Headphone Amp & Speaker Amp.

[lagavulin]

Okay my primary source is a Sony CDP and I use an Onkyo to drive my speakers. But I also want to use my Sony CDP to connect to my headphone amp.

Is there an adapter I can use to connect the CDP to both the Headphone amp and my Onkyo amp? If there is such an animal would it degrade the sound much?

 

[Dusty Chalk]

It depends which amp you get. Most of them have a "pass-through" which you can then connect to the input of your Onkyo.

 

[Hirsch]

As an alternative approach, there may be a handy passthrough built into your Onkyo. It's the tape output, if you have one. Simply hook up your headphone amp there and set your source to CD. Turn off the headphone amp when using speakers, or mute the speakers for headphone listening.

 

[meithkiller]

Since you didn't list exactly what equipment you are using, I'll list several options. It would be helpful to know if your Onkyo is an amp, pre-amp, or receiver.

1. As Hirsch mentioned, you can use the tape output if you have one and it is free.

2. Get some y-cables or small adapter plugs that have a single RCA male and dual RCA females on them. There are some high quality y-cables and adapter plugs available that shouldn't affect the sound much, if any.

3. For awhile I used the analog outputs on my Marantz CD player to go to my Yamaha receiver and speakers, and then used the digital output to go to a small Audio Alchemy DAC-in-the-box D/A convertor I had laying around and from the DAC to my Creek headphone amp.

4. If you are a DIYer with some skill and knowledge you could could probably add another set of RCA outs to your CD player.

-Keith

 

[lagavulin]

I apologize for not listing my sources. Here they are:

Onkyo TX-SV545 receiver
Sony CDP-C545
Corda HeadAmp-1

thanks for all the tips.