If a stack of 3 units is acceptable, that's a substantial improvement over a stack of 2. It makes a 5 or 6 channel setup a double-stack instead of a triple-stack. It also helps anybody who wants to use 3 M-Blocks for the front soundstage but rely on lesser amps for the surround channels.

According to the manual: "Both in and out trigger jacks are provided so that the control signal may be cascaded". From that, I would think you could daisy-chain quite a few of these together for external triggering- right?

Well, I doubt they're amplifying the trigger signal; I would expect it to get weaker as you pass each link in the daisy chain. If a 950 has enough juice to trigger six of them, then that's good.

Three in a stack is a big difference, definitely. With a rack on each side of the TV, as many people have, you can put three on each bottom shelf and have a nice symmetrical look.

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Matthew J. Hill
matt@idsi.net

Check out page 4 and the description of the trigger output jack:



Apparently an endless daisy-chain is not advisable, but there are alternatives.

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gonk -- Saloon Links | Pre/Pro Comparison Chart | 950 Review

Would this work? It's what I've been thinking of doing with my 950 and Parasound monobloc amps.

The amps for the front left and right speakers will be connected to the trigger on the 950 (trigger goes to one amp, then that amp's trigger out is connected to the trigger in on the second amp). To control the other three amps, I planned to get an X10 appliance module and plug a 12vdc wall wart into it. I would plug it into one of the three remaining amps, and daisy chain from it to the other two. This way, the 950 turns on the main left/right amps for stereo and if I want to do home theater, I can turn on the other three via remote control.

Any one see any problems with this? I really don't need to do it as the 950 seems able to turn on all 5 amps with no trouble. But I thought it would be convenient this way.

I guess I don't understand why everybody is hung up on the trigger limitation issue. Why not just place the amps in the auto-sensing mode so they only turn on when there is an audio signal sent to them? Wouldn't that eliminate the whole prolem? Maybe there's an "understood" issue that I don't know about using this approach, but I don't see why it wouldn't be the most convenient means of controlling them.

Well, there's a school of thought which says that audio equipment should warm up for, say, 15 minutes to reach its optimal operating characteristics. In this case, you might prefer that your amps come on and stay on even when you're not playing anything yet.

There are also some people who believe that power cycles on things like amps are hard on them, so even if you're listening to a stereo source you don't want your center and surround amps to turn off.

Speaking of auto-on, how long are people finding it takes for the amp to decide there's no signal and go to standby mode?

I don't know how I missed this. This is exactly what I do, except I am using a 1050. The 1050 triggers my main two amps while my center and surround amps have an x10 trigger. I also use the amp button on the 1050 to control x10 signals with an x10 ir converter. So it should work for you and I do find it convenient since my use is about 50/50 stereo vs. multichannel.