Hooking up ceiling speakers to receiver

[houston]

I just bought a new house which came with in-ceiling speakers and I planned to buy a receiver with the intention of hooking up the speakers. The receiver that I plan to buy seems to have two inlets (black and red) for speaker connections. However, the speakers seem to have 4 wires (black, red, white and green). I will appreciate any suggestion as to whether I can use the ceiling speakers with the receiver (Onkyo TX-SR606).

 

[Adam]

Welcome to the forum!

It sounds like you are describing a wall plate that has four binding posts on it that are colored black, red, white, and green. I would guess that wall plate connects to two speakers (so, there are two connections per speaker).

How many speakers are there in the ceiling?

 

[highfigh]

I just bought a new house which came with in-ceiling speakers and I planned to buy a receiver with the intention of hooking up the speakers. The receiver that I plan to buy seems to have two inlets (black and red) for speaker connections. However, the speakers seem to have 4 wires (black, red, white and green). I will appreciate any suggestion as to whether I can use the ceiling speakers with the receiver (Onkyo TX-SR606).

Hi. Speaker connections are 'outputs', by the way. RCA jacks for sources are 'inputs'. Gotta keep the signal path straight, you know.

You should be able to use the ceiling speakers with no problem, although you should find out how they were wired. If all of the speaker wiring comes back to one place, it's easy. If they daisy-chained them, it'll be harder. How many ceiling speakers? If it's only two, the red/black are for the right speaker (+/-, respectively) and the white/green is for the left speaker (+/-, respectively). If the sound lacks bass, reverse the white/green. Some installers/contractors do it that way.

If they installed more than a couple of pairs, you will need some kind of impedance compensation device but the Onkyo should be fine.

 

[houston]

Thanks

Thanks Adam and highfigh for your inputs. There are four speakers in the ceiling. There are four sets of wires, coming out of the wall, each with black, red, white and green wires.

 

[highfigh]

Thanks Adam and highfigh for your inputs. There are four speakers in the ceiling. There are four sets of wires, coming out of the wall, each with black, red, white and green wires.

Take a AA battery and connect the ends to the pairs I mentioned before. If you hear a pop from each pair, the speakers are the dual voice coil type and need to be connected as stereo. This also means that if you don't need to control them individually, either they'll need to be wired in series-parallel or through an impedance matching device (fixed level, volume control or speaker switcher/volume controller) to make the receiver happy. If the four speakers are in the same room, it's possible that they just used 4 conductor instead of 2 for everything but you'll need to verify this. If they're in different areas of the house, they're for distributed audio and level control of each is preferable, but not absolutely necessary.

Fixed level:
http://www.parts-express.com/pe/showdetl.cfm?Partnumber=182-820&FTR=WH10SDH&CFID=3023429&CFTOKEN=62282562

Volume control:
http://www.parts-express.com/pe/showdetl.cfm?Partnumber=300-552

Speaker switch/volume controller:
http://www.parts-express.com/pe/showdetl.cfm?Partnumber=300-610