AmpliPi shares a pair of the HiFi's speakers...?

[rickballard]

Is anyone using their AmpliPi to drive a pair of speakers that are already connected to their living room HiFi, AVR or TV?

[rickballard]

A living room AVR/HiFi and an AmpliPi zone output, can both drive the same pair of speakers, JUST NOT CONCURRENTLY OR DIRECTLY. To avoid blowing up the AVR or AmpliPi, an automatic Speaker Selector switch should be used.

Some Speaker Selector switches use audio-sensing to determine whether the AVR or AmpliPi owns the connection to the shared speaker-pair, while preventing transients, shorts, flip-flopping, cross-talk, etc. Sensitivity and Delay are adjustable, but should not really matter as this is a binary gate.

Manual or IR-remote-controlled speaker selectors are cheaper, but so last century. Automatic selectors cost about $100, and include:

• MCM 50-8395 (Speaker Level AutoSelector)
• MCM 50-8396 (Line Level AutoSelector)
• Russound AB-3.2 (Speaker Level AutoSelector)

Setup:

The AVR/HiFi amp is default, amp-A, and the AmpliPi is the interruptor, amp-B. Thus, the AmpliPi takes over the connection to the shared speaker-pair, only if the AmpiPi is outputting sound on the relevant zone. If you are listening to the AVR/HiFi and someone rudely unmutes this AmpliPi zone, you get HiFi sounds from all surround speakers, except the shared speaker-pair, which gets AmpliPi sounds.

If a Line Level AutoSelector is used: the Hifi pre-outs and AmpliPi pre-outs, go to the AutoSelector's A and B inputs; while the AutoSelector's output goes to the amp that drives the shared speaker-pair.

If a Speaker Level AutoSelector is used: the AutoSelector needs six pairs of speaker cables: two pairs from the HiFi, two pairs from the AmpliPi, and two pairs from the shared speaker-pair. Frankly, I would rather use a Line Level AutoSelector, as any introduced artifacts can then be filtered out by the subsequent amp(s), before signals hit speakers.

My HiFi has a piggyback stereo-amp, because 7.2.4 surround sound requires more speakers than the HiFi can drive using its own internal-AMPs. Thus, the piggy-back amp is used to drive my ceiling surround-back speakers, and this amp also has the ability to turn on when an input is detected. So, by using the above Line-Level AutoSelector, my living room surround back speakers will automatically serve double-duty, both as their original purpose OR as a pair of AmpliPi zone speakers.