ELK-800 - 10 Watt Audio Amplifier

The ELK-800 is simply a small, low powered amp. The SGAMP takes an input from an amp and allows you to break it into 6 zones of audio. That being said, I don't think it would work because the ELK-800 is so low powered. At 10 amps, it is designed to power a single speaker for brief annoucements. The instructions even say that if you are going to use it to drive music which would play for longer periods of time, you'll have to reduce the volume of the speakers to prevent the ELK-800 from overheating and shutting down. Keep in mind that is with a single speaker. There is no way it would work if you tried to break that into 6 zones. That would give you less than 2 watts per zone (and potentially less than 1 watt per speaker).

You'll need a larger amp to drive the SGAMP. That is why the SGAMP is rated for 150 watts continous power and 225 peak watts. You need a powerful amp to drive that many speakers.
 
Between your A/V receiver and my Leviton SGAMP? You lost me on this one.... why don't you explain what you want to accomplish and get some ideas.
 
Between your A/V receiver and my Leviton SGAMP? You lost me on this one.... why don't you explain what you want to accomplish and get some ideas.
I have an A/V receiver. On zone 1, I have my main home theater speakers. On zone 2, I have my SGAMP, now connected to three different rooms. It's just that I find the volume to be lower on zone 2 and I want to juice it up a little. I don't have pre-amp outputs on my A/V, so I think my options are limited. I thought adding the Elk module would help a little, but I guess it won't.

Does anybody have another idea?
 
What receiver? I'd be curious to look up the specs on it to see the power output of zone 2.
JVC RX-8000VBK (about 8 years old, if I remember correctly). Specs say: 120W per channel, min. RMS, driven into 8 ohms, 20 Hz to 20 kHz with no more than 0,02% total harmonic disruption.

By the way, this is not a powered zone 2 and I can't control its volume independantly from zone 1.
 
OK - that would make sense and you do need to put an amplifier between the Zone2 Preout and the SGAMP. But I think you'll want something a lot more powerful than a ELK-800.

You could even use just about any cheap receiver since you can hook volume controls to the SGAMP. But something with more than 10 watts, please... :)
 
OK - that would make sense and you do need to put an amplifier between the Zone2 Preout and the SGAMP. But I think you'll want something a lot more powerful than a ELK-800.

You could even use just about any cheap receiver since you can hook volume controls to the SGAMP. But something with more than 10 watts, please... :)

Another issue I'm having with this: My zone 2 is not a pre-out per se. The pre-outs I've seen on newer A/V receivers use RCA cables, which is not my case. My zone 2 uses speaker wires. That's why I think I can't even use any cheap receiver for this. I would not be able to feed it speaker wires as an input.
 
OK - I looked at the manual and it appears that your receiver has a A/B speaker switch - not really 2 zones. So you can have speakers A playing or speakers B playing or both sets at the same time. They would be listening to the same source, and the volume control will control both sets of speakers.
If you cannot play both A and B speakers at the same time, then check out this note from the manual.
IMPORTANT:
You can activate two pairs of the front speakers at the same time only
when the SPEAKER LOAD SELECTOR on the rear panel is set to
“HIGH†and when no signals are sent to the center and rear speakers.
Otherwise, activating one pair of the speakers deactivates the other.

Otherwise you should be able to connect your B speaker output directly to the SGAMP. Honestly, I'd be more inclined to simply dedicate the receiver to the SGAMP because you'll probably want the volume turned up all the way on the receiver and use the volume controls on the SGAMP to lower the volume in the individual rooms.
 
OK - I looked at the manual and it appears that your receiver has a A/B speaker switch - not really 2 zones. So you can have speakers A playing or speakers B playing or both sets at the same time. They would be listening to the same source, and the volume control will control both sets of speakers.
If you cannot play both A and B speakers at the same time, then check out this note from the manual.
IMPORTANT:
You can activate two pairs of the front speakers at the same time only
when the SPEAKER LOAD SELECTOR on the rear panel is set to
“HIGH†and when no signals are sent to the center and rear speakers.
Otherwise, activating one pair of the speakers deactivates the other.

Otherwise you should be able to connect your B speaker output directly to the SGAMP. Honestly, I'd be more inclined to simply dedicate the receiver to the SGAMP because you'll probably want the volume turned up all the way on the receiver and use the volume controls on the SGAMP to lower the volume in the individual rooms.
Yes. It is and A/B switch and not really a second zone. I can play A and B by themselves, or together. No problem there. But the volume seems lower on the B output. So what I'm looking for is something to amplify the sound between my B output and my SGAMP. So the speaker wires coming out of B on my current A/V receiver would plug into some kind of amp or another receiver, from which I'd then have another pair of speaker wires going into my SGAMP.
 
Not really a good idea to try and amplify a high level signal from an output of a receiver. Have you considered using a LPAD speaker volume control on the A output to balance the volume with the B output. That would be a more conventional approach. Make sure it is a impedance matching type to maintain the proper impedance on the receiver.

http://cgi.ebay.com/Speaker-Wall-Mount-Vol...alenotsupported
I fail to see how this would help because the volume on output B seems lower whether or not output A is active. In other words, if I'm playing music through output B and I suddenly turn on output A, I don't see a drop in volume.
 
I think what he was suggesting is that you turn up the volume of the receiver to a point that the B volume is loud enough. This would cause the A volume to generally be too loud, so you could use the volume control on the A speaker to lower it to an acceptable level.

I'd personally suggest that you scrap using the B speaker output and go buy a used receiver somewhere on the cheap. Use the 2nd receiver to power the SGAMP. Check out your local craigslist, yard sales or pawn shops and I bet you can find something really cheap.
 
I think what he was suggesting is that you turn up the volume of the receiver to a point that the B volume is loud enough. This would cause the A volume to generally be too loud, so you could use the volume control on the A speaker to lower it to an acceptable level.

I'd personally suggest that you scrap using the B speaker output and go buy a used receiver somewhere on the cheap. Use the 2nd receiver to power the SGAMP. Check out your local craigslist, yard sales or pawn shops and I bet you can find something really cheap.

I would tend to agree with sic0048 ... but what I suggested was sound advice providing the power output on the receiver is adequate to drive all the speakers your trying to hook up. It would let you 'balance' the volume level between the B zones and the A zone. You would be required to turn up the receiver to drive B louder and then turn down the volume from A with the LPAD.


Also a block diagram of what you are trying to do might help people understand.
 
I think what he was suggesting is that you turn up the volume of the receiver to a point that the B volume is loud enough. This would cause the A volume to generally be too loud, so you could use the volume control on the A speaker to lower it to an acceptable level.

I'd personally suggest that you scrap using the B speaker output and go buy a used receiver somewhere on the cheap. Use the 2nd receiver to power the SGAMP. Check out your local craigslist, yard sales or pawn shops and I bet you can find something really cheap.

This is precisely what happens if I run both A and B at the same time. A is too loud and B not loud enough. So I usually turn off A. A volume control would indeed help. I might have to shop for an amp with pre-outs then...

What about something like this? A bit expensive because it does more than audio, unfortunately.

Nah. Nevermind. I think the amp inputs are just pass-through. No amplification there.
 
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