Using 2 Connect Amps to Drive Left and Right Speakers

  • 10 January 2017
  • 6 replies
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I've got a couple of beautiful Clements Audio Speakers with Ribbon Tweeters that can handle an immense amount of power. I've had them hooked up to a ZP120 and they sounded great, but I recently picked up a 2nd ZP120 and tried using the left channel of one and the right channel of the other to drive the pair of speakers and they literally "came alive". Controlling the volume on them is no problem as long as take the two amps and group them together but when I add them to a larger group, (I've got components and Zones all over the house) it becomes problematic. I need to control left and right independantly. Is there a way to set up 2 Amps as a stereo pair as can be done with a pair of Play 1, 3, or 5s?

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using the left channel of one and the right channel of the other to drive the pair of speakers and they literally "came alive".
I assume this means that the left channel is wired to one speaker and the right channel of the second 120 is wired to the other speaker. Both are still delivering the same watts to each speaker as one amp so wired would.
Unless one of the channels of one of the two amps is defective and not working and not the one wired to the speakers in this set up, there is no reason for what you are seeing to happen - other than psychological.
Is there a way to set up 2 Amps as a stereo pair as can be done with a pair of Play 1, 3, or 5s?
No. And the power amps can't be bridged either.

To be frank, if you're that fussed you should get a CONNECT and a pair of monoblocs.
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I'd love this feature as well.

I have a bunch of CONNECT:AMP(s) from a previous house, and it'd be much easier to use two in a L/R bonded pair than to string speaker wire across the room (looks janky).

I setup it up w/ 2, and one speaker on each, but they show up as different rooms... which is fine, until the volume gets tweaked on one of them... then it's kinda annoying.

I also have a SUB in the room, so had to choose which "room" got the sub, which is also kinda janky. One channel has a freq crossover and the other doesn't.

I agree that is'a fairly stupid setup, and a bad use of money if you were starting from scratch. But as I said, I've had all this stuff for years, just trying to use it in a new (smaller) house w/o buying more stuff.
As long as the two units are grouped it should not matter which one connects to the sub. Using group volume should prevent any issues with them getting out of sync. The fact that one channel on each amp is not connected to a speaker might make it "feel" like you are doing something strange but I don't see any reason why it wouldn't work.

Creative way to use what you have on hand!
One channel has a freq crossover and the other doesn't.

Interesting way to use legacy speakers without the usual associated cabling messes. Does the quoted bit have a noticeable effect on sound quality or imaging to the extent that it is distracting?
One channel has a freq crossover and the other doesn't.

Interesting way to use legacy speakers without the usual associated cabling messes. Does the quoted bit have a noticeable effect on sound quality or imaging to the extent that it is distracting?

It could sound a bit odd. There are rock tracks where the bass pans between L & R (the producers were a bit more pan-pot-happy back then) and I'd have thought the timbre would change quite dramatically.