speaker wiring for h/t and stereo

Line level switch ahead of the tube amp so you use if for home theater too, speaker level switch down between the two, and in the later case care to make sure you don't feed the amp a signal when the speakers (you get more voltage swing when it's unloaded and can cause arcing in the tube or output transformer) which could be as simple as turning off either CD or amp.

Xantech and Niles sell switches which can be controlled by IR or the 12V trigger signal on home theater equipment.

simpler to just have a preamp with HT passthrough, most of the good ones have it.

Macdadtexas

"simpler to just have a preamp with HT passthrough, most of the good ones have it."

Perhaps many of the newer preamps have the HT pass thru feature... new however doesn't equate to good though... nor does having more features such as 'pass thru'.... unless of course Good = bells and whistles.

Short of rushing out to by another preamp as Macdadtexas suggested, you can simply swap the speaker leads between the two rigs when desired... although an obvious pain perhaps, short of getting another pre, and another set of cables as well for the bypass, that works for me...

Of course, adding another set of speaker cables from the HT rec. to the speakers will do it too... You have to be mindful each power source has to be off prior to switching them though.

Separating the two systems seems the best choice so they can run 100% independant of one another.

It's looking more and more like that's what I'm going to be doing pretty soon myself. I'm considering however to use some wall mounted speakers though for mains in the HT... and I'd still be able to use the same dedicated room for both 2 ch & HT.

When I was setting up my home theater I tried multiple HT receivers and all were unsatisfying, though I wasn't very high in the quality chain admittedly. I ended up going the passthru route as Macdadtexas suggests. It's by far the most convenient and most economical, and also gives you the best rig for HT. Also, you needn't run out and find a preamp that has passthru. You can use any available line-level input on your existing 2 channel preamp (assuming you have one available). Connect the front L/R preamp outputs from your HT receiver to this preamp input, then calibrate your your HT output levels for a pre-defined preamp volume level. For example, set your 2 channel preamp at 12:00 and calibrate your HT. Each time you go into HT mode, simply select the input for HT and set your preamp at 12:00. Your receiver front L/R amps go unused.

This setup makes no compromises for stereo sound quality, and in your case will likely benefit your HT sound by virtue of the tube amp on the front.

The only flaw I see in this for you is you may not want to burn up tubes while in HT mode (my rig is in 2 channel mode most of the time).

One thing to be careful of if you go with a speaker switch or swap cables like Blindjim recommends - don't power up your tube amp without speakers connected unless your amp has a protective circuit against that.

I thought I mentioned making connections whilst everything was dead...? Anyhow.. Absolutely DO not energize amps without a load being connected to them.

I did the line out and line in bit too... and wound up with a fairly significant lag in the audio stream coming from the speakers my tube power train were driving when hooked to the HT system. I then hooked the Receiver straight to the tube monos for the front mains and the SS amp for the rears... and as was said, got a little hinkey about burning up my tubes for movies and TV, and went back to just using the Odyssey Se for them fronts and doing the speaker cable shuffle... Weekends when I expect company, the HT is all connected. Tuesdays to Fridays, usually, the tubes run the show... musical show, that is... no vids.

I didn't see where I could delay or advance the audio anywhere in the setup menu to compensate for the timing differences I was experiencing with my Onkyo 805... only in the center ch could I affect any changes.. ie., lip sync.

it wasn't off by much. Just enough to agrivate me though.