for 5.1, I want to try and use two speakers for the left and right surround.

Wiring is not a problem, ohms, amp is all solved and understood. I wonder what the sound impact would be?

Hook it up and tell us!

That can work. If you have a really large venue, you'll probably want to time delay compensate the different speakers so that the sound reaches each audience person at approximately the same time.

If you look in a movie theater, you will find several each of the left, right and rear surrounds (as well as the fronts, usually).

If you have a large space with multiple rows this can be a fine solution, and is similar to what you find in a commercial theater which usually uses many speakers in arrays to the side and wrapped to the back. Obviously if HT is your goal this is a fine solution. If multichannel music listening and precision rearward and sideward imaging is an important goal, this kind of diffuse array to the sides will be counterproductive, and introduces combing and the like which you would want to avoid.

But no, it is not inherently a bad idea, as long as you understand its limits if imaging for multichannel music (especially) is important to you.

What is the best way to wire something like this.


(+)--[A]----[B]--(-) or


(+)-----[A]-----(-)
\--[B]--/

Parrallel or Serial

Thanks for any advice you can give. so from what I've researched...

Parrallel if my amp can handle it. Series if I wish to play it easy on my amp, but might need to turn it up a bit to get the same volume levels.

I'm running an older Onkyo 939, 100wpc Speakers are rated at 60w continous... Would seem that my amp should be able to handle parrallel... wonder what ohm rated speakers are compat with it... off to Onkyo's website! Well it doesn't say much in the manual... it does mention 6 ohm speakers.. and from what I read when you parrallel 8 ohm speakers they will look like 4 ohm speakers to the amp.

Stick with parallel wiring. You are correct that two 8ohm speakers in parallel; the amp will see 4ohms.

Two 8 ohm speakers in series; the amp will see 16 ohms.

If you am can't handle the 4 ohms, I would mess with it.

How about this? 4 8ohm speakers per channel for a total of 8. Amp still sees the same 8ohm impedance. You could have 4 surround left and 4 surround right speakers.

:D


https://home.comcast.net/~schiz/series_parallel.jpg