Since most outputs will drve 600 ohms and are <100R output impedance, and most modern inputs are 22K.... I just put a 1K or 2K resistor from source to each load. The <1dB voltage loss is easily trimmed away. If one or even two loads get shorted, any surviving loads still get good signal.
2K source and -1dB loss at 16KHz is 5,000pFd or >150 feet of cable. My local lines are 6 feet, 400KHz bandwidth. (Maybe 150KHz including RFI caps on most inputs.) I actually drive a remote booth through 3K3 and 200 feet of cable, 'cuz he'd never miss the top-octave, and he DOES short my line.
That's unbalanced, re-figure for balanced.
That's all that's in most of these Distribution amps anyway. Bridged loudspeaker amp chips and a bunch of 270R resistors. A speaker-chip fed for 10-20 ohm operation can drive DOZENs of 270R shorts and still put signal into anybody left. It is very rare to find separate amp for each output.
If you have just two loads, don't crap it up with extra amplifier stages. Just split with resistors.
And my need, like Live Broadcast, is "show goes on". But in transfer work, if a load goes dead, you usually stop, fix, rewind. If you will stop on any fault, it hardly matters if the non-faulted machines lose signal. And you don't have panicked talent running loose. Shorts are less likely. So the despised Y-cable IS a valid solution.
(Unless you are making 10,000 copies 20 at a time; then it may be quicker to go ahead with 19 decks and 5% overtime than to stop and fix the dead recorder.)
