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Wire 6 speakers with 7.1 receiver? (1 Viewer)

AndrewErickson

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I have a Harman Kardon AVR 325 and I have speakers for a 6.1 setup. The receiver has binding posts for a rear surround left and a rear surround right. However, I only have one speaker for my rear surround.

Do I wire the speaker to both pairs of binding posts to get all the rear surround info going to the one speaker or will that cause problems. The speaker is 8 ohms.
 

John Garcia

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Both rear center channels are the same information, so you will not lose anything by wiring just one.
 

The Void

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I have the same receiver set up for only 5.1 surround. I haven't messed with using the two back channels yet but I may be able to help you.

From what I understand, on a 7.1 receiver the surround back speakers are getting the same audio signal. The Surround Back L/R is a single channel played across two speakers. Because of this wouldn't it be possible to just one of the channels up for the surround back speaker? (I doubt which channel you use really matters).

Can someone either confirm or deny this as a possible solution?
 

Thomas Smailus

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I would say, with the currently available software on DVD's, as a 6.1 signal is the most available on DTS-ES tracks, your reciever might well send the same signal to the two back speakers in the 7.1 system.

However, this is not necessarily the case. A processor/amp system can send different signals to the rear left and rear right speakers. It depends on what sort of processor you have an how it is set up. If you processor/reciever has the option for you to tell it in setup that you will be running as a 6.1 system, then do so, and connect the back speaker to the appropriate amp output (may be one specific one, or either one). It is possible, that a 7.1 system processes the sound of a 5.1 or 6.1 signal to generate the two back channels from a combination of the left and right surrounds and either a discrete back (6.1 signal) or self-extracted rear. In these cases, the rears will be different from left to right. As I said, check your recievers documentation - it will tell you (or it at least should if well written) how to wire up only 6 speakers and set that up correcty.

Do not, however, wire one speaker, simultaneously, to two different amplifier outputs - that can be a problem if the two outputs are driven by two independant pathways and amplifiers.
 

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