Impedance help! Desperate for ideas (1 Viewer)

[Clay D. Major]

Hey gang,

I just bought a house that included a very nice Home Theater set-up in the basement with a built-in big-screen and 5 in-wall Sonance speakers. I'm re-racking and re-wiring my own components and will be using the Onkyo TX-SR701 as my HT receiver. Problem is this: The 701 says not to use any speakers with an impedance rating of less than 6 ohms, as it may "harm the unit", but I have NO IDEA if the built-in Sonance speakers in my HT are rated below 6 ohms. There are no serial or model numbers on the back of the speakers that I can find, and they don't seem to want to come out of the walls for easy replacement, so I'm afraid to hook up my Onkyo until I know more about these speakers.

The HT was built around '96, I don't know if that helps. There are two wiring covers in each unit, one marked "5W2J" and "10W20J". Are those 10 and 200 watt references of some kind? What should I do?

Any help would be greatly appreciated. I'm a speaker moron. If these things would come out of the wall easily I'd just replace the suckers.

Thanks!!

Clay D. Major
Tekamah, Nebraska

 

[WayneO]

Have you tried going to their website and looking to see if one of your speakers matches their current offerings? I looked through them all and most are 8 ohm speakers, some are 6, there are no 4 ohm. I think it would be safe to say yours are 6 or 8 ohm based on all their products and should have no problem with your receiver powering them.

 

[Clay D. Major]

Thanks for the quick reply, WayneO. And yeah, that was the first thing I did. Without being able to remove the grilles (they're on there so tight there's not even a seam between them and the wall) I can't really compare the configuration to those models on the website but I'm assuming my Sonances are several generations behind what's available today.

Are in-wall speakers of a certain size rare at below 6 ohms? What possible damage could it do to my HT receiver if I plug them in and it turns out they're sub-6?

Frustrated!!

-cdm