Need help with hi-fi / speaker connection...

[FancyPants]

Yesterday I bought a new micro hi-fi system (Cambridge) for my bedroom because the old Panasonic's CD drive finally fell off the perch. The speakers were quite good so I thought I'd just use the old ones and not bother buying new ones. But I'd totally forgotten until I got home that both Pana's speaker units (two speaker cones in each) have four individual speaker wires: Red+ Black- Blue- Grey+ . While the stereo itself the usual Red and Black. I've assumed the Blue and Grey wires are for the smaller speaker cones on the top. Logic tells me I can just twist the ends of the ++ together and put into the Red, and same for the -- into the Black. But I didn't want to do this juuuust in case I fuck up a brand new stereo, so for the meantime I've just used the Black and Red wires for the bottom cones, and then turned down bass, turned up treble to even it out.

So, can someone please tell me if I'm good to combine the two +, and combine the two - with no problems? Or if I now need to go out and buy a great second hand pair of small Jamos or something? I hate crap sound, especially considering how much I love putting on my psychonaut birthday suit and lay in bed listening to fantastic crystal clear music like Shpongle.

[dworx]

You should be Ok, the speakers wont drag out too much power but your sound may not be what you want, you could open the speaker box up and solder the wires inline, leaving you with just red & black. I would probably do that just to make sure the blue and grey actually go to the tweeters.

[Chiral]

pics of the terminals...?

[ballzac]

It seems odd that the tweeters would have different wires to the woofers. Perhaps the impedance is different. Without knowing the details though, it could be anything. Perhaps the crossovers were in the old amplifier rather than the speakers where they normally are...in fact how would crossovers work inside the speaker if the input for tweeter and woofer are different?

Sometimes you will have a separate power amplifier for the tweeter and woofer. In this case, the crossovers can be earlier in the chain than the power amplifier...just thinking out loud here.

Most low-mid range systems simply have an integrated amplifier (i.e. power amp and any required tuners/preamps etc all in one unit), that feed a signal through a pair of wires into the speaker which then splits it into highs and lows using the crossover, and these separate signals go to the woofer and tweeter.

If your old speakers are large, be careful using them with an amp designed for smaller speakers. You are actually more likely to get clipping of the signal like this, which means a DC current will be applied to the coils, which can burn them. I think it's more likely to damage them with an amp that's too small rather than one that's too big for them.

Having said that, it's rare for anything to go drastically wrong when mucking around with shit like this. If the sound is only coming out of the woofers the way you have it, then you could probably assume the other wires go to the tweeters. Plug them in starting out at low volume. If the sound is distorted, then it's a good idea to turn it off.

I assume no responsibility for you destroying your new system

[mac]

It sounds like the old stereo amp was set up with surround sound or as a crossover type setup (eg has seperate outputs) One for woofer, other for tweeter.

They can also be wired in Series or Parallel

While you can connect any number of speakers in series, try to keep the total equivalent-load impedance for each channel below 16 ohms, since most amps are not designed to handle higher loads.

The number of speakers that can be connected in parallel is limited by the minimum load impedance that the amplifier is capable of driving and the power-handling capacity of the speakers. In most cases, load impedance should be held to a minimum of 2 ohms – provided the amplifier can handle impedances that low.

So its best to know the minimum & maximum ohms of your speakers & amp

So if in doubt it is always best to match speakers match the amplifier, otherwise at best you will have shitty audio from the system if not correctly matched or worst case you will fry the amp.

Edited April 23, 2010 by mac

[nabraxas]

can't help you w/the speakers, but Cambridge was the first "proper" stereo system that i bought.

Beautiful sound, & very reasonably priced.

[FancyPants]

Thanks for the info guys! I decided to just suck it up and get the Cambridge speakers better matched for the unit, also so I can give the old stereo speakers and all to a friend who needs it.

Jeez the sound coming out of the new-unit-old-speakers which sounded fine while normal, sounded crap as F*** with "enhanced" perception. And that was half the point of getting a new GOOD stereo...

[mescalito]

Sounds like the extra wires were for the "Enhanced" selection,just another pair of tweeters running through a signal delay from the head unit....virtual surround/wide type effect.

Also speaker wattage as in sound plays only part of the role.If the head unit isn't capable of outputting low (2-5) wattage with a good THD value it doesn't matter what speakers you use,you can't make it sound better....the speakers are drawing wattage not the other way around

Always use the RMS value too and look at the frequency response curve....if there aint a printout of one,they're inferior and should be destroyed LOL

I like my Tannoy's

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1X10" 5watt speaker in each,vented box and 1and a half inches of concrete in the base.Man these babies rattle all the windows and the neighbours think there's a live concert on when the volume's set to -40dB.....still can't get them to distort without blowing my ears up!

They were hand built from the original BBC monitor speaker design back before I was born(thanks DAD).

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[FancyPants]

^^ Shit what a find you got there! The salesman where I bought the new unit and speakers from offered me a pair of great bookshop Richters for $800 (rrp $1200) and hoo-boy I wanted them, but couldn't quite justify that much just for the bedroom I've got a great Jamo 5.1 set in the loungeroom with a Marantz receiver/amp. But being greedy ol' me and loving my good music and movie collection I want to upgrade to go better with the big Sony LCD tv and PS3...

I think the mechanics of what was explained to me in this thread is a little bit over my head, but it's great to know anyway. The Ohms of the old speakers(6) were suitable to the new unit (4-8). I don't even have cable strippers so I had to cut the speaker cable with a stanley knife lol. Thumb cut FTL...

I'd love what Chiral's got set up in his garage

In the meantime, I'm working on my loungeroom crashpad:

[Chiral]

Generally you can get any sound system sounding good with a little patience and following a few simple rules, you'd be surprised how good thrown out stereo's can sound if you know what to do and tweak things etc...sound quality is usually relative to matched impedance's with speakers and amps, correct amount of deadening materials in room, speaker placement, correct volume levels/gain structure and one that everyone overlooks is...set a completely flat EQ and then work your speakers and room etc, forget all the crappy bass boost, magic button beautiful sound stuff, or super duper hip hop low end EQ presets etc...set up a general sweet spot listening area, flatten the systems EQ and then work the room you are trying to tune to the system to, isolate speakers properly from any vibration, deaden large reflective areas and try to make speakers hi's and mids aim at least at your face to shoulders...if the mids and hi's that are passing below your waist, the overall sound will be dull and un-interesting. Obviously the correct connections/cables are necessary, you'd be surprised how many people hook up stuff incorrectly and still sound out but wonder why it sounds like a raspy fart.

My garage system sounds kick arse cause I spent waaaaaaaayyyy tooo long tweaking...errrrr..anyways you know what I mean.

[mescalito]

nice setup Fancypants.....very trippy!!!

yeah polarity most peeps stuff up or expect 2 channels to cope with 4 4ohm speakers.The body density and size with venting plays a big part in good sound too.If ya got a wooden floating floor like us,then the base of the speakers need to be heavy.

In cars a cheap pair of 60 watters sound great if they're mounted solidly to the metal door/parcel shelf.I always used 3-5mm MDF between to really bring out the bass.

If ya got an older car with a dash speaker as well,the positives from the unused (rear or front)channels can be attached to each terminal(yep + and + to either side).This speaker will play anything out of phase giving a cheap pseudo-surround with no signal loss!