A little help to setup my old Marantz amplifier

[Lorenzobal]

Hi everyone

I'm new to the forum and quite newbee in the hifi world too. I just bought an amazing old Marantz PM 450 amplifier from the 80's and got it restored, so it's in perfect shape. I want to get the best of it. In particular, I am not sure about the speaker's number of ohms. The speakers are also old fashioned JVC SP-E35BKE (I have had these since the 90's).

I made a few drawings on how I have it set up today and how I am planning to set it up later. Something to know is that there are 2 outputs: system 1 with a connection to a firt pair of speakers (left and right) and system 2 with where you can connect another pair of speakers (left and right). You can decide to have system 1, system 2 or both live.

I'd looooove your opinion on whether the way I am currently doing is ok and about my plans for the future (where system 2 speakers will be in a different room).

Thanks so much !!

Today's setup:

My question for you's: I'd like to be sure that the numbers of ohms of the speakers is appropriate to the amplifier. Knowing that I have the system 2 turned off on the amplifier, so I understand it's a 4~16 ohms on the amplifier side.



My plan for later:

I'd like to have a second pair of speakers in a different room. In the amplifier, you can select to listen either to system 1, system 2 or both. I will have use of all these 3 options.
Question: ideally what number of ohms should I have in my second set of speakers?




Third setup:

I have a third setup in mind, but I'll share later if I see I get answers

 

[nopiano]

Question: ideally what number of ohms should I have in my second set of speakers?

Welcome to the forum!

8 ohms or more if you need (even occasionally) both systems running simultaneously. Otherwise 4 ohms upwards if only ever used independently.

 

[Lorenzobal]

Welcome to the forum!

8 ohms or more if you need (even occasionally) both systems running simultaneously. Otherwise 4 ohms upwards if only ever used independently.

Thanks for the welcome And more thanks for the answer, this is great and I start making sense of it I think. The thing I always forget is that the less ohms the more powerful the speakers !!

All right, so I'm gonna try to go to next level I am considering adding 2 more speakers in the living room. The guys told me I could add 8 ohms speakers if I were assembling them in serie.

Question: So, if I understand well in a setup like the below, I should be able to have 8 homs speakers everywhere, right?

 

[GSV Ethics Gradient]

Some amps struggle with driving two pairs of speakers - connecting three seems like asking for trouble, at least if you are using them all at the same time.

 

[nopiano]

Question: So, if I understand well in a setup like the below, I should be able to have 8 homs speakers everywhere, right?

I certainly wouldn’t consider wiring 4 speakers in any fashion as you’ve been suggested. What are you hoping to achieve? If you don’t want stereo, for a traditional listen, then buy an AV receiver and have speakers everywhere. Or consider a Sonos multi-room system.

 

[Al ears]

I'd agree with the above two posts and have no idea why you'd want two pairs of speakers in the one room

 

[gasolin]

Some just wants more power

 

[Wil]

i.e. megalomania

Some just wants more power

 

[Tinman1952]

The thing I always forget is that the less ohms the more powerful the speakers !!

That’s not quite right…..the less ohms the speaker has then the more current it draws from the amp. That’s what you need to be careful of….and hence need an amp with decent current output. What I think you mean by ‘power’ of a speaker is it‘s sensitivity. i.e. How loud does it go with one watt at one metre.

 

[Wil]

I’m not going to say what I had half finished writing. Others can deduce…

 

[Lutfij]

Thread cleaned. Please keep all discussions on threads, civil and on topic.

 

[Lorenzobal]

Wow I didn't connect for a bit and didn't see there were so many answers. Great, thanks everyone !

So, it seems there is conscencus, which is great. OK, so no extra speakers. Even if no one really consider my plan of wiring them in series, which according to the guy who fixed the amplifier would work even with 4 speakers.

To answer the question about why such as setup. Well, my idea is that the sound would be better if it's coming from all 4 corners in the room, better distributed. Maybe that doesn't really make sense and that's also what I was planning to ask as a follow up question. But, I wanted to first check about the technical possibility of doing this by using a serie wiring. If it's not possible technically even with serie wiring, then end of the story.

 

[Lorenzobal]

That’s not quite right…..the less ohms the speaker has then the more current it draws from the amp. That’s what you need to be careful of….and hence need an amp with decent current output. What I think you mean by ‘power’ of a speaker is it‘s sensitivity. i.e. How loud does it go with one watt at one metre.

OK thanks

 

[gasolin]

Wow I didn't connect for a bit and didn't see there were so many answers. Great, thanks everyone !

So, it seems there is conscencus, which is great. OK, so no extra speakers. Even if no one really consider my plan of wiring them in series, which according to the guy who fixed the amplifier would work even with 4 speakers.

To answer the question about why such as setup. Well, my idea is that the sound would be better if it's coming from all 4 corners in the room, better distributed. Maybe that doesn't really make sense and that's also what I was planning to ask as a follow up question. But, I wanted to first check about the technical possibility of doing this by using a serie wiring. If it's not possible technically even with serie wiring, then end of the story.

Quadraphonic sound

Quadraphonic sound - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Al ears]

Whatever you are playing will probably be recorded as stereo, that is two channels, try playing that through four speakers and you certainly will not get a good result no matter how widely distributed...... it is then no longer 'hifi' simply a mess.

 

[Wil]

Some 20 years ago, when I was researching into setting up multichannel, I looked into how ITU (International Telecommunication Union) was involved…

This is from Page 5 of Rec. ITU-R BS.775-1 “Multichannel stereophonic sound system with and without accompanying picture”:

 

[Lorenzobal]

OK, so I understand the idea is maybe not that stupid... BUT essentially 1) I would need different recording, which is obviously not possible and 2) it's most likely going to end up in a bad result.

So, better stick to 2 speakers.

 

[Lorenzobal]

Whatever you are playing will probably be recorded as stereo, that is two channels, try playing that through four speakers and you certainly will not get a good result no matter how widely distributed...... it is then no longer 'hifi' simply a mess.

BTW I didn't know that hi-fi meant high fidelity, I had to google that one.

 

[Gray]

BTW I didn't know that hi-fi meant high fidelity

...and you won't get it by wiring speakers in series.
They're right when they say it's technically possible - of course it is and it will still make a sound.
But you're right to be sticking to 2 speaker stereo.

 

[nopiano]

This reminded me that there was a time when Hafler surround was a ‘thing’ - perhaps when Quadrophonic sound of the 1970s started to appear.

I‘m not going to recommend it for anyone who isn’t100% ok with wiring up their speakers, but it did create a pleasing ambient sound from behind, by using a second pair wired in a particular way thus capturing the difference signal between the front speakers.

 

[Lorenzobal]

All right, so I am probably not going to check the messages anymore, but just wanted to say thanks to everyone. That was really helpful to me

.... Well apart from the ones below I'm still curious about what people had to be bitchy about. I was just asking questions and making it crystal clear from the beginning that I was a newbie. But well, I guess online there are always some crazy (to stay polite) people.

Take care everyone !!

Thread cleaned. Please keep all discussions on threads, civil and on topic.

 

[Gray]

This reminded me that there was a time when Hafler surround was a ‘thing’ - perhaps when Quadrophonic sound of the 1970s started to appear.

I‘m not going to recommend it for anyone who isn’t100% ok with wiring up their speakers, but it did create a pleasing ambient sound from behind, by using a second pair wired in a particular way thus capturing the difference signal between the front speakers.

...and back then I thought, why not do it at line level. So when I was younger and stupid, I made my difference box (input and output grounds must stay isolated - hence the out sockets on plastic).
Now that I'm older (and even more stupid) it's still fun to put just the difference into an amp and speakers (active Hafler)

 

[Wil]

Since OP is happy, but because he’s only “probably not going to check the messages anymore,” I’ll gloss over (revealing a part of) what had tested me on what-to-say previously—when I discovered amp's Power Output at 4 Ω is but 1.14 times that of at 8 Ω

 

[Lorenzobal]

Nothing to do with you, don't worry.

No worries, again I got the answers I wanted on this thread, so thanks