Four speakers for one Hi-Fi

[admin_exported]

Hello, i was just wondering if there are any bad points about connecting four speakers to one Hi-Fi apart from the fact that the speakers will only be getting half the power. The reason why I ask this is because I will be putting some ceiling speakers in my garage, so quality will not really be a major issue, But because I have a triple garage, i would want the speakers to be right the way across the garage so that two people could hear it, but without it being to loud.

 

[JoelSim]

It depends on the power of the amp and the impedence of the speakers I believe. Too little power with too high a volume on difficult to drive speakers could overheat the amp.

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[Anonymous]

well its not really a Hi-Fi, more just a cheap all in one system, but i will try to find out some figures

 

[JoelSim]

If the speakers are less than 8 Ohms then be careful. I have two pairs of speakers running of mine, one is 6 Ohm and one is 8 ohm, and Arcam told me to be careful and monitor it, although they were pretty sure it would be ok. So far so good and I haven't noticed any burning smell or smoke!

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[Anonymous]

Well the speakers are 8 ohms and 60W max, and all 4 are the same, so sould they be okay?

 

[JoelSim]

TomW93:Well the speakers are 8 ohms and 60W max, and all 4 are the same, so sould they be okay?

Sounds ok, but I really don't know enough about it to be sure, only what I know from when I was connecting 2 pairs of speakers up.

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[Anonymous]

look on the back of the system where the speakers connect. it will hopefully say 4-8ohms. If so your fine.

a small number came with there speakers and were never designed to do anything else. adding more then becomes an issue.

from your amps point of view, it could be happy pushing 10 watts through a speaker of 8 ohm resistance(impedance) but if you give it two speakers of 8 ohm then it will try and put 10watt through each. This is why adding more speakers causes strain on the amp. There are two ways of wiring the speakers though. parallel or series. parallel ive described, it gives two routes of 8ohm for the amp to put power down. series would be daisychaining the speakers so the amp has to put power through one speaker, then the other before back to the amp. in a row. Pushing through one, then another is twice as hard and means you now only get 5 watt from the 10w amp. This wont warm it up any more than usual. less infact.

Valve amp users should ignore this post.

tbh it sounds like a midi system. do whatever you want with it its no loss lol. If it distaughts or runs hot im sure you will turn it down. Just dont let kids near it as we all know that only volume level 10 exists in there minds 🙂

 

[DistortedVision]

TomW93:Hello, i was just wondering if there are any bad points about connecting four speakers to one Hi-Fi apart from the fact that the speakers will only be getting half the power. The reason why I ask this is because I will be putting some ceiling speakers in my garage, so quality will not really be a major issue, But because I have a triple garage, i would want the speakers to be right the way across the garage so that two people could hear it, but without it being to loud.

You could always get a speaker switch like this QED:

http://www.superfi.co.uk/index.cfm/page/moreinfo.cfm/Product_ID/1382

They do them up to 5 way.