Hooking up 2nd set of surrounds in my 5.1 setup?? (1 Viewer)

[Dan Da Silva]

Hey guys I was just wondering I have a Sony DB-940 reciver and I wanted to know if it would be okay if I hooked up another set of surrouds to the same outs that I am currently using for my surrounds. So I would have 2 right surrounds and 2 left surrounds in my system. If anyone can tell me the pros and cons of doing this I would appreciate it. One more thing all 4 speakers are 8 ohms. Thanks guys.

 

[henning hoffmann]

I don't know if your receiver can handle it or not, but I'd say try it and see.

I hooked up a 2nd set of surrounds using another amplifier (using the surround signals from pre-out on my receiver into an extra amp). I just did it as a test with some speakers from my upstairs system at first, and yesterday I bought dedicated speakers for this purpose (Paradigm Atoms). Now I just have to run speaker cable through my basement so I don't have to string it across the floor (like I did for testing purposes)!

I liked the results. The weird thing was, some surround effects seemed to come from behind me (the new speakers), and some seemed to come from the side (the old speakers). You might say that's weird, but I thought it was a pretty cool effect, usually reflecting well what was going on on-screen. Go figure.

henning

 

[Mike LS]

You need to check to see what impedance your receiver is rated for before doing something like this.
I can't remember the formula for figuring what the impedance load of the speaker would drop to, but it almost seems like it's more than half, so that would put the surround channels at 4 or less ohms. I doubt that your receiver would handle that at any high levels.
Granted, for surround channels, it would probably be ok, but if you feel you need to hook up extra speakers, I'd suggest running them in series instead of connecting both speakers to the same posts on the receiver.
Hook them up like this and repeat for the other side:
Connect a wire from the + terminal of your receiver to the + terminal of the first speaker. The run a wire from the - terminal of that speaker to the + terminal of the next speaker in line. Run a wire from the - terminal of the second speaker back to the - terminal of the receiver.
This will actually raise the impedance load, so it won't run the risk of harming your receiver. It will cut the strength of the signal to each speaker, so you'll have to recalibrate to compensate for that.
I've put a link to a crude drawing of this setup at....
www.geocities.com/hometheaterwizard

 

[Zack_b]

hate to dig up an older post like this, but im a noobie and was searching for an answer to one of my questions which was hooking up 2 sets of speakers to 2 reciever outputs, only mine was for fronts, not surrounds, and came acrross this post. my exact question, but no for sure answer. can someone please comment on this? i would like to hook up my towers and satelites to the front for a wider sound stage, etc. any comments/ideas on this?

thanks,

zack

 

[Wes]

I have two sets of 8 ohm L/R fronts and two sets of 8 ohms L/R surrounds and also two EX speakers all ran in parallel and have never had any problems. Sure my amps may run a bit hotter and may not last as long but by that time it will be upgrade time anyway.

Dan,

I would take it a step further and run a Dolby Prologic reciever on your Surrounds and make the second set of surrounds the EX channel!

Wes