5.1 Pioneer feeding 3.1 Klipsch Wiring Config question.

[vVSHARKVv]

If a receiver only puts out a true 80x5 wpc @ 8 ohms, and will be mated to (2) bi-wirable Towers, rated @ 150 RMS / 600 Peak.

Would if be safe to use the (4) Front Channel terminals in conjunction with the (4) Rear Channels terminals. To bring their RMS up to 160. So the Towers aren't starving, while the Receiver isn't glowing cherry red from a 3 minute pumbling?

 

[NINaudio]

Receivers, in most cases, are not made to have their amp channels bridged like that. Most modern Klipsch speakers are pretty efficient and it's highly unlikely that you will need much more than a few watts to reach obnoxiously loud levels. I would wire one channel to each speaker and not even bother with bi wiring them as it's typically a useless marketing gimmick.

 

[TLS Guy]

If a receiver only puts out a true 80x5 wpc @ 8 ohms, and will be mated to (2) bi-wirable Towers, rated @ 150 RMS / 600 Peak.

Would if be safe to use the (4) Front Channel terminals in conjunction with the (4) Rear Channels terminals. To bring their RMS up to 160. So the Towers aren't starving, while the Receiver isn't glowing cherry red from a 3 minute pumbling?

If you do that, you will be looking for a new receiver as soon as you turn it on. It ill blow fatally in a fraction of a second.

 

[Eppie]

To be more precise, if you leave the jumpers connected on the speaker binding posts, you will blow the amps. As mentioned above, multi-channel receivers are not designed to have their amplifiers bridged to increase available power. You need an amplifier that is specifically designed to have its outputs bridged (like some Crown and Behringer amps).

If you remove the jumpers on the speaker binding posts, then you can bi-amp. I assume that you mean bi-amp as opposed to bi-wire. When you bi-wire, two sets of speaker wire run from the same speaker terminals on the amplifier. There is no good reason to bi-wire as you are still jumpering the upper and lower speaker terminals on the speakers; the only difference is that they are jumpered at the amplifier instead of at the speaker. Power delivery to the speaker is the same.

When you bi-amp, you run separate speaker wires from separate amplifier terminals to the upper and lower speaker terminals on the speakers. The jumper connecting the upper and lower speaker terminals must be removed. In general, members here do not recommend bi-amping. The tweeters take very little power so putting them on a separate amplifier has little benefit. You are better off getting sufficient amplification to drive the entire speaker.

The other issue is that with a multi-channel receiver (AVR), the content coming from the rear channels is different from that coming from the front channels. If you want to bi-amp with an AVR, you would have to permanently leave the AVR in "all channel stereo" mode to ensure that the rear channels get the same content as the front channels and the center channel would likely not get processed properly.

Also, you should not try and match amplifier RMS ratings to speaker RMS ratings. Speaker RMS ratings are simply maximum power handling ratings. The proper method is to calculate how much power is required to reach a certain decibel level at a certain distance, as the rating depends upon the speaker efficiency. You can use this calculator for that purpose.

If the room is large and you need more power than the AVR can deliver, you should add external amps, assuming that the AVR has pre-amp outputs available.