I seek the advice of the crowd as I am a bit confused on this whole preamp topic...
I have a Denon AVR2800 receiver which drives my home theatre set up. Works great. Love the sound, and is simple to use. However, life has gotten a bit more complicated. I recently put a pool in my back yard and have gotten 3 pairs of outdoor speakers for the pool area. 3 pairs for three distinct areas around the pool.
I envisioned that I would just use the B speaker option on my receiver to do this, but in looking at the wiring diagram and talking to a local dealer, it is clear that I cannot due to the likely distortion that I will encounter.
The local dealer is suggesting that I put a 4 channel pre-amp in place so that I can feed a signal to each set of speakers to avoid the distortion and have good volume control.
Does this make sense? If so, where to I look. Local dealer does not have any models less than $3,000, and I am a bit tapped out after spending money on the pool!
Any advice on what to do would be really great. Thanks for your patience with my amateur question.
A pre amplifier is not the solution. Possibly you misunderstood what the dealer suggested since the pre amp is unaffected by speaker load. Thre are more questions to be answered before a definitive solution can be provided but, as of now, I would suggest you look at an autoformer based impedance matching speaker switch box. If you require individual volume controls for each area, these can be purchased also as individual units or combined with the speaker switches. I would suggest you put "PARA dealers" in a search engine to find a qualified dealer in your area. These are the sorts of installations PARA dealers do everday and they should be able to assist you and provide the proper equipment.
Thanks, Jan. I went back to the dealer today and I had it wrong. He is suggesting that I use the amplifier's pre-out to a multi-channel amp to drive each speaker. So now I understand why I was so confused on the need for a pre-amp.
Thanks for your advice about the PARA dealers. I will look into that solution as well!