Receiver without speaker (1 Viewer)

[KennethT]

Hi all,

If a home theater receiver is not connected to a speaker will it damage the receiver amp ?

ie. I want to connect a 6.1 receiver to only 2 speakers (front left and right)

 

[ChrisWiggles]

No. You can just set it up in the menus such that you only have two speakers. Select "no" for center, surrounds, and surround back. Sur back usually is unavailable if you turn off the surrounds so you may not have that option. When you eventually add more speakers, which I'm sure you will, then you go back and turn them on in the menu again, and they will be utilized for the appropriate surround sources.

 

[Brian Fellmeth]

It won't harm the receiver even if the menus are not set up.

 

[Jack Briggs]

And you can even sneer at the receiver at the same time and it will be fine.

 

[ChrisWiggles]

Yep. There is not damage risk, although it's a good idea to select all these things in the menus anyway, or your receiver will assume you have all the right speakers, and might automatically go to full 5.1 for movies, or do PLII or something on music without you really realizing it if you're not paying attention, and then you'll be missing sounds, or get a very different result than intended.

 

[Ted Lee]

chris is right. make sure you tell the receiver you're only using two speakers...

 

[KennethT]

Does all receivers support speaker configuration or only higher ends ? I'm looking into buying Yamaha Rxv630. I assume this receive should be capable of doing that ?

 

[ChrisWiggles]

I don't want to say ALL, because I'm sure there's some crazy unit out there that is an exception(maybe some of the all-in-one systems like HTiBs or bose or something), but most all surround receivers come with the speaker setup menus. Regular stereo receivers, do not, because there are only two speakers, and it assumes you are using both sides, and it can't "downmis" it all into mono anyway. I digress. The yamah you are looking at it should have this for certain, as well as time delay, and small/large settings, and loudness adjustments for each channel. All you need to do is to enter the basic speaker menu (consult your manual) and just select yes for front L/R and no for everything else.

In terms of higher end receivers, the flagship units, and pre/pros out there tend to have more adjustments, in terms of crossovers, and crossovers on individual channels, etc. Again, a far cry from just 2-channel stereo. Of course, when you add more speakers to your receiver for HT, you'll not only want to activate them via the menu, but set all the levels the same, along with the time delay (or distance), using an SPL meter, and a yardstick or something.