[Chrisk327]

I just hooked up two new speakers to my HT system. I have my normal front speakers Wharfedale Diamonds as speaker set “Aâ€, I just hooked up a set of Infinity OWS to speaker set “B†along with a volume control, for my dining room. I have a pioneer amp. Niether of these are set up as surrounds. These are the main speakers.


Now when I just set the receiver to play out of speaker set “A†it sounds fine, nice and loud. When I set it to play out of speaker set “B†it sounds fine nice and loud.


When I have it play out of “A†and “B†together. A gets very very soft and low, while B is loud and clear. You can barely hear A.


Can someone help me diagnose the problem?

 

[midfiman]

Hey Chrisk,


It's too much of a load for your reciever to drive both of these sets at the same time.


What I would do is go to Radio Shack, get one of those speaker selectors with protection, hook it up to A, then hook up multiple pair to it. I did this in the past (with a Pioneer) and had no problems running multiple speakers.


Some people may advise against this, but I had no issues, and the selector will protect the receiver in the event anything goes wrong. I've seen several other people use this method and no one ever mentioned anything bad happening.

 

[LeeLee]

My only guess is that the volume control adds impedance to the chain, and doing "A+b" on your receiver puts the two sets of speakers in series, in which case the power is distributed proportionally according to impedance. Speaker B, being attached to the volume control, wins.


More tests for you to run:


1) reverse the connections between A and B and see if the problem follows the speaker.


2) temporarily remove the volume control and see if the problem disapears.