Super basic speaker question

[haukeg]

Hi, I am looking to answer a very basic speaker wiring question. I have pre-wired speaker wire into my ceiling in my living room to a wall plate before some recent drywall work. However, I only ran two wires for a 2 speaker stereo setup (1 right and one left). I realize this might not have been the best application for general music ambience, since when you are standing below onbe speaker you may be overwhelmed with one channel and hear unbalanced sound.

I know another option is a dual channel speaker like the "ICE640TT High Performance Pro Single Stereo Speaker" (search on google - first result, I cannot post links in the forum yet).

But since I wired only 2 lines into my attic/ceiling, I cant do this.

Unless I wire to one speaker, then "daisy chain" to the other one (essentially wiring one speaker to the other and then to the wall). Is this a stupid idea? I assume so.

Any advice on a solution, comments on having two seperate channel speakers and directing tweeters for good balance, or should I just put one dual voice in the room and skip the two option (but that might not cover as much area with sound).

Also, any advice/reviews of these ICE speakers (I think theyre made by Phoenix Gold).

Thanks!

 

[lsiberian]

Hi, I am looking to answer a very basic speaker wiring question. I have pre-wired speaker wire into my ceiling in my living room to a wall plate before some recent drywall work. However, I only ran two wires for a 2 speaker stereo setup (1 right and one left). I realize this might not have been the best application for general music ambience, since when you are standing below onbe speaker you may be overwhelmed with one channel and hear unbalanced sound.

I know another option is a dual channel speaker like the "ICE640TT High Performance Pro Single Stereo Speaker" (search on google - first result, I cannot post links in the forum yet).

But since I wired only 2 lines into my attic/ceiling, I cant do this.

Unless I wire to one speaker, then "daisy chain" to the other one (essentially wiring one speaker to the other and then to the wall). Is this a stupid idea? I assume so.

Any advice on a solution, comments on having two seperate channel speakers and directing tweeters for good balance, or should I just put one dual voice in the room and skip the two option (but that might not cover as much area with sound).

Also, any advice/reviews of these ICE speakers (I think theyre made by Phoenix Gold).

Thanks!

Daisy chaining is a bad idea in most cases. I would only suggest it to folks who are very electronically savvy and understand speakers and amplifiers. I would hate to see you pop an amp or speaker.

 

[agarwalro]

You can daisy chain speakers into one amp if you put an impedance matching volume control between the amp output and speaker chain. Something like this, http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2421203&CAWELAID=253524917

But even then, you cannot mix the two speaker level connection. This is sure to blow your amp.

I have no idea if this will impact the receiver, but if you have line level zone 2 out, put a Y-adapter on that and take a single combined line level signal and put a reverse Y-adapter. Now if you feed this to an external amp you will have L+R combined out on 2 line level connections, which can then be amplified and that you can feed to each speaker to get dual-mono.

This goves into the Receiver Zone 2

this connects to the first one and a normal RCA stereo cable goes into the 2 inputs of an outboard amp.

 

[highfigh]

Hi, I am looking to answer a very basic speaker wiring question. I have pre-wired speaker wire into my ceiling in my living room to a wall plate before some recent drywall work. However, I only ran two wires for a 2 speaker stereo setup (1 right and one left). I realize this might not have been the best application for general music ambience, since when you are standing below onbe speaker you may be overwhelmed with one channel and hear unbalanced sound.

I know another option is a dual channel speaker like the "ICE640TT High Performance Pro Single Stereo Speaker" (search on google - first result, I cannot post links in the forum yet).

But since I wired only 2 lines into my attic/ceiling, I cant do this.

Unless I wire to one speaker, then "daisy chain" to the other one (essentially wiring one speaker to the other and then to the wall). Is this a stupid idea? I assume so.

Any advice on a solution, comments on having two seperate channel speakers and directing tweeters for good balance, or should I just put one dual voice in the room and skip the two option (but that might not cover as much area with sound).

Also, any advice/reviews of these ICE speakers (I think theyre made by Phoenix Gold).

Thanks!

Assuming you didn't buy the speakers yet, you may be able to wire them without a problem. Some dual voice coil speakers have a 4/8 ohm switch on them, which would allow you to wire two in series (with the switch in the 4 Ohm setting) and still let the amp see the load that makes it happy. This would be easy to do if you ran both wires past the speaker that's closest to the system and drilled a hole that's larger than the wire you ran to the other speaker and didn't fasten the wire to the framing. If the attic allows you to get to the backside of both speakers, this it not a problem but someone will have to go up there to crawl around and run another wire. Using both channels to wire two dual voice coil speakers in series will give you both channels at each location but for surround, this isn't needed unless you would have used a dipole/bipole speaker anyway. If the speakers aren't more than about 8' apart, the ceiling is normal 8' height and the people are seated, it shouldn't be a big problem. Standing, it's another story. When possible, use dual voice coil speakers whenever distributing audio, or run it mono. In cases like this, separation isn't needed but even coverage is.

This situation is the main reason I recommend 4 conductor speaker cabling be run in most surround systems and all distributed audio applications.

 

[haukeg]

Gracias! So...

Thanks all. Sounds like the simplest and possibly most appropriate approach is to run a mono signal to single voice speakers?

I was planning on powering my Logitech Squeezebox Duet using an Audiosource AMP-100 amplifier. Does anyone know if that can outputa mono signal?

Any thoughts on the speakers referenced in my original post?

Again, this is simply for ambient background music use in a kitchen/living room with 8' ceilings. Nothing utilizing surround or super hi fidelity.

Again, thanks!

 

[ParadigmDawg]

I think you are making too big of a deal out of this. I use inceiling in my bedroom for background music and on my patio. I do not feel "overwhelmed with one channel and hear unbalanced sound" at all. Now if you were doing some critical listening, it may be a different story.