Ahoy electrical types

[dillybar]

I have a Kenwood stereo reciever /cassette player with a seperate cd drive on the boat. I bought a reciever at west marine today for 99 bucks that has a cd drive as well as MP3 and USB inputs.
In an effort to embrace the new century (read: placate the kids) I would like to remove the old cd drive and replace it with the new technology while keeping the old reciever/ cassette player.
The old set up had a single heavy cable connecting the two which I naturally cannot use to connect to the new unit.
HERES THE QUESTION: Will I damage anything if I just splice the (8) output speaker wires on the new unit to the coresponding (8) out put wires on the remainig old unit?
To further clarify; this would mean if I turned both units on at once they would both try to play on the same speakers.
I was told a long time ago by an electrician that once the magic blue smoke escapes from an electrical component they will no longer work and I would like to avoid this.

[celenoglu]

There might be a method to use the same speakers for two different sets of instruments but this is not as easy as using diodes. The output to speakers is alternating current and using diodes is not possible.

It is best to use two different sets of speakers if you really need two different equipment.

[capn_dave]

Something like this Amazon.com: Sima SSW 4 Speaker Selector (4 Speaker Pairs): Electronics. as was stated before the diodes will not work. Depending on the wattage of the Amplifiers you could get away with just, like you said splicing the wires to both amps. You cannot, however run both at the same time.

Fair Winds

Dave

[BubbleheadMd]

Capn Dave has it right. Would you damage anything by having them feed the speakers at the same time? Probably not, but the speakers should be isolated from the system NOT being used at the moment for the best sound.

Honestly, I've no idea why you'd keep a radio reciever. Broadcast radio these days is nothing but talk and commercials and CD's take up unnecessary space. XM/Sirius and an MP3 player input will give you all the music you'll ever need. You can even skip the XM/Sirius really.

[dillybar]

Thanks for the input guys,
I want to leave the old reciever in because I want the option to play a cassette
if I require as well as listen to local news and frankly, I don't want to have to fill the gaping hole left in my Nav station panel.
I had planned to put a selector switch on the power sources so they could never be on at the same time.
The concensus seems to be that I can't hurt anything but the sound may be degraded?
Me thinks I'll give it a try and report back.

[wind_magic]

This is really a btrayfor's type of question, maybe he'll see it and give you an answer. I don't think it would hurt the finals on the built in amps, but I really don't know. I wouldn't try it with a new stereo, I would go with the selector switch idea, or use the line level signals from both stereos and run it through some kind of mixer/amp.

[mitiempo]

If you hook 2 amplifiers to the same set of speakers the amp not in use will be destroyed in short order. The amp output has no protection if it is used as an input as it would be in this case. The only way to do it is to switch from one amplifier completely to the other.