# Mixing 4 ohm and 8 ohm pairs



## PoorSignal (Jul 23, 2009)

I have an older technics 5.1 receiver retired using for in room background music now in stereo mode. It has A and B speaker connection and can run both together..

The A is connected to 8 ohm speakers,

Now I am looking to add B which is for outdoor and they are 4 ohms, will this be a problem running A and B at the same time?

most of these are small speakers the A pair is only 4.5 woofer


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## lsiberian (Mar 24, 2009)

PoorSignal said:


> I have an older technics 5.1 receiver retired using for in room background music now in stereo mode. It has A and B speaker connection and can run both together..
> 
> The A is connected to 8 ohm speakers,
> 
> ...


Probably not, just don't push your receiver too hard on the B speakers.


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## tonyvdb (Sep 5, 2007)

Just remember that even though it has an A & B selector it is still only using the one two channel amp to drive all 4 speakers so its usually not recommended to drive less than 8ohm speakers.


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## PoorSignal (Jul 23, 2009)

OK, I guess I will try to look for 8 ohm speakers.
it's no difference than tieing 2 pair of wires in the same post right?

But here is a cheap trick, if I can run the signal to the analog 5.1 input I would be able to use the rear channels amps and then the ohms would not matter


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## tonyvdb (Sep 5, 2007)

PoorSignal said:


> OK, I guess I will try to look for 8 ohm speakers.
> it's no difference than tieing 2 pair of wires in the same post right?


In most cases the receiver will automatically reduce the amps output when both switches are pressed thats why you will hear a drop in level on the "A" channel even if no speakers are connected to the "B" speaker terminals.



> But here is a cheap trick, if I can run the signal to the analog 5.1 input I would be able to use the rear channels amps and then the ohms would not matter


If the receiver has an all channel stereo mode then yes that would work fine.


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## PoorSignal (Jul 23, 2009)

for the analog 5.1 input I don't think it needs any special stereo mode, each RCA jack should be able to play it's own sound out their speaker wires

All I need to do is split the RCA source into 2 pairs.


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## tonyvdb (Sep 5, 2007)

Ah yes I follow you, that will work fine.


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