Wiring Two Speakers Together

[joel2762]

Hey Everyone! haven't been here in a while but i'm back finally!. Need a bit of fast help!. Okay. So, My reciever can drive 8-16 ohms each channel. I have two 8 ohm speakers, I want to wire them and use them for center speaker. How can I wire both of these and still be able to drive them?? I just need to know how I can wire these two 8 ohm speakers and be able to drive them. Thanks for help! Amp has a protect feature if you're only guessing :p

[woodman]

Joel:
You can wire the two speakers in either series or, in parallel ... and they will work. Neither is really ideal, however. The parallel connection will cut the overall impedance in half, which your receiver might not like too much (possible damage), and the series connection will lose some efficiency of signal transfer. The latter however would be the preferred one.

In case you don't understand the terms, here are the exact connections to be made:

The + terminal of the amp (receiver) to the + terminal of the first speaker.

The - terminal of that speaker to the + terminal of the second speaker.

The - terminal of the second speaker back to the - terminal on the receiver.

The only remaining question is ..... why do you think you need to do this in the first place?

[joel2762]

Thanks, this works great. Well, I currently don't have a center channel, and I had two 8 ohm speaker here, i'm planning on getting a center channel, but for now I am just going to use these. And instead of having one extra just lying around, I had the idea of wiring them so i could use them both. Thanks for the help.

[This Guy]

Your receiver can't handle 4 ohm loads so don't wire them in parallel. If you hook them up in series, you're not gaining any output, they only way you gain output is by wiring them in parallel. So just run one of them for the center and use the other speaker as a backup incase you damage the one your using.

-Joey

[Quagmire]

I don't advocate wiring speakers in series - at least not for "hi fidelity" home audio systems. If the only consideration were the impedance load on the amp, series wiring would be okay, but that isn't the only consideration. When you wire speakers together in parallel you actually create two seperate circuits. The speakers are not really tied to together electrically, and each speaker is free to act independent of the other one, but so long as they create very similar loads to the amp, they will work in unison fairly well as if they were one speaker. A series wiring scheme ties the speakers together in one circuit so that the speakers are forced to behave as one electrical load. The problem arises as the electrical signal is passed through the first speaker and is changed by this electrical load. The modified signal is then sent on to the second speaker where is is faithfully reproduced. Since neither speaker is reacting to the same electrical signal, they do not work together in unison, but rather work against each other. The result is that these two speakers behave as a single poorly damped speaker, not a desirable sonic trait, and can also create problems in the form of back emf. I'm not saying that it can't be done, but if fidelity is important to you, I'd advise against it. Of couse, if fidelity is truly important to you, then I'd advise against the whole two center speaker concept anyway. Sorry.

Q

[joel2762]

Thank you everyone. As I mentioned before, I had these so I was using them for a temp center channel until I get a real Timber-Matching speaker.