# I have no idea what I'm doing



## FatherAtlas (Jul 4, 2017)

I just moved into a new house with four built in speakers. 2 in the front wall and 2 in the ceiling behind the couch. I imagine these are setup for some sort of surround sound system.

I'm not looking for anything fancy, I'd be fine with a mono channel setup as long as I could get sound coming out of all of the built in speakers. I'd prefer to run a stereo signal through them.

Here's what I have in the way of equipment. 100' of 16-gauge speaker wire, lots of banana plug caps, a new Yamaha receiver, and a tv plugged in through hdmi.

The problem I'm running into is that to plug into the speakers I have inputs built into the wall that require banana plugs. Behind the tv are two such inputs (black and red). However, on the receiver their are banana plug outputs for right and left which each have positive and negative connection ports. 

How can I connect the two built in wall inputs to the four output ports on the receiver?


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## Wayne A. Pflughaupt (Apr 13, 2006)

The speaker terminals labeled “Front” will accept banana plugs. The ones labeled “Center Surround” are spring loaded and require bare wire. Just strip back a 1/4" or so of the insulation. 

Regards, 
Wayne


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## FatherAtlas (Jul 4, 2017)

Hey Wayne,

Thanks. I'm curious though, how can I convert the *two* banana plug inputs that are built into the wall to the *four* outputs (L/R and +/-) in the receiver?

There are four speakers built into the walls. Two on the right and two on the left.

I have added more photos of my equipment and the wall inputs I have at my disposal. I have read that HDMI Arc is the simplest method, but I'm not sure if I even have the right equipment to take advantage of that. 

Thanks!


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## Wayne A. Pflughaupt (Apr 13, 2006)

FatherAtlas said:


> I'm curious though, how can I convert the *two* banana plug inputs that are built into the wall to the *four* outputs (L/R and +/-) in the receiver?


 You can’t. One pair of banana plugs on the wall (black/red) goes to one pair of banana plugs (or spring clips) on the back of the receiver. They Yamaha owner’s manual has directions and picture diagrams on how to hook up speakers.

It would be a good idea to put an ohm meter across those banana plugs and make sure the speakers are all 8-ohm.




FatherAtlas said:


> I have added more photos of my equipment and the wall inputs I have at my disposal. I have read that HDMI Arc is the simplest method, but I'm not sure if I even have the right equipment to take advantage of that.


 You can’t connect speakers via HDMI. Again, see the manual for info on HDMI.

Regards, 
Wayne


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## KevAudio (Jul 8, 2017)

Text deleted by Moderator.


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## david yurik (Feb 17, 2013)

you really need to get an ohm meter and verify where those wires go. they are inexpensive ( but work ) for only 8 bucks at my local harbor freight. if you still have a radio shack you might fine a cheap one there too. so besides verifying speaker resistance you can also verify where each wall jack goes. 

you mentioned 4 speakers mounted in the wall but the plates look like there might be 5 with a mix of coax and rca. i would pull off the wall plate and verify whats hooked up to each terminal.

dave


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## phillihp23 (Mar 14, 2012)

It looks like you have a Pos/Neg speaker terminal in the tv cubby. That is probably meant to connect directly to a center speaker.
The second set of inputs appears to have 4 sets of Pos/Neg speaker terminals which connect to the receiver to run the four speakers already installed. There also appears to be a single Pos.Neg speaker terminal to the left of the four terminals. This is probably were you connect the receiver to and it feeds to the outputs in the tv cubby were you would place the center speaker. Just guessing from the photos provided.


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