running multip. speakers on one channel?

[rolyasm]

My parents are getting a receiver, probably a 7.1, but they only want to use it for stereo listening. However, they have speakers in several rooms that they don't have hooked up. They are basic 6" in wall speakers, 8 ohm. If the receiver they get can handle 4 ohms, could I run say the center channel to their bedroom and run two speakers off of it without burning up the amp? As long as I don't exceed the ohm rating, shouldn't it be okay? The other option is to get a stereo receiver, and a seperate amp, but they are trying to keep it really simple. My plan was to just have the one receiver run everything and throw a volume control into each room for the speakers. So I guess I would have a pair of wire, red/black, running to the volume control from each channel, and then 2 pairs of wire running out to the speakers. Bad Idea? Thanks for any input.
So the surround channel left would power 2 speakers in the bedroom, the surround right would power 2 speakers in the living room, and so on.
Roly

 

[bandphan]

major headache if you go this route

 

[jcPanny]

House speakers

Make sure you get impedance matching volume controls for each room. With the speakers wired to the IMVCs, use the zone 2 feature of the receiver or 7 channel stereo mode to engage the house speakers. If you don't have enough power, get an outboard amp to power the house speakers. A behringer A500 will give you over 200 Watts into 4 ohms and could power several pairs of speakers.

 

[rolyasm]

Bandphan, why a major headache?

JC, yes, I was planning on using the 5 or 7 channel mode when I ran all of the speakers. Are the IMVC's rated at a certain ohm, like four ohm, or do they "match" the impedance as it changes? I was thinking of using an inexpensive receiver, even something like the OnkyoTXSR575 at 80 watts per channel and would just look for some speakers that are easy to drive, like Klipsch. Thanks.
Roly

 

[bandphan]

why not get a unit thats designed for multi channel, it can only cause problems if settings get changed and power gets mis managed,ht recievers are not designed for whole house audio... try http://nilesaudio.com/product.php?prodID=SI-1230&recordID=Multichannel Power Amplifiers&categoryID=System Integration Amplifiers&catcdID=4&prdcdID=FG00737

cost would be similar.

 

[jcPanny]

Impedance matching

The impedance matching VCs (or speaker selector) has a jumper where you specify whether 1 pair, 2, pairs, 4 pairs, etc. are hooked up to the receiver or amp and makes sure that the amp sees a 6-8 ohm impedance. If you connected 2 or more pairs of speakers in parallel to the receiver without the impedance matching circuit it will overheat and go into shutdown.

One of the limitations of your proposed setup is the volume in each of the rooms will change whenever you change the receiver level and volume in the main room. The VCs in each room would help but they would interact with the receiver volume.

 

[rolyasm]

Thanks for all the input. The reason I was straying from a Niles or Nuvo or other multizone system was the cost. My parents don't care if the same input is playing though the house, they won't switch sources from the different rooms and they don't care about even having volume control in each room. So it seemed like a lot of waste to get a full system. I could even just use one channel for each room and limit it to seven speakers. Use the 7 channel steroe mode and I think they would be happy. I like the idea of the volume controls in a few rooms. Thanks.
Roly