Receivers and Mono Button

[JackVa1]

Back in the day, my Sansui 2000 Receiver had a Mono button on it that took the two channels and split them into one channel.

Seems to me that if you had this capability in a receiver, it would save you from running 4 wires to your ceiling or wall speakers to do a whole house sound installation. They sell speaker for this purpose today and you pay a premium.

Do any receivers still have this capability? (by the way, My 2000 still works pretty good in my garage)

Thanks

 

[m_vanmeter]

I believe the "mono buttion" had more to do with the FM receiver section than the amplifier. When stereo FM reception is poor, if you combined the sidebands for a mono FM signal you could often get enough signal increase to have full quieting FM reception....in monophonic rather than stereo mode. The amplifier section was still two channels, they just both had the same signal.

The problem with just adding speakers to the amplifier channels is that they can combine impedances in such a manner to greatly lower the overall speaker system impedance to a point the amplifiers will be ruined by trying to output far too much power into the very small load of the multiple speakers. I know it's difficult to think of more speakers as a "smaller impedance load", but that's the way parallel speaker resistances work.

 

[MDS]

The mono button is a thing of the past but many receivers do feature a mono listening mode with options to direct the sound entirely to the center channel or spread it to the front left and right speakers.

 

[chadnliz]

Mono switches are still popular with more Hi-End gear, the mass market products are hit and miss.