minutes wrote:

I'm in need of some help with adding to my desktop music set-up.

5k iMac -- USB -- Schiit Modi 2 DAC -- RCA -- Schiit SYS Pre -- RCA -- Audioengine A5+.

All is well with the above set-up.

I have some Beyerdynamic DT 880 Pro's collecting dust, and might as well use them. I'm interested in adding a Schiit Magni 2 headphone amp to the above chain.

I'm not a full time headphone user - maybe 50/50 split. I'm not in need of the Magni 2 to bi-pass/power the A5+ speakers. I'd simply like to have the ability to plug my headphones into the Magni 2 and have it power them when needed, but when not using the headphones, the system remains unchanged from the above (A5+ amp powers its speakers for non-headphone listening).

The Magni 2 has 1 set of RCAs. Could I run the Magni 2 via RCA into the SYS Pre's remaining set of unused RCA inputs? Would that allow me to use the Magni 2 to run the headphones and not affect the rest of the system when headphones aren't in use?

Or would it be more complicated than that? I asked Schiit, but they were steering me down the path of using an RCA Y cable, and mentioned it would somehow connect the Magni 2 to the Modi 2 and SYS. But it seems to me that perhaps that would be the set-up for having the Magni 2 powering the entire system, including speakers - which I want to avoid.

Any help that could be provided would be greatly appreciated.

You can simply turn off the power to the A5 speakers when using the headphones.

If the switch on the speakers is inconvenient, you can install a AC cube switch that plugs into the wall and then plug the power of the speakers into it, or use an extension cord with an inline switch.

Another way to do it would be to install an audio signal switch box after the DAC.

The Cables to Go #28750 is less than $20 from Amazon and will do the job. The only thing is, you will be hooking it up in reverse.

Normally it is used to switch more than one input to an amplifier or other device. In your case you are switching one input to two different paths, so you would plug the DAC signal into the output jacks and use two of the input jack sets as the output jacks to hook the speaker signal path and the headphone signal path to.