You want to run the left and right line outputs of your 'home theater' preamp into a stereo line level input of your 'music' preamp. When listening to music, you just select on your 'music' preamp whatever source you want, adjust the volume and enjoy. When watching movies, select the line input on your 'music' preamp that corresponds with your 'home theater' preamp. The only thing you will need to do is mark a "calibrated" position on the 'music' preamp's volume control so that you can set it to that when watching movies, and use the 'home theater's' volume control to set overall volume.

Thanks Soundhound but you are dealing with somebody who really needs the kiss theory applied when explaining this stuff. Do I run the 950's main out to the main in of the pre or into one of its sources (tuner)? I am looking at a Sonic Frontier unit that also has a direct mode. How would this come into play?

Thanks again, you have always been a great help.

The Sonic Frontiers with it's "direct mode" would be the best solution. You can also use the "tape loop" on a standard stereo preamp if it has one.

You can run the main output of the 950 into any available line input of your stereo preamp. Any such input will work - aux, tuner, tape - anything but "phono".

As always Soundhound...thanks.

Have a happy and healthy New Year.

I'm intrigued by the discussion here since improving 2-channel playback on my 950/7100 combo is something I've been looking into, and I'll definitely be considering a separate stereo pre-amp per the advice above.

What I've been focusing on is improving my source performance (currently a Denon DVD 1600) and what I just did yesterday was order a stereo DAC (the Benchmark DAC-1) to replace the DAC within the Denon (I've found the quality of the analogue pass-through in the 950 from the Denon to be better than using the 950's DACs on the Denon digital signal). I'm hoping this will give me a much better analogue signal. The DAC-1 can also function as a pre-amp, and I'm intrigued about ways to pass the signal through the 950 rather than using the 950 as a pre-amp. This would necessarily make the order Source-->DAC-1 DAC and pre-amp-->950-->7100. I'm not sure how I'd do this though.

Any advice?

You could always run the S/PDIF or optical digital output of your player to the 950 and the analog output of your new DAC to the stereo preamp. The 950 then could decode Dolby Digital and DTS, and do it's signal processing from the digital bitstream and you would get maximum purity from the outboard DAC through your stereo preamp.

Some players will let you use both the S/PDIF and optical outputs at once, otherwise you could loop one of them through the 950 and then to the outboard DAC - using the 950 as a "splitter" in other words. You of course would have to set the 950 to the CD player's input so that the bitstream would be looped through to the outboard DAC.

[This message has been edited by soundhound (edited January 02, 2004).]

If he's getting the DAC-1 as both stereo DAC and pre-amp, though, he probably wants to use the Denon 1600's digital output for both the DAC-1 and the 950.

I'd suggest using one digital output for the DAC-1 and one for the 950, but there's only one output on the 1600. You might use the 950's optical digital output to pass the 1600's signal from player to 950 to DAC-1?

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

Is the 950 2CH(Stereo) so bad you need to go to all of this trouble? If so, that should be fixed in the next Outlaw pre/pro. There is no technical reason that a pre/pro in 2 CH mode cannot sound as good as a 2CH preamp.
(Putting aside the Tube Vs. Solid State issues)

Ah! but the devil is in the details.

Thanks for the responses. I'd already considered the Denon 1600 digital output limitation by ordering a Toslink splitter to allow me to take the digital output from the 1600 and feed it both to the 5.1 input of the 950 and to the DAC-1. It hadn't even occurred to me to use the 950 as a "splitter" (now there's ANOTHER permutation I'll need to try out!). Come tax refund time I'm already considering an upgrade to the 2900/5900.

To Paratrooper's point, 2CH from the 950 isn't bad, but I did see a noticeable improvement by using the 950 passthrough and the 1600's DACs to do the D/A conversion. And since this whole hobby/obsession/addiction (for me at least) is about getting the best possible sound and picture given our respective budgets, it seems a worthwhile use of time to try out whatever tweaks I find out about. Simple economics would suggest to me that I'm going to get better stereo sound from a $850 dedicated DAC than by using the stock stereo DACs inside a $500 DVD player (that probably contributed $50-100 max to the price of the player).

I suppose I'll find out in a week or so, and Benchmark has a 30-day return policy so the risk is limited.