8 ohm to 4 ohm

[dcamp]

How efficient/safe would 2 epos els3 be ---these are 4 ohm speakers---(used as surrounds and some music) hooked to onkyo tx ds494--55w per channel --8 ohm receiver???

 

[agarwalro]

You might be ok at very low to low volume but it is not recommended to use 4 ohm speakers on a receiver rated only for 8 ohms. The higher current/ power required will cause the receiver to go into protection mode very easily and you may even end up damaging it.

 

[MichaelJHuman]

I used to hook up two 8 ohm speakers to my Yamaha's A/B posts. And never saw any issues. But does Yamaha do something to ensure you are not feeding the RX a 4ohm load when you do this?

 

[markw]

I used to hook up two 8 ohm speakers to my Yamaha's A/B posts. And never saw any issues. But does Yamaha do something to ensure you are not feeding the RX a 4ohm load when you do this?

I'm assuming you had a pair of eight ohm speakers hooked up to both the A and B speaker terminals, right?

Several possibilities.

First, Yamaha connected the two sets in series, not parallel. that's a smart and safe way of preventing too low an impedance

Second, not all amps are created and speced equal and you got lucky.

Third, all of the above.

 

[MDS]

Onkyo receivers automatically switch to stereo mode if you do A+B. It will still be a 4 Ohm load because they are wired in parallel but it does prevent you from trying to run two sets of fronts, the center, and surrounds all at the same time. I think that is actually a reasonable approach to protect people from themselves.