How to amplify 4 Main/Front Speakers


Newbie here. I have an old Sony DA3ES Receiver driving an equally old pair of B&W DM640s with B&W 303s for side-positioned surrounds. The receiver has connections for only two 'front' or 'main' speakers so the 303s are hooked up as surrounds. Is there a way to get the signal going to the mains to also travel to the 303s?

This is probably a stupid question but I need to learn this stuff.
civilguy

Showing 1 response by mechans

There are a couple of ways to do this. The two that I know of are called parallel and series connections.
The easiest is the parallel where you simply attach both pairs to the main speaker posts, that is the main and the smaller ones to the same post on each side. Doing this cuts the output impedance by half and may not be the best choice if your amp is not rated to handle this. The only amps that I would exclude immediately are tube amps which need all the output impedance they can get, and certain SS amps that warn against this. I had a Marantz power amp that specifically warned against it. The other less "amp taxing" method is called a series connection, which has one speaker connected in a chain with the next speaker in series. I don't remember the exact connections so do a search using that term and I am sure you'll find it.