Looking at buying McIntosh C2200, 2 channel Tube Preamp. I own a Sunfire GTA5200 amp. The amp has Balanced and RCA inputs. My A/V Receiver is connected to the amp via RCA. I want to connect the McIntosh via Balanced connections. Looked through the manual there is no mention that you can't do it, furthermore there is no toggle switch for going from RCA to Balanced.

Is anyone doing what I just explained?

Thoughts....

bump...

If the preamp and amp have XLR ins then just use them. There is usually not a switch to toggle.

I pretty sure you can't. If you attempt to connect RCA and XLR, for safety, one connection will be shut down. If I remember correctly, you will lose the XLR connection.

You can use the tube to drive the mains at all times, although you may not want to use this option since this will certainly decrease the life of the tubes, and I assume you only want to listen to the tubes while listening to two channel music.

Perhaps someone may chime in and tell us if an external HT bypass would be an option. Some tubes have a HT bypass built in, I don't know if a stand alone is sold.

Mark

You can use XLR on one channel and RCA on another, but you cannot use both on the same channel.