Quote:
Originally Posted by dssturk
Does anyone know if the CM 3414 will work with a preamp if needed?
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Only if you are careful to avoid over driving the second amplifier in line and also avoid over driving the tuners.
A general rule of thumb is: One amplifier can be too many, Two amplifiers are too many.
It's rare to find a home installation that has enough legitimate* distribution losses to justify two amplifiers. However, there are times when more than one amplifier is needed. For example, if all signals are weak to begin with and you are distributing to more than eight TVs, you may need to use a preamp feeding a passive splitter which then feeds multiple distributions amplifiers.
In your case, the 17 dB gain of the CPA-19 is more than enough to overcome the cable, diplexer & splitter losses and still provide help with tuners that have poor noise figures.
I would install the CPA-19 at the antenna and try running with only a passive splitter.
But... you have the problem of getting power to the preamp... that may well force you to settle for using only a CM-341X. With this option you are at least dealing with the loss of the splitter and cables between the splitter and TVs. (Of course, remove any existing passive splitters and use the integral splitter in the CM-341X.)
* There are plenty of improperly wired installations that have more loss than necessary. In some cases the real problems may be masked by the addition of an extra amplifier, but the overall system performance could be improved if the wiring problems were corrected and the extra amplifier was removed.