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Nuvo Grand Concerto Speaker Wiring

2K views 5 replies 3 participants last post by  jautor 
#1 · (Edited)
Hello everyone,
I will really appreciate your diligent response to my question. I home run 1 pair of speakers (8 ohms per speaker) to the wiring closet and 2 pair of speakers in the living room and another 2 pair in the kitchen was home run to the wiring closet. My 2 pair speaker zones were connected in parallel, therefore making it 4 ohms (8 ohms/2). I do realized that the nuvo grand concerto supports only 6 ohms per zone. Is it ok if I connect all the speakers to the nuvo GC without endangering its lifespan. In summary

Master Room speaker - 1 pair - zone 1 - 8 ohms
Living room - 2 pair - zone 2 - 4 ohms (ran in parallel)
2nd room speaker- 1 pair - zone 3 - 8 ohms
kitchen speaker - 2 pair- zone 4 - 4 ohms (ran in parallel)
patio speaker - 1 pair- zone 5 - 8 ohms
office speaker- 1 pair- zone 6 - 8 ohms
theater room speaker - 1 pair- zone 7 - 8 ohms
laundry speaker- single speaker- zone 8 - 8 ohms

If I connect 8 ohms to 6 ohms amplifier (nuvo GC), will it auto adjust itself and operate the speakers at 6 ohms?

If you were me, how would you go about this? I called NUVO technical support but the tech guys told me its okay but I'm still worried about the impedance overloading. Thanks
 
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#2 ·
My 2 pair speaker zones were connected in parallel, therefore making it 4 ohms (8 ohms/2). I do realized that the nuvo grand concerto supports only 6 ohms per zone. Is it ok if I connect all the speakers to the nuvo GC without endangering its lifespan.
No. Running 4-ohm loads into amps with a minimum 6 or 8 ohm rating is asking for problems.

Since you have eight zones, you'll need to use an external amp for zones 7*8 anyway, so just buy a 4-ohm-stable external amp for each of those zones, and hook the 2-pair rooms to those amps.

I did exactly the same thing for my 2-pair rooms... AudioSource AMP-100 is an excellent value (
 
#3 ·
Thanks Jeff for you quick response. It helped. You said 6 ohms is the minimum, I concur. Now my question is, each zone on the grand concerto has +-+- on the speaker connection block. so, running two 8 ohms speakers to each zone like the picture shown below shouldn't be a problem, right?

Also, on the back of Nuvo GC, it clearly state 40W/6ohms x 2 for each zone. so does the "6ohms x 2"
mean minimum of 6 ohms for each speaker (total 2 speakers) connected to the positive and negative of the connection block for each zone? not sure if my question is making sense. :):):):)
 

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#4 ·
The ratings are always "per amp channel". Each zone is a pair of amp channels (stereo) - with one speaker connector each. So on the GC, you can connect a pair of 6-ohm or 8-ohm speakers to the zone's stereo amp (two channels, one speaker each).
 
#5 ·
I will defer to more experienced on this forum with this matter, but in the FAQs on their website Nuvo/now Legrand explains how to use 2 x 8 ohm speakers per channel with the GC. This is likely also the advice you got from their technical support.
For being a whole house audio, a lot will also depend on your listening habits and your cables/speakers.
After you are wired up, I suggest to take a reliable multimeter to the speakers and check the actual resistance they have. In my case it was 5.6 ohms instead of 4 and that is quite close to the 6 Nuvo states the amp in the GC is stable at.

https://www.legrand.us/~/media/Files/NuVo/Catalog/TechnicalSupport/NuVos%20FAQs/FAQ.ashx
 
#6 ·
After you are wired up, I suggest to take a reliable multimeter to the speakers and check the actual resistance they have. In my case it was 5.6 ohms instead of 4 and that is quite close to the 6 Nuvo states the amp in the GC is stable at.
That's measuring the DC resistance, not the impedance of the speakers. 8-ohm speakers will read DC resistance in the ~6-ohm range, for example...

But the FAQ from NuVo is interesting... They're suggesting that if you space out the 4-ohm / 8-ohm zones, you'll be ok. That would indicate the design is capable - just have to be careful about the current / thermal load.

As the OP is using 8 zones anyway, and will have to power two zones with external amps anyway, I'd reiterate my suggestion and just put the 2-pair zones on an external amp.
 
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