[cm11599ps]

Hi guys. I'm trying to setup a home audio system but ran into a little problem today.


Backstory.


I've got all my music ripped to my computer which goes right into my HT receiver. The computer is ALWAYS on so all I need to hit is "Listen to Music" on my Harmony remote and I get my music coming from my front surrounds and sub. I also have a set of speakers hooked to my "b" speaker set on my receiver and these lead to my outside deck. Of course I can have both sets on, both off or any comb

ination of them on or off.


Now for today's problem.


I now come out of the "b" speaker outputs on my receiver into this unit.


From that distribution unit I am trying to run to some volume controls linked here.


Then I'm running to soem ceiling mounted speakers.


Here comes the problem.


If I run speaker set "a", the real front surrounds, then those work fine. When I select both speaker sets, speaker set A still works but "b" only comes from one side.


I can't remember right now what happens if only "b" is selected, but I believe both channels worked at that point. Then when you wanted both "a" and "b" on, then one side of speaker "b" went out while "a" was fine.


What am I missing here?

 

[m_vanmeter]

this is a bit of a guess, but here goes....


On the typical receiver with "B" speakers, there are two methods to handle the 2nd zone. (a) separate stereo amplifier to drive zone B; (b) zone B is "added" to zone A and the overall inpedance of the speaker system drops due to the speakers wired in parallel.


It is possible, now that you have added a distribution connection bar that controls impedance by presenting an average 4 ohm load to zone B...when it is "added" to zone A the overall average impedance could drop as low as 2 or 3 ohms. This could be overloading your receiver amplifier circuit.


The other option (you did not mention the manufacturer model number of your receiver) is that zone B has a separate amplifier, but it can not handle the low impedance presented by the distribution bar.

 

[cm11599ps]

The receiver is nothing special at all. It's a HTIB unit JVC rx-6008V that I purchased about 10 years ago.


Do I have any options in making this work as is? What if I simply skipped the "b" output and went directly from the "a" output into the distribution bar? Then from there I went to my real front HT speakers as well as the other speakers around the house. I would place a volume control between the distribution bar and each set of speakers.

 

[m_vanmeter]

what do you want to do with zone B ? Do you just use it for ambient music in stereo mode ? I doubt you want it playing the soundtrack from a movie ???

 

[cm11599ps]

Zone A is just for home theater stuff and also for listening to music while in the living room.


I planned to have zone B for the whole house audio as well as my speakers outside. Each set of speakers will have their own volume controls.


I'm going to try and hook up everything to zone A and see what happens.


For what it's worth, I had the zone b outputs going directly to my outdoor speakers last summer. Say zone A was playing and then I decided to play zone b. As soon as you hit the button to activate zone b you could hear the volume in zone a drop a little bit.

 

[cm11599ps]

I think that may have did the trick. I have the audio output from zone A running into the distribution bar. Then from there I'm running to my main front surrounds, a set on my deck, a test set in my attic next to the distro bar and also running just one channel to a volume control switch in my bathroom and then going to the single speaker in the bathroom.


Everything seems to be working just as I want it to.

All that's left to do is decide where we want a speaker in our bedroom. lol


Every room will have it's own volume switch on the wall when all is said and done. That's going to be sweet when it's operational!

 

[devtha]

I am leveraging this thread as it is relevant to the problem I am having.


We just moved into a home and there are speakers in kitchen, office, dining and living room. All the rooms have 2 speakes in the ceiling.

In the family room we have wires with bare openings from opposite walls which I think was meant for choosing various furniture layouts. So one can use either of the sets of wires.


Same setup is created upstairs but only two rooms have speakers and wires are coming out from a wall in the master bedroom for them to be hooked up with a receiver.


So far I have tested the wires and speakers in the first floor. The family room:

When I connect my receiver to one of these wires and play music it plays on the first floor and deck.


The problem: It plays in one speaker only and sometimes the sound is disrtored.

Assumption: The speakers has impedence of 8ohms.


My receiver drives 8 ohms speakers.


Any inputs?


Thank you in advance.

 

[m_vanmeter]

"devtha"

do the speaker wires coming out of the living room wall have any form of identification on them - i.e. room name, or something like that ?


are the wires 2 conductor or 4 conductor each ?


Without a speaker selection switch that protects the receiver from the much lower combined impedance of multiple speakers hooked together, you should only connect one set "left and right speaker" speaker wires to the output connectors on your a/v receiver.


I'm not sure the assumption that the wiring coming out of the two locations in the living room is the same, unless the identification on the wiring matches.

 

[devtha]

No the wires do not have any indication as the first floor speakers are all wired through these inputs. I have set of 4 wires. Red Green Black White. I am using the Red and Black as this combination produces sound but only in one channel in all rooms and patio. Hope this is enough info. I can send pictures if needed.

 

[m_vanmeter]

try red/black and green/white - I would think this would be a more standard color code for the two speaker channels (red + / black - and green + / white -)


I'm afraid this is really not something that can be diagnosed remotely. You may need to get a home theater installer in with the proper test equipment to trace the wiring and help you set up a system.


Can you contact the original home owner ? It's really sad the original wiring installer did not mark the wiring, that is just sloppy work.