Hi, hopefully someone out there can help me. I've just purchased an Athena P.5 surround speaker system, with an extra pair of satellites & a Cambridge Audio Azur 540R 6.1 receiver. The amp only has one output for the centre rear surround, but I've been toying with the idea of connecting a pair of the P.5s, which have an impedance of 8 Ohms, to this single output. The centre rear channel is in mono anyway, so this won't provide better separation or anything, but should simply improve the 'steering' in the rear. My question is an obvious one: what's the likelihood of me 'frying' the amp by doing this? I know it's a slightly dodgy proposition, but I'd have thought that as the centre rear isn't handling a full-range signal, as the front left & rights are, the risk would be fairly minimal. I've just had 12 years of having my old stereo Sony amp connected to a smaller pair of rear 'surrounds' from the same outputs as the main speakers. This setup never gave me any problems at all, despite often listening at high volumes. All comments & advice greatly appreciated! Thanks, Brent
Brent, I would prefer to try to connect the two extra speakers in series (1 wire to the + of one speaker, the other wire to the - of the other speaker. Then connect the remaining terminals with an extra wire). The 540 R would prefer 8 Ohms (no less). Using this connection you will have 16 Ohms, so it would be imppossible to cause any damage. If you connect the speakers in parallel the result would be 4 Ohms (and possibly even less), which would be a problem for the amp, as it will have to produce twice as much current. Using the series connection would result in the two speakers sounding not as loud, so it would be advised to increase the output of the Back Surround (BS using the spkr adjust on the control of the Azur) to your taste.