Advice on using 2 pairs of channels for surround speakers...

[admin_exported]

Evening all,

I am looking to invest in an AV amp at some point over the next year (gives me plenty of time to research and more to the point, save...) What makes it an "interesting" task is that my speakers aren't the easiest load to drive. I have two pairs of Dali Suite 2.8 floor-standers and a C0.7 centre speaker. The floor-standers are big and have a nominal impedance of 4 ohms which makes finding a suitable amp tricky, as most amps don't state that they will drive 4 ohm speakers.

My intention is to still run the front (L+R) speakers from my stereo amp as that will give me the best stereo sound from them, which is very important. The centre shouldn't be an issue as that is a 6 ohm speaker, so a bit easier for an amp to drive. The rears are where I have a potential issue... I was thinking of using 2 pairs of channels on the AV amp rather than the just the rear (L+R) channels. Would this work ok? I know that it is common to use 2 pairs of channels for front speakers but what about the rears???

Being that the amp will only be used to drive the centre and the two surround speakers (maybe more in the future if I get a bigger house), it makes sense to me to use both the surround and surround back channels to drive the surround speakers. Am I likely to have any issues with this? Is there a better way of doing it than what I have suggested? Would I have an issue with different signals from different channels clashing?

I was thinking provisionally about the Yamaha RX-V3067, would this be a suitable match for my setup? It is very early days at the moment, as I said at the top I need to save so it will be a while before I am in a position to be buying an amp...

Thanks in advance for any help/input []

 

[Anonymous]

Any comments and/or advise will be gratefully received

 

[Andrew Everard]

Assuming you're thinking of using the biwiring terminals on the speakers for this, the result will be that the two sections of the speaker will be receiving different signals. If you're not going to split the crossover by removing the links, I'd say don't do it, as you risk damaging all the amp channels involved.

 

[Anonymous]

So I take it for what I want, you would theoretically need an amp with 2 sets of surround channels that both output the same signal? Do any AV receivers have a feature where you can do this, or am I just wasting my time with this idea?

 

[Andrew Everard]

Some AV receivers do offer a facility to reassign unused surround back amp channels for biamping, but they reassign them to the front left and right output.

 

[Anonymous]

Yes, I am familiar with that, but as I said in my original post, I would be using a pre out to my stereo amp for the front 2 channels rather than using the AV amp to drive them. It seems like I will have a lot of unused channels on the amp... I wouldn't have thought it would have been a difficult thing for the amp manufacturers to incorporate the ability to assign channels to whatever speakers you want, but I suppose there would have to be enough of a demand for it first...

 

[Andrew Everard]

I think demand is probably the reason, as you say. The only way to achieve what you want to do is to use a couple of stereo power amps, or a multichannel power amp, and pair the channels up using Y-connectors - ie one phono plug to two phono plugs.

 

[Anonymous]

The thought of using 2 stereo amps and an AV amp had crossed my mind, but I thought it a tad excessive running 3 amps for surround sound, not to mention the space it would take up! I think I will just have to stick with finding a powerful AV amp that will handle the speakers with just the one channel per speaker...

Thanks for your advice Andrew

 

[ear]

search for speakers connected in serie on the internet.

 

[Andrew Everard]

ear:search for speakers connected in serie on the internet.

Doesn't really address the problem, as the question was about more amps for two speakers, not more speakers on existing amp channels.