running speakers from headphone jack

[drummer4gc]

hey everyone.

i just bought an old pioneer vsx-3600 receiver and im running a few speakers off it like normal. however, i used to have a logitech z-5300 setup hooked up to my computer through the headphone jack. i've noticed that the A channel speakers from the pioneer unit can stay active when i have headphones plugged into the unit.

What I'm wondering is, would there be any potential damage to either unit if i ran the z-5300 set AND the A-channel speakers, with the z-5300s getting their input from the pioneer's headphone output? I assume its fine for the 5300s since they have always gotten their input from a headphone jack, but i just want to make sure this isnt going to overwork the pioneer system or something.

would there be any difference if i just ran the sub from the 5300s and not the other speakers?

-thanks

 

[ecluser]

There is no risk to overwork the Pioneer from the phone jack because there is always a resistor (one per channel) before the jack to reduce the output signal to the earphone. Usualy this resistor is about a hundred Ohms.

In other words, your amp don't know if something is pluged into the phone jack, even if it is a short!

I don't know about the z-5300 so I can't be of any help to you for the second question... Sorry!

 

[mulveling]

It'll be fine.
You're not actually "driving" the computer speakers from the headphone jack; they're self powered. The headphone jack is merely sending out a line-level signal...and actually into an easier load than what headphones would present. That's good, because it won't have the guts to do more than that (it's likely just a little op-amp driving that jack).