Newbie Question - 4 speaker system - do I need amp with 4 sets of L/R terminals?

[soutz]

Hey All - as my post states, I'm pretty much a newbie with what is probably a really easy situation to deal with.

Would TRULY appreciate any suggestions.

When we bought our home we inherited speakers and wiring through our house. For the longest time we've just used a pretty beefy bookshelf system to send a signal out to 2 of the 4 speakers in our house. That bookshelf system only has two sets of L/R speaker terminals, whereas our house has stereo L/R wiring for 4 speakers.

The speakers that came already mounted in the house are 4 older BOSE 301 Series IV that sound plenty decent to our non-audiophile ears. Specifics on those speakers are - 8 ohm, 75 watts/channel - and they stipulate on the back of each speaker that they like rec/amps with 10-150 watts/channel.

And again, the speaker wiring in our home supports 4 separate speakers, with speaker wire coming out to a single point in the living room, presumably where the stereo system would live.

So, we have two sets of 4 channel speaker wire to deal with. I'm assuming that means I need a receiver or amp with 8 individual terminals (4 pairs of L/R) to send out a signal to each speaker, correct?

The above point is my biggest point of confusion actually - since I see so many receivers, amps and DAC components out there that just seem to have one or two stereo L/R speaker terminal pairs on them. Seems like I need 4 L/R sets, which means 8 terminals. Or, can I go out to 4 speakers from just two L/R terminal pairs? I know, this is where the newbie in me is really showing.

Once I have that answer I think it will be much easier. We are still deciding on how we might source in our music - and may very likely put together a system that allows us to come right out of our MacBook Pro and/or iPad/iPhone. I've been looking at some nice components from PeachTree Audio. They might ultimately be a bit more than I want to spend, but I'm having more luck in finding great potential components than I am in figuring out the answer to my simple, silly question. Does the device sending my signal out to my speakers have to have enough terminals for all 8 wires I have (4 speaker wire stereo pairs)?

I know, I'm a loser.

But I really appreciate your help everyone!

 

[Grador]

Are all these speakers in one room, as to be used for home theater, or are they spread about for whole-home audio? If they're spread about what you're going to want to look for is a "distribution amp." These are moderately low power (usually amps with many channels to be used to power speakers throughout a house. I've linked you to an example of one below. You'll see that it is 12 channel, and on the back has 12 inputs. You can use a few "Y- cables" from your ipad in order to split it out into 4xleft and 4xright.

HTD DMA-1240 High Efficiency Multi-Channel Amplifier

 

[ImcLoud]

A few pictures would be worth 1000 posts..

Like grad said is this all in one room or in all different rooms?

What is your budget?

What do you want to do exactly, play music though the speakers, play your movies and tv through them, or both?

If you just want to play music which is what it sounds like to me there are a bunch of options but will need to know what you want to spend either way, answer them questions and you will get your answer