Never owned enough speakers to ask this question....

munk

I'm going to have 3 RTi A9 speakers. I've never owned more than two speakers in my life. I have this question....



Can I hook up one speaker to A output from the reciever/amp, and one from B output, with one speaker hooked up from both A and B (using the seperate dual posts) ?????

I see potential trouble in the passive wires picking up the load and carrying it back to the source...

thank you,

munk

vc69

I am confused. Why would you want to do that?

messiah

Is it a home theater receiver, or 2 channel, and if 2 channel, why do you want to run 3 speakers?

munk

I don't want to run Three at once- I'd like the ability to run my two main in the livingroom, but have the option of placing a speaker in the kitchen while doing chores and hearing more music. It's two channel. The old carver reciever with two A and B ouputs isn't even working, but I've thought about fixing it and doing this.

A speaker in the main room A, a speaker in the main room A, B, and the speaker in the Kitchen B. Using the dual posts, one speaker in the main room would be wired from both A and B.





My next project will be surround sound, as I have my 2 LS50's and the three RTi A9's.

But that's in the future.

Is this crazy? Would it work? Is this a hazzard? I just don't know.

messiah

I cant imagine that sending the right and left channel to the same speaker would sound good, but I could be wrong I guess.

ecod123

I have not seen anyone done that so there could be a reason for that. Hopefully the experts would chime in. Good lucks.

greyford1979

Isn't this kinda like when you bridge a car amplifier for use with one speaker?? I think on car amplifiers it also presents a different load on the amp doing this, but I could be wrong. I would definitely be cautious, don't wanna fry anything lol:eek:

Knucklehead

In true stereo, how would the left and right source be presented to one speaker?

fishbones

You should have 2 sets of posts for A, and 2 sets of posts for B. That's 4 speakers. Cross-wiring will only create problems.

vc69

I'm just going to say it. No, it is not a "good idea" and frankly I see no use in it. Park the third as a spare.

TECHNOKID

Set your main room on A. set your Kitchen speaker on B left side and set your switch for mono when running the B side. If you want sound in both rooms you simply need to set the switch on AB with switch set on mon trand you will get sound in both rooms (you can still set for stereo but sound would be lower in the Kitchen).

munk

Not trying to send l and r to one speaker.

Main room; A set, right channel, speaker number 1. A set, left channel, speaker number two, and B, left channel.
Kitchen B set, Right channel.
"A" and "B" are the speaker pair designations from the amp/receiver, not right or left. Many recievers have this feature.

There are two sets of posts on the back of the speaker. The speaker with both A and B inputs from amp/reciever would be left channel.

Looks like I'll be asking Polk directly on this. I won't try this unless it's safe. That's why I'm asking here. Haven't seen a situation you guys haven't heard of.

TECHNOKID

munk wrote: »

I'm going to have 3 RTi A9 speakers. I've never owned more than two speakers in my life. I have this question....



Can I hook up one speaker to A output from the reciever/amp, and one from B output, with one speaker hooked up from both A and B (using the seperate dual posts) ?????

I see potential trouble in the passive wires picking up the load and carrying it back to the source...

thank you,

munk

munk wrote: »

Not trying to send l and r to one speaker.

Main room; A set, right channel, speaker number 1. A set, left channel, speaker number two, and B, left channel.
Kitchen B set, Right channel.
"A" and "B" are the speaker pair designations from the amp/receiver, not right or left. Many recievers have this feature.

There are two sets of posts on the back of the speaker. The speaker with both A and B inputs from amp/reciever would be left channel.

Looks like I'll be asking Polk directly on this. I won't try this unless it's safe. That's why I'm asking here. Haven't seen a situation you guys haven't heard of.

Your first post is scary and confusing.

So, according to your second post:

A = Main room pair of speakers and B = 1 speaker hooked-up to the Left side.

Then, if you use A + B = sound in your main room pair while you get sound from 1 speaker hooked-up to B left, corredt? Is this what you are trying to achieve? If so, no hazard for your amp or speakers. You simply do not get as good sound in your Kitchen as you would get with a pair. I would make sure to set the amp as mono otherwise you would loose some of the audio info since there is no right speaker connected in the Kitchen.

munk

Yes, I wrote very poorly. That's just one reason I'm not a mechanical engineer. Thanks for your reply.

The carver reciever can power two sets of speakers, A or B. Not right and left. Both sets are stereo.

One speaker would be wired for say, left channel for either A or B speaker set. The two remaining speakers would be connected for right channel, one from A, one from B.

The harder I worked to describe this, the worse my description became.

mdaudioguy

munk wrote: »

Yes, I wrote very poorly. That's just one reason I'm not a mechanical engineer. Thanks for your reply.

The carver reciever can power two sets of speakers, A or B. Not right and left. Both sets are stereo.

One speaker would be wired for say, left channel for either A or B speaker set. The two remaining speakers would be connected for right channel, one from A, one from B.

The harder I worked to describe this, the worse my description became.

This much I can say, your music will be ALL RIGHT in one room.


I do have to say, though, that this just doesn't sound like such a great idea, and I'm unsure of the effect it might have on your receiver or speaker. For some reason, I've always thought that it wasn't a good thing to run only one channel of a stereo receiver, but I could be mistaken.

TECHNOKID

Running only one speaker will not damage the receiver in any way. The negative of running only one speaker is the abscence of decent soundstage and of course the lack of stereo info. However, I believe Munk is simply wanting to use that extra speaker to simply provide him with some music in the kitchen, not really looking for the big sound. Simply creating an extra zone with what he has at hand. Munk, am I correct? You basically get the SQ of what the Rti A9 is capable of but in a simple mono version.

If it is simply for a little music in the kitchen, I would suggest you maybe buy a used pair of decent speaker for such and keep the extra A9 as back-up for your system. You would get better results as you'd be getting stereo and decent soundstage. However, I realize that sometimes we are not looking for big sound in a kitchen...

munk

Yes, I just want to hear more than I do now in the kitchen. But I wouldn't be running just one speaker.



One speaker would be connected to the left channel from both A and B, where A and B represent two stereo routes from the Carver reciever. Only a single route would be chosen, either speaker set A or set B, not both at once.

I simply bog down trying to write this- it's over my head. I lack the technical background to simplify what I'm saying. I know it's been confusing and even frightening- but better to ask the stupid questions here amongst knowledgable people than to even think of connecting without credible opinion on the subject. For that, I'm grateful there is a Polk forum. Many of the folks here are simply outstanding in their technical knowledge.

One speaker, Right channel A set
one speaker, Right channel B set

One speaker, left channels from A and B set.

I've decided to repair my Carver Reciever.

The fault is mine for not being able to write more clearly.

TECHNOKID

One speaker, left channels from A and B set.

So this was no confusion, this was really what you wanted. NO, I would not do that, you are risking damage to your receiver/amp and/or speaker. You are parallelling the 2 outputs and theferore this becomes a new circuit path which will affect impedance matching. If you were using receiver/amp pre-outs, this would be a different story. Some also to consider, when you are splitting signal like this (paralell) you are affecting the current output which is not a good thing. If you really want to go that route, I would suggest you put a selector switch at the output of AB and select which route you want to the speaker as this will protect receiver/amp/speaker.

Big Dawg

At first I too thought you were crazy. Now I understand what you want to do, and so long as you only run set A or set B, you'd probably be OK. You should NEVER run both A and B together with that setup.

However, I think you'd be MUCH MUCH better off selling the spare A9 and buying a set of bookshelves (A1s?) for the kitchen to run as pair B.

TECHNOKID

Big Dawg wrote: »

At first I too thought you were crazy. Now I understand what you want to do, and so long as you only run set A or set B, you'd probably be OK. You should NEVER run both A and B together with that setup.

However, I think you'd be MUCH MUCH better off selling the spare A9 and buying a set of bookshelves (A1s?) for the kitchen to run as pair B.

Here is an interesting idea, +1!

EndersShadow

munk wrote: »

I'm going to have 3 RTi A9 speakers. I've never owned more than two speakers in my life. I have this question....



Can I hook up one speaker to A output from the reciever/amp, and one from B output, with one speaker hooked up from both A and B (using the seperate dual posts) ?????

I see potential trouble in the passive wires picking up the load and carrying it back to the source...

thank you,

munk

nm, didnt read the entire post...ignore me

munk

My fear was something along the lines Technokid brought up, the possibility of a passive line picking up signal from the active line, and if this happened, what would that do?

Disconnecting the non-active line would solve any potential problem. Are there switches out there that would do that for me without me having to unscrew posts?

I'm not one to connect 'stuff' up just to see the explosion, ruin good equipment, ( or even bad) nor even to see 'what would happen'.

I love good equipment. That great moniker-'toolsforlife' (paraphrased) is how I feel about decent handtools, Polk Speakers, AR turntables, mauser rifle, etc etc; a well maintained tool will be there for you when you need it.



The safest way would be to run the third speaker in the kitchen as mono under set B and keep the other two speakers as my stereo duo on A, Technokid has a good suggestion there.


I'll write Polk about the passive line and see what they say. Thank you all for your help and advice.

messiah

You could just get a separate 2 channel kitchen system.

munk

I could use the polk ls50's in the kitchen and park the extra RtiA9 until I get the surround deal figured out.

I read here about people with den systems, bedroom systems; I could have a kitchen system. Then there's one horizan left; the Bathroom system.

I must admit I envy people with additional two channel systems.... seems neat to me.

mdaudioguy

Big Dawg wrote: »

However, I think you'd be MUCH MUCH better off selling the spare A9 and buying a set of bookshelves (A1s?) for the kitchen to run as pair B.

OR, do like what I've done (which is what I thought you were first going for) and use all three A9 towers for left, right, and center in a monster HT rig!

munk

That's what I'm going to do in the long run, with the LS50's in the rear.