Passing audio from AV Receiver to headphone Amp

[apcbhf]

I just assembled a crack and I totally love it but I've been thinking about hooking it up to my digital music in addition to my analog stuff. That said I'm currently running all of my audio through a Sony AV receiver (the STR DG 720 specifically) and I was wondering if passing audio from the line out on that to the amp would result in a loss of sound quality. I'm pretty ignorant around the way AV receivers work so while I can't imagine it would result in a problem there's just so much I don't know.

Right now I go from a media pc --> DAC --> receiver to listen to my digital stuff on a loudspeaker and I would love to just pass a cable from the receiver's line out to the headphone amp so I can listen to anything passing through it without switching cables (ideally I'd pull the analog stuff in there to.)

I'm going to just test this myself of course but I'd love to know if there's something obvious here that I can't see.

 

[Doc B]

Pretty hard to say what the receiver would do to the sound without knowing how it is configured. It is quite likely that there is a solid state buffer in the line output, and that could have an impact on the sonics. The very best thing to do is try it both ways and decide whether any perceived difference matters to you.

 

[apcbhf]

Blah. Thanks. That was my guess. This receiver has an "analog direct" option but they're obviously no description of what it does anywhere on the internet... so it's a bit less than valuable

Out of curiosity do you (or anyone out there?) know of a switchbox that allows you to select an output rather than input? It'd be an okay compromise if I could flip a switch to change between where the audio was ending up but I'm only seeing input selectors.

Thanks either way

 

[adamct]

Just use the opposite connectors. Input selectors aren't one-way devices. I use one to connect one DAC to 4 or 5 different headphone amps.

Best regards,
Adam

 

[apcbhf]

That absolutely never occurred to me. Thanks so much for the good look.