Multiple main speakers

Davidv

Does anyone have more than one pair of mains hooked up? If you do how should they be hooked up? In series or with a jumper?

Also are there any benifits, or drawbacks to doing this(other than less power to each speaker if hooked up in series)?

My old setup was:
Mains: RT10
Center: CS400
Rears: fx500
sub: psw404

I got an awesome deal on a pair of RT12's and replaced the RT10's as my mains(which gave me a fuller sounding front stage, that I was hoping for), and then as an after thought ran a jumper to the RT10's and I swear the soundstage improved again.

Any input appreciated.

Thanks,
David

cnjvh

Be sure to wire them in series. This results in around a 16 ohm load to the amp and will prevent overcurrent. The larger load will simply cause them to play quieter which you can adjust for. Wiring them in parallel would drop it down to 4 ohms which could be bad for the amp (some here have meausured these as lower than 8 ohm speakers so the effect in parallel could be even worse than 4 ohms).

Davidv

So by running the jumper you are saying that I have them hooked up in parallel.

After I looked again at the description for each type of connection, it seems like it may be hooked up in parellel, but I am not sure.

I hooked the wires from the amp to the rt12's lower hookups, left the gold biwiring strips in place and ran a jumper from the upper connection on the rt12's to the rt10's. Is that running them in parallel?

cnjvh

Yes, this is parallel and bad. To wire them in series (leave the jumpers on place and use either top or bottom for this):

red on amp to red on speaker 1
black on speaker 1 to red on speaker 2
black on speaker 2 to black on amp

Good luck! Many people find that running multiple sets of speakers muddies the sound due to frequency cancellations but if it rocks to you, go for it!!

Davidv

Thanks for all the help.
I hooked them up in series last night and listened. Then I hooked up just the rt12's, then just the rt10's. I did that 3 times listening to the same thing each time and the rt12's by themselves won the battle. Heck they even sounded better than when I had the rt10 & 12's hooked up in parallel.

So the rt10's move down to the 2ch rig.

It is disappointing having to move them. The 12's and 10's look too good sitting next to each other at the front of the room. Oh well.

Thanks again for being the only person to respond. You helped me out alot!

David

cnjvh

glad to do it :-)

doggie750

Davidv wrote:

Thanks for all the help.
I hooked them up in series last night and listened. Then I hooked up just the rt12's, then just the rt10's. I did that 3 times listening to the same thing each time and the rt12's by themselves won the battle. Heck they even sounded better than when I had the rt10 & 12's hooked up in parallel.

So the rt10's move down to the 2ch rig.

It is disappointing having to move them. The 12's and 10's look too good sitting next to each other at the front of the room. Oh well.

Thanks again for being the only person to respond. You helped me out alot!

David

need stronger amp! to run 2 mains........ but you will Overkill the center......