I am considering buying a vintage Marantz 221 but I have a question about using it with external (active) speakers. I noticed that it only has a single jack for line OUT, can I use a rca splitter to connect to stereo speakers? I have never had a unit with only 1 jack ... they are normally L and R out.
You should be able to, although obviously you would get the same sound on both channels. I had a look at some pictures and I suspect the 221 is mono but with a neat vari-speed playback trick. I am not sure what the intended market was although it looks very professional. News reporting was one task that came to mind. Also here in the UK we didn’t get stereo sound on TV until the very late 1980s so until then using stereo equipment for TV production would have been pointless.
