8-ohm amp, 6-ohm speakers - OK?

[jtauxe]

<font color='#000000'>OK, I'm a newbie, and need to know if I'm going to damage something.  I'm also cheap, so please don't suggest ant high-dollar solutions. ;*)

I have a small RadioShaft amp that I got at a garage sale and I want to hook it up to my PC and to some speakers. The amp says it wants 8-ohm speakers, but the speakers I got are 6-ohm.  Is this an accident waiting to happen?

Also, the speakers accept bare wires into their little clamps, but the speaker output from the amp wants RCA plugs. Is there an accepted way to hook this up?

Thanks for any advice!

- John</font>

 

[jtauxe]

<font color='#000000'>Hi, all!

My (little, old) amp has RCA plugs for speakers connections, but the speakers want bare wires to the red and black clamps. Is there an accepted way to hook these up?

I am considering just cutting off one end of the RCA-terminated wire, but don't know if 1) there is a polarity issue to be concerned with, and 2) if I'd executing a real no-no, killing either the amp, the speakers, or myself.

- John</font>

 

[Audioholics]

<font color='#000080'>What amplifier do you have?

If the RCAs on the back are truly for hooking up directly to the speakers, then you are correct, clipping a standard RCA cable is exactly what you should do.

You can check polarity by using a 9 volt battery. Take a length of cable and snip both ends. connect it to your speaker and touch the other ends to a 9V battery. The positive lead on the 9V is the small one. It should cause the speaker to push OUTWARD.

This will not hurt your speakers provided you don't walk away and leave the battery attached!

Make sure your speakers are wired in phase.

If they are OUT of phase, you should experience a strange feeling in your ears when placing your head evenly between both speakers and listening to a CD. If they are IN phase, they shoudl sound fine.

You can just switch the wires back and forth on one of the speakers to check.</font>

 

[Audioholics]

<font color='#000080'>Please don't double post.

Provided your amp is well ventiliated and you don't play your speakers too loud you should be fine with 6-ohm speakers.

[Edit: merged posts]</font>

 

[jtauxe]

<font color='#000000'>Thanks for your reply.

Sorry about the double post. After I had written the first one, I realized that it was really two questions, and should be two different messages with different headers, to attract different answers. Ah, well -- didn't quite work out as I intended.

I don't expect to play anything loud - these are 20 W speakers intended for an office. I'm hooking them up to the amp which is in turn wired to the output of the PC's sound card. The speakers are Yamaha NS U50 that I found new for $20. They seem pretty nice for bookshelf speakers at that price. It seems that they are intended to be used with Yamaha's CAVIT DP-U50 external sound card/amp thing, which looks nice but is a bit over my budget at $100 (like I said, I'm cheap).

The amp - I don't have it in front of me, but it's a small Realistic job, only about 8 in wide, 2 in tall, and 6 in deep. It's very similar to the RCA SA-155. If I burn it up it's not a huge deal, either. What I don't want to do is damage the speakers.</font>

 

[pondej]

hey all

i have just bought these whafedale speakers Xarus 5000 that are 6 ohms and am about to buy a amplifier that is 8ohms does this matter will it work?

any feed back asap would be appreciated thanks.
jordan