Hello Everyone,
We are opening a little community bakery and, along with all of the great breads and pastries that our customers might enjoy, we will have an excellent sounding stereo to complete the ambiance. Music in the front-of-the-house will be played through a pair of Focal Electra 1008 Be 2’s powered by our new HIFI Rose RS520. I purchased the RS520 from my local stereo shop and I had one deal-breaker of a feature that I needed before I bought it: a LINE-OUT function so that my zone in the production area could also enjoy music played through the Rose.
But it doesn’t work! Try as I might, I can only get the LINE-OUT to output the feeblest little signal. It seems like there are a great deal of settings in to go through, but when I apply those settings, the speakers get disabled, or I just end up with a teeny signal which requires the absolute highest volume setting on my secondary amp just to get ½ the sound pressure from the Focals. I’m vexed.
I’ve been a stereo guy for decades and also hold an Extra Class amateur radio license so usually I’m the one trouble-shooting technical problems but this has me frustrated and stumped.
Cheers!
Strange. The line out should work even if to attach subwoofers.
I would try a digital output. If you have an amp with integrated dac or an extra dac that should get the full signal output.
I have the RS250 and I put a DDC on the USB output. From there I get the same signal to 2 external DACs. Or I use my preamp that has 2 outputs. Or my 2 amps (Fosi ZA3’s) that each have a pre-out.
Now that makes me think: if the output is a pre-out, that means it follows the volume on the RS520. That means the other amp should be full volume. The RS520 has 250W. If the other amp has just 25W yes, then you get 10dB less ie very modest level (half the volume). Add that to speaker efficiency, Focals are about 91dB I think? That would not get very loud.
Good Morning,
Thanks for the information and suggestions. I have ascertained for certain that there is no FIXED-OUT on the Rose RS520, a feature that seems possible with a software update. I hope it gets added in the future. Indeed you were right, however, the particular combination of amps and speakers were very mismatched in terms of gain and speaker sensitivity. Swapping the secondary integrated greatly improved the functionality,
In the meantime, however, I have come to miss the UI of ROON that I enjoy at home so I’;ve decided to get a ROON server for iur bakery too. And, already having a spare NODE, it will be easy to get all issues with gain solved.
Regards,
Oran
You’re welcome. Yours was a very specific situation. It’s very uncommon to serve a second room with the pre-out. They are usually used for subwoofers, where the volume should follow the main speakers.
Using a digital output would be your simplest solution. Unless you’d want to play something different. Then I didn’t even mention the broadcast licence fees for the workplace if there are other workers present… That’s always fun 
My gift for problem solving sometimes has to be invoked at the most inconvenient times. Yesterday my whole appartement was without wifi. In fact, without power. I noticed when I couldn’t sleep on early Sunday morning my phone gave a warning message about data usage “no wifi”. I had no idea what the cause was. Unplug everything and start eliminating. It turned out to be the cat who threw up next to her seat in the window, into my stereo rack. Right in a power supply for my DDC from the Rose streamer causing a short. Thanks kitty. It took me over 4 hours to get everything working again.
Anyways, I’d solve it with my Fosi ZA3 amps and ZD3 dac. Not expensive, very good quality (especially if you swap in better opamps) and more than enough clean power. It even comes with a remote.
Good luck with the bakery.