Dual Speaker Power! (maybe)

[ckitz]

Well, my stereo and turntable have been kaput for a while now. The turntable doesn't spin easily, and the receiver will only play out of one speaker.

So my dad was cleaning out his guitar room/den and decided that I could have his turntable/stereo combo with the speakers.

I cart all my turntable, tape deck, and receiver down to the basement and managed to keep from dropping it (it weighed about 100 pounds, and I'm what people would call a wimp). I plug in my dad's turntable, plug the speakers in and it works great.

Now I have an idea. If I stack the my speakers and my dad's speakers, I could have quad power! So I do that, plug one set of speakers into the speaker A jacks, and the other set into the speaker B jacks.

Unfortunately, unlike my receiver, this does not have a speaker A+B setting, so I can only listen to one pair at a time. Is there any way that I can combine the two speakers without reducing the ohmage? (Which my dad says would happen if I just joined the two together)

 

[WardEarth]

I feel like ive just combined them a few times, but maybe it wasn't the best way to do it. Anyways, you system is only as good as its components, you need an amp that runs all 4 speakers. You can probably find a stereo amp for fairly cheap, sounds like that is what your using.

 

[ggunn]

Well, my stereo and turntable have been kaput for a while now. The turntable doesn't spin easily, and the receiver will only play out of one speaker.

So my dad was cleaning out his guitar room/den and decided that I could have his turntable/stereo combo with the speakers.

I cart all my turntable, tape deck, and receiver down to the basement and managed to keep from dropping it (it weighed about 100 pounds, and I'm what people would call a wimp). I plug in my dad's turntable, plug the speakers in and it works great.

Now I have an idea. If I stack the my speakers and my dad's speakers, I could have quad power! So I do that, plug one set of speakers into the speaker A jacks, and the other set into the speaker B jacks.

Unfortunately, unlike my receiver, this does not have a speaker A+B setting, so I can only listen to one pair at a time. Is there any way that I can combine the two speakers without reducing the ohmage? (Which my dad says would happen if I just joined the two together)

It probably won't hurt anything to just double lug two cabinets on each channel, but unless you want to spread them out to put music in two different places, it likely won't buy you anything. It won't necessarily be any louder, if that's what you're thinking. It certainly won't be quadraphonic sound; you'd need two stereo amps and a 4 channel signal source. You can also buy an outboard speaker switch that would give you A, B, A+B, too; they used to have them at Radio Shack, but in A+B mode you do have more load (less ohms) on the amp just like if you double lugged the speakers. There is no way around that.

FWIW, receivers that have a speaker selection switch are just doing the same thing. You could wire the speakers in series to decrease the load on the amp, but I don't know how the passive crossovers in the speakers would react to that; any analog circuit guys out there?

 

[ckitz]

Yeah, I figured that It wouldn't get too much if at all louder. But one pair has some very clear bass and the other pair is a little cheaper, but the treble makes it worth having.