Well, they DID work for about 3 years! Here's the story: bought a house 5 years ago with built in Bose Invisible Stereo whatever - built in speakers for surround sound and in other rooms. When I got the house though, the previous owner had disconnected the large wall mounted amps and run the speaker wires straight to behind the TV area. There was no model number on the speakers - but I did read that many Bose speakers are lower ohm rating. I hooked it up to a new Sony AV Receiver and it worked fine for 3 years - until NYE when my son really cranked it up. (The Bose speakers were only in the rear. The Bose speakers in other rooms in the house worked for a bit then blew the amp I was using.) The speakers stopped working and the receiver would go in to protect mode and shut down at any volume. Disconnected the rear speakers and the receiver works fine. Hooked up some small 6 ohm Panasonic speakers to test, and while I get very little volume from them, they put out a bit of sound. The plan is to install the Panasonic speakers and replace the AV Receiver with a new one. The old one can be saved in a 2.1 application. I'm shocked the system worked so well for so long! 1.2 ohms?!!!
Never run speakers at less than the amp is designed for. Ohm is "resistance". So when you run speakers at less than the amp rating, the flow is "too easy", very simplistically speaking. The amp has to ironically work harder when this happens. On bass amps people do cab splits and ohms split /matches all the time. But it's a formula when they do this, that has to be followed correctly. But it's the same story on those amps if you rig it up so that the total ohm rating from speakers is way lower than the amp is designed for or set at. If I'm wrong I'm sure the TB gurus will be here any moment...
Oh, I'm very well versed on ohm ratings and amps/speakers. The rear speakers of a surround sound system typically get very little signal, so it wasn't a problem for years. Obviously wasn't safe to crank up the volume. Lesson learned. Amp still working but cant hear much from the rear channel through normal speakers so will be replacing the receiver as well. People on here often ask about hooking up a lower ohm rating than their amp can handle. Some people say they've done it without problem. But the math will always catch up - when the signal strength is increased things go south fast.
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