I intend to acquire a superb pair of active speakers to listen to music in my living room. I still hesitate on the model, but that is not my question. These speakers will be connected in ethernet for music. All the models I look at also have analog inputs …
I have always had a stereo system. On some films I suffer. The vocals are too far behind the soundtrack or special effects. I’ve had it up to here.
Suddenly, after my evening calvados, I had an idea of genius (or not …): why not put a home cinema preamp in order to add this famous central voice, which I miss so much, and connect my preamp on my active speakers for a 3.0 system then maybe 3.1 and even 5.1 or more later ???
I am still taken with doubts:
can this assembly hold up?
and above all, are there any problems that I do not see in view of my very poor knowledge of home cinema?
an active center speaker? Or not ?
…
I specify. I target the “excellence” on the active hi-fi system and something just “correct” on the home cinema side is enough for me.
If I understand your intent here then I think I have some input for you.
My entertainment system was originally geared for movies and soundtracks. I have one AV receiver with 13 channels for various passive speaker setups. Mine is configured in a 7.2.4 arrangement with 7 surround speakers (Front Left/Right, Center, surround left/right, surround rear left/right), 2 subs (front left corner, rear right corner), and 4 height speakers (2 high front and 2 high rears). In the past I have boosted the center channel to hear the dialog better but don’t really need to do that any more.
That same system works very well for stereo and multi-channel music with roon, again with passive speakers with the AV receiver. Using the NUC/Rock to receiver via HDMI the Stereo and Multi-channel files sound good and I can use the receivers Dolby Surround processor to simulate multi-channel from stereo input if desired.
I recently added a multi-channel streaming DAC so I could play DSD files and that DAC uses the 7.1 analog inputs on the receiver and the same passive speaker arrangement.
It works very well for music and movie soundtracks.
What I was thinking was having 2 systems using some common speakers:
system 1: ducth and ducth 8c speakers, receiving roon flow through ethernet direclty and then processing music internally.
system 2: a homecinema preamp, using tv as a source, connected to a central speaker (active or with a dedicated amp) and connected to ducth and ducth 8c through analog input for front left and right speakers (+ other speakers maybe later).
I am not sure if that would work or if it just make sense.
I may be wrong in this because I might have misunderstood your requirements and it is quite some time since I had a multichannel AV amp; but I’m pretty sure most have a stereo pre-out so you can output the left and right channels to a dedicated stereo amplifier.
The AV drives all the rest of the speakers directly, letting you have a multichannel system and a stereo only system without the weakness of an AV amp for purely stereo listening.