Wiring Speakers in Parallel or Series?

Question

I have home speakers that I'm wiring. My reciever has 4 speaker slots, problem is I have 6 speakers. My reciever has a 8 ~ 16 Ohm impedance. My speaker sets have 6, 8, and 8 ohm impedance respectively. My question is, which is safer, wiring parallel, just shoving in 2 speaker wires into each slot. Or in series, wiring a red and black from different speakers and a red and black into the reciever.

Answer 1

What model is the receiver / amp? (To determine if the outputs are in series or parallel anyway.)

Unfortunately you can't get high enough impedance for the receiver wiring either side in parallel - 8 ohm is quite a high minimum, and wiring anything in parallel is going to reduce the impedance compared to a single box. Since the highest impedance of any of your boxes is equal to the minimum of your amp, there's really nowhere you can go with it.

Have you tried listening tests to determine if it's worth connecting up all three boxes? With attaching multiple boxes of differing models you could be inducing all sorts of acoustic pitfalls, and as you'd have to wire them in series, each additional speaker box will increase the impedance and reduce the power output of the amp, so it might be worth having a listen to the three and see if you could be better off with just one or two pairs of them.

Wiring in parallel decreases impedance present at the amplifier, wiring in series increases. Too low an impedance will damage your amp, as the low resistance is effectively tending to shorting out your amplifier, too high an impedance will just reduce the power delivered to the speakers, and result in quieter and quieter overall output. I've never known of too high an impedance to be damaging to an amplifier.

Answer 2

????? What? XP

Answer 3

WHY do you NEED to use ALL your speakers?

That's the question you should ask yourself......

If you think that adding speakers increases volume, it does not....

In fact, it actually becomes LESS efficient and certainly dangerous to the amplifier output/drive circuits.....

Put your Favorite 4 speakers on that unit, and keep the other 2 to use when you get a Dolby 7.1 amp in your home....

Those 4 will provide clean, efficient sound without "coloring" it with a second set of speakers causing phase mismatch....

Answer 4

Here are some formulas you can use to determine whether this will work or not.

The formula for finding the total impedance of a circuit in parallel is Rtotal=(R1 * R2 ... * Rn) / (R1 + R2 ... + Rn), where Rn is the impedance of each speaker.

The formula for finding the total impedance of a circuit in series is Rtotal=(R1 + R2 ... + Rn), where Rn is the impedance for each speaker.

Based on this I would say wire in series.

Answer 5

If you hook them up in parallel, your amp would "see" about 3.4 ohms [(r1*r2) / (r1+r2)]. The speakers will also get different current since they have different resistance. Normally, you would hook up two 8 ohm speakers in parallel to show the amp 4 ohms impedance but each speaker would get the same power. 4 ohms to any good quality amp isn't a problem.

Hooked up in series, your amp will see 14 ohms.

Normally, a 14 ohm load would be too much for an amp to properly power.  In your case, since your rated to 16 ohms, I think you should go with a series connection.

Answer 6

This all depends on the six you to have break them down in three area's.  highs,mids, lows.   subswoofers are always for rear and tweeters are for front. the size of you speakers make a differents. Do this, all low bass should go to rear and rest should be front. Running the speakers in a series are only for subwoofers. ohms are downloaded to a smaller ohm which can cause the amp or powersupply to get hot and quit working. I suggest to find the amps ohm load specs before putting speakers in a series.  " dual voice-coal are made to run in a series"

Answer 7

if you go with series it lower the sound output.  it could cause damage to your amp also.

Answer 8

Match impedances as close as you can,

2 8 ohm units in series to the 16 Ohm output is ideal.

Answer 9

Yes, TV-TECH man is right.  If you REALLY need to run more than four speakers, then buy a separate amp.  I would only connect ONE speaker to ONE output and keep it simple.

Many of the questions here at Yahoo answers are about people driving themselves crazy trying to make equipment do what it was not intended to do.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kludge