Mixing 4 ohm and 8 ohm?

Lan077

Would it be fathomable to pair a 8 ohm center with 4 ohm front speakers all driven by one amp (Onkyo receiver)? I'm guessing you would select the impedance to 4 Ohm and just lose out on some power to the center. Or would doing this be a no-no?

PrazVT

I wouldn't mix 4 ohm and 8 ohm speakers when running off of a receiver. Hell I wouldn't run 4 ohm speakers off of any low / mid level av receiver in the first place. Which Onkyo is it?

pyrocyborg

I wouldn't too... but yeah, it might depends on the receiver model. Mixing both impedance is generally a no-no (except, let's say, a 6 ohm speaker set and a 8 ohm speaker set), but I wouldn't do it with a pair of speaker with half the impedance.

Also, try to see how much distorsion would going to 4 ohm create? There should be a rating for distorsion @ 4 ohm, I think... generally, on receivers capable of 6 or 4 ohms, this spec tends to be high value, which isn't good at all for a good quality sound.

Dennis Gardner

The 4 ohm setting puts your receiver in a high current mode. You may have to run the center 3-4 dBs hotter to keep up with the mains, but the mains being 4 ohm may tax your receiver at high volume levels, especially if you are running 5-7 channels.

Lan077

PrazVT wrote: »

I wouldn't mix 4 ohm and 8 ohm speakers when running off of a receiver. Hell I wouldn't run 4 ohm speakers off of any low / mid level av receiver in the first place. Which Onkyo is it?

Its the fairly beastly SR876, 140w per channel. I acquired one of the new LSIm centers and was considering matching it with the older LSI 15's since they can be had on the cheap now. But if it would add distortion to the center running at 4 ohm would not want to do it. I could look into the RTI A9, but understand the older LSI's are a better "tonal" match to the LSIm's, correct?

kawizx9r

No experience with the LSim's, but I wouldn't run any LSi speakers off a receiver...not even their bookshelf version LSi7 or LSi9.

pyrocyborg

LSi7 can be ran by a receiver, as they rarely go down to something under 6 ohm. Lsi9 and Lsi15/25, I would never try it as they can go down to something near 2 ohm by times. As for the RTiA9, they need at least something like 250-300w to really shine, same for LSi15, as they have three 7'' woofers which requires a lot.

Don't know about LSiM, but they seem easier to drive than LSi series.

As for your receiver, it will run 4 ohm speakers as specified... but I don't know if i would mix up both impedances...

steveinaz

Short answer: As long as the amplifier section can handle a 4ohm load, mixing is fine.

tonyb

Another short answer- Don't run 4 ohm speakers from that receiver.

I remember when the speedometer on most family cars read 140-150 mph, didn't mean they could actually do it though.