How to Connect Multiple Speakers to Your A/V Receiver
Okay, so you have experience with connecting your outdoor stereo speakers. Speakers are made to handle specific wattage’s. This is the number that most people pay attention to when picking out their speakers.
Speakers are advertised with the wattage they can handle on the front of the package. Speaker wattage is not what we are most worried about when it comes to hooking up multiple sets or pairs of speakers.
The real killer is the resistance that comes with added speakers. Most home speakers, whether they are for in your home or outdoor speakers, are rated for 8 ohms resistance. Some other options available for outdoor speakers and car audio speakers are: 6, 4, 2 or even 0 ohm resistance. Most home stereo A/V Receivers are rated at 8 ohms. You can get A/V Receivers that are rated for 6, 4, 2 and 0 ohms as well.
Think of it like this: one speaker connected to your A/V Receiver is like hooking your garden hose up to the faucet, the pressure from the waterline feeding your house is, let’s say, 8 ohms.
The pressure flowing through the hose allows the water to shoot out the end about four feet before it hits the ground. Now if we add speakers to the line, it is like taking that hose and doubling the inside hole diameter.
Then half that when you add another speaker and double the size of that hose. The resistance goes down by half when you add another speaker, which requires your A/V Receiver to work 2x harder to get the same amount of wattage to both speakers on that line. Add a third speaker, it works 3x harder.
Add a fourth speaker, it works 4x harder. To sum it all up; if you add speakers, you decrease the resistance on the A/V Receiver causing it to have to produce the same amount of wattage, faster and harder. A/V Receivers are designed to work at certain resistance levels only.
Don’t worry, most stereo home A/V Receivers have two sets of outputs labelled “A” and “B” which you can hook a second set of speakers up to and you don’t need to worry about resistance issues. There are ways to keep the A/V Receiver you have and still add more speakers without blowing it up from the resistance.
It has to do with running speakers with different resistances in series or parallel to match your A/V Receivers, but that is for another time I think! So join me next time and I will take you on another amazing outdoor speaker journey!
Related Posted Articles
- Samsung LCD HDTV Reviews
Speakers are advertised with the wattage they can handle on the front of the package. Speaker wattage is not what we are most worried about when it comes to hooking up multiple sets or pairs of speakers.
The real killer is the resistance that comes with added speakers. Most home speakers, whether they are for in your home or outdoor speakers, are rated for 8 ohms resistance. Some other options available for outdoor speakers and car audio speakers are: 6, 4, 2 or even 0 ohm resistance. Most home stereo A/V Receivers are rated at 8 ohms. You can get A/V Receivers that are rated for 6, 4, 2 and 0 ohms as well.
Think of it like this: one speaker connected to your A/V Receiver is like hooking your garden hose up to the faucet, the pressure from the waterline feeding your house is, let’s say, 8 ohms.
The pressure flowing through the hose allows the water to shoot out the end about four feet before it hits the ground. Now if we add speakers to the line, it is like taking that hose and doubling the inside hole diameter.
Then half that when you add another speaker and double the size of that hose. The resistance goes down by half when you add another speaker, which requires your A/V Receiver to work 2x harder to get the same amount of wattage to both speakers on that line. Add a third speaker, it works 3x harder.
Add a fourth speaker, it works 4x harder. To sum it all up; if you add speakers, you decrease the resistance on the A/V Receiver causing it to have to produce the same amount of wattage, faster and harder. A/V Receivers are designed to work at certain resistance levels only.
Don’t worry, most stereo home A/V Receivers have two sets of outputs labelled “A” and “B” which you can hook a second set of speakers up to and you don’t need to worry about resistance issues. There are ways to keep the A/V Receiver you have and still add more speakers without blowing it up from the resistance.
It has to do with running speakers with different resistances in series or parallel to match your A/V Receivers, but that is for another time I think! So join me next time and I will take you on another amazing outdoor speaker journey!
Related Posted Articles
- Samsung LCD HDTV Reviews
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