old marantz

[shoe6651]

Some advice please. I have a Model 27 Marantz, 30 RMS per channel, with 2 speakers, all bought in 1970. It is in a 25 x 25 room and sounds good with classical music. For better sound, similar to surround sound, can I add 2 good speakers so that I will have 4 speakers, one in each corner. With this arrangement, what speakers do you advise and can I use a switching system so that television and stereo can be played on same speakers. Or, should I start over with a system that will provide surround sound and high quality audio. We don't have any sound stores within 100 miles so that I can shop and compare, other than circuit city, Sam,s, etc. I don't want Bose. Any suggestions are appreciated.

[markw]

You have outputs on the back of the receiver for two speaker sets and buttons on the front to select them. Problem 1 pretty much solved, but with some cautions.

1) Are your current speakers 8 ohms? Correct answer is "yes" but check to be sure. It's fairly important for running more than one pair of speakers. If they are less, you may potentially have problems.

2) Assuming the answer to # 1 is yes, then virtually any 8 ohm speaker will work for the second pair.

Try to keep both sets of speakers as efficient as possible since you've only got 30 watts per channel to play with and, at high levels, you could run out of power,

Reasoning being that two sets of 8 ohm speakers will result in a load on the amp of 4 ohms and most amps don't like this, particularly an amp with low power.

As for which speakers, you might want to provide a price range.

As for playing the TV through them, I'm a bit unclear. Do you playing the TV through the receiver or just the speakers?

If you mean the former, you can take the red/white audio jacks from the back of the TV and plug them into he receiver's "AUX" jacks. If these are currently in use, you can pick up an inexpensive switch at Wal-Mart or an electronics place that will allow you to select from several devices into that one input.

If you mean just the speakers, I'm outta ideas.