance and the parallell connection of the two amps input impedances. The equivalent impedance of the parallell connection of the two amps will be lower than the input impedance of the one amp, thus causing comparatively less of the voltage to fall over it.
Or looking at it another way; because the current draw increases due to the lower impedance load, the voltage drop over the empegs output impedance increases...

Just increase the gain slightly, if you detect a difference at all.

/Michael

yeah, i saw that too. it shows to group the sub and rear speakers together....

.... as one possible variation. You could do the subs independent if you wanted, such as in variation 3, just using Y's instead of pass-throughs.

The output impedance of the empeg is 100 ohms; the average amp input should be >10k - basically, you really shouldn't get any droop in voltage from splitting the output at all as the empeg can drive quite hard.

Hugo