Speaker switcher boxes... which one is best?

RunOutGroove

RunOutGroove

Addicted Member
I use one of these on my system as I have a couple of sets of speakers and being that the speakers in question are both rated at lower than 8 ohms and my amp isn't designed for that kind of load, I need that "speaker protection" switch for when I want to run both sets together. Today I've been doing a bit of housecleaning and playing some old LPs with both sets of my speakers playing. I have that protection switch on of course, but it kind of bugs me how much of the music it seems to take out when I have that thing on. My box is a Niles brand one, but I vaguely remember someone on the forum saying that there are two different (and maybe more) designs for the circuitry of these things and one of them (the more premium style) is able to adjust the load on the amp without nearly as much degradation to the sound as the other...

My Niles switcher seems to be a pretty cheap unit, so I'm assuming that it has the lesser good kind of circuit in it and I wonder what might be good one to upgrade to that has the better, less-degrading-to-the-sound type of circuit? If it had something better than those tiny spring loaded speaker wire terminals, that would be a plus too. I really only need something for two pairs of speakers and I don't really even need volume controls (my Niles box has volume controls, but I don't really use them). I think I paid something like $20-30 on Ebay for the Niles and I'd be willing to spend a maybe up to $80 on a more premium model (hopefully to also be found used on Ebay). Any recommendations?
 
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Don't know nothing about no different circuits, but Adcom GFS are pretty good. Really weird clamping connectors, but do the job.
If your amp isn't rated to handle less than 8 ohms, you may want to give up on any switcher that parallels speakers and make a custom A-B switcher.
 
Semanon said:
Don't know nothing about no different circuits, but Adcom GFS are pretty good. Really weird clamping connectors, but do the job.
If your amp isn't rated to handle less than 8 ohms, you may want to give up on any switcher that parallels speakers and make a custom A-B switcher.
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Adcom made a newer model that accepted banana plugs too .
 
In my experience, speaker switches which use transformer-based protection circuits (autoformers) have less effect on sound quality than those that are resistor based.
 
zebra03 said:
Adcom made a newer model that accepted banana plugs too .
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That might be the ideal box, but out of lots of Adcom switchers things that I saw on Ebay not a one had those type of connections...?

spark1 said:
In my experience, speaker switches which use transformer-based protection circuits (autoformers) have less effect on sound quality than those that are resistor based.
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Yes, I'm guessing that the Adcoms have this and my Niles doesn't...?
 
I am happy with my Rotel RSS-900 speaker switch box. Replaced a Niles. Can handle up to 6 pairs of speakers, I am running 5 pair currently, easy to use with banana plugs. Easy enough to find used.
 
RT Fan said:
I am happy with my Rotel RSS-900 speaker switch box. Replaced a Niles. Can handle up to 6 pairs of speakers, I am running 5 pair currently, easy to use with banana plugs. Easy enough to find used.
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Does that one have the protection circuit thing and then if it does, how's it sound? I also wonder if Rotel made a smaller unit with less inputs? I could get a larger one, but I really only need two inputs and would rather get a simpler, smaller unit, all things being equal. I like that it has those good connecting posts though...
 
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There is not a protection circuit switch on the RSS-900. Your main pair of speakers are run through the first or “Direct” speaker selector which receives an unadulterated signal. The remaining 5 switches have impedance compensation allowing all sets to be played simultaneously. They also have inductor coils to deal with excess capacitance resulting from multiple long speaker wire runs.
https://www.rotel.com/sites/default/files/product/manuals/RSS-900-OM.pdf
 
RT Fan said:
There is not a protection circuit switch on the RSS-900. Your main pair of speakers are run through the first or “Direct” speaker selector which receives an unadulterated signal. The remaining 5 switches have impedance compensation allowing all sets to be played simultaneously. They also have inductor coils to deal with excess capacitance resulting from multiple long speaker wire runs.
https://www.rotel.com/sites/default/files/product/manuals/RSS-900-OM.pdf
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So... and I realize that this might be obvious stuff to anyone but myself, but without that switch for a protection circuit (I realize that it has some sort of automatically engaged thing), is it going to protect my Marantz 2270 from frying with two sets of 6 ohm speakers running simultaneously? Basically, my question is: does this automatic circuit provide the same level of protection as the switch in my Niles? And I wonder if it sounds any better than my Niles when the two sets are running together...?
 
I am not a gear fanatic and you will need someone more advanced in their knowledge to answer that question.
 
RunOutGroove said:
That might be the ideal box, but out of lots of Adcom switchers things that I saw on Ebay not a one had those type of connections...?


Yes, I'm guessing that the Adcoms have this and my Niles doesn't...?
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I have been looking around for an Adcom that takes banana plugs for a few months now and the only one I see pop up on ebay is the GFS-4.
 
I use Niles in my systems, thankfully I've never had a protection circuit kick in. Their customer service is second to none. I found one with the connector strip missing. They sent me a new strip at no charge. They even paid the postage and sent it first class mail.
 
bzb882 said:
I use Niles in my systems, thankfully I've never had a protection circuit kick in. Their customer service is second to none. I found one with the connector strip missing. They sent me a new strip at no charge. They even paid the postage and sent it first class mail.
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I didn't realize that Niles had a speaker selector with some sort of protection relay? What triggers it?

Or are you talking about impedance protection (impedance management)? I don't think it "kicks in". Its either active (on) or inactive (off).
 
spark1 said:
I didn't realize that Niles had a speaker selector with some sort of protection relay? What triggers it?

Or are you talking about impedance protection (impedance management)? I don't think it "kicks in". Its either active (on) or inactive (off).
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Didn't say it has a relay,
 
spark1 said:
I guess I misunderstood. Does it have some kind of protection circuit that kicks in and out (opens and closes)?
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I'm not sure if your question is for me, but the thing that I currently use, a Niles switcher has switchable protection circuit that I only turn on when I run both sets of my speakers together. Both of those are 6 ohm ones and those straight into my amp, if run together would likely fry the thing over time, hence the need for the box that has a protection circuit. The problem with the one on the Niles that I won though is that when that protection circuit button is engaged it sucks much of the life out of the sound.
 
There are 2 kinds of these boxes, ones with volume controls and one with just switches. The "protection circuit" in the ones that are just switch boxes usually consists simply of a few Ohm resistor (2.5 Ohms for the Niles, apparently) that can be switched in series with the speakers, which are themselves all connected in parallel. If you have two sets of 6-Ohm speakers running together, the amp will see (6/2)+2.5 = 5.5 Ohms with the protection circuit on, instead of the 3 Ohms it would see with the protection off. That all there is to it. It's not ideal, but it does give protection to the amp. But if you have a 100 Watt/ch amp, then in the above situation 100*(2.5/5.5) = 45 of those Watts will be committed to heating that resistor. And the speakers are now effectively being driven from a 2.5 Ohm source (rather than 0.1 Ohm or whatever for the amp by itself) so the varying impedance of the speaker (e.g. with frequency, or with power level) will now change the sound from what you would otherwise have.

The type of boxes with volume controls use autotransformers for the volume control. Those effectively increase the impedance that each speaker presents to the amp, which provides some protection. No amp power is wasted driving a series resistor...but the autotransformers themselves all have loss, and they also have limitation in the frequency range over which the do their job and in linearity with which they do it. So there will also be changes in the sound using this type of box. I didn't find enough information to quantify that, though.
 
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I think there are selectors without volume controls which use transformers/autoformers for impedance management.
 
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