[jonathanjong]

Someone asked me this the other day, and I had no idea. I don't suppose the built-in amp in the speakers get by-passed, so is there just redundancy? Will the speakers get over-powered and, thus, wrecked in some way?

 

[ClieOS]

Nothing get bypassed. You are just double amping the speaker basically.

 

[ProtegeManiac]

Someone asked me this the other day, and I had no idea. I don't suppose the built-in amp in the speakers get by-passed, so is there just redundancy? Will the speakers get over-powered and, thus, wrecked in some way?

 
It depends on the circuit. It either goes through the speaker amp circuit then goes into a headphone output circuit that helps adjust the impedance for a headphone, which when used with a speaker tends to be way off what speakers need (in some cases the output impedance is adjusted to 120ohms on older receivers, which is why some of them just suck with Grados while they have no immediately audible issues on 300ohm+ headphones). In some cases I think it has some kind of dedicated headphone driver circuit, which likely isn't enough to power the speaker still.

 

[MindsMirror]

Nothing will be bypassed. Nothing will be over or under-powered either. The integrated amp or whatever is driving the headphone output cannot deliver any significant power to the input of the speaker's built in amp. The high impedance of the speaker amp's input means that it draws very little current, so practically no power is delivered to it. The built in amp supplies it's own current/power to the speakers. The it will work just as it would if you connected it before the first amp, you will just lose some quality by sending an analog signal through another amplifier circuit unnecessarily.

 

[jonathanjong]

I was kinda hoping that something to blow up...