What do I need for my Speaker system?

Question

I have a 9 speaker system routed throughout my building. What kind of Equipment will I need to run it through a computer? an IPOD? all I have are the red and black wires comming out of the wall right now.

Answer 1

Sir:

You left out a huge amount of information needed to
correctly reply to your question. To reply in detail to
you I need the following information:

Wattage Rating of each of the nine speakers in your
building: _________________. (Such as 20 Watts RMS).

Impedance of Each Speaker:
_____________________ (such as 8 Ohms).

Layout of the nine speakers, such as:
#One and #Two in Lobby - desire them in Stereo
#Three in Mens Restroom - Monaural okay.
#Four in Womens Restroom - Monaural okay
#Five and Six in Conference Room - Desire Stereo
#Seven, #Eight, #Nine in individual offices - Monaural ok

You will need a Public Address System Audio Amplifier with Stereo capability and hopefully the ability to service the speakers you already have installed in your building.

You will connect the "Line Out" of your computer Sound Card to the "Line In" of your PA Audio Amplifier. Most likely this connection will be made with shielded cable having two conductors and a shield, or in some cases, two individual phono plug tipped shielded cables.

Your IPOD will always connect to the computer in the standard manner using a special cable that should have been supplied with the Ipod.

Your PA Amplifier will have various Speaker Output connections and I don't know what unit you will select to buy, so I am a little ignorant on that point. Also, since I don't know the wattage and impedance of your speakers, I have difficulty in setting up a plan for you right now.

However, if your speakers are 8 ohms and 20 watts each,
you could connect two two speakers together (Red-Red, and Black-Black), and connect Reds to 4 Ohm Output
Left Channel-Hot, Blacks to 4 Ohm Output Left-Grd.

that gets left channel wired.

Do the same thing for right channel using the desired mates to those two speakers.

You should have some other outputs available
on the amplifier. What they are, as I said, I don't know.

Here are some possibles for the single speakers left over from the nine (four handled in above method)

Maybe you have an output labled Center Channel which could be a mix of both left and right channels...And maybe that center channel has outputs for 8 Ohm speaker loads...

In that case, you could series / parallel four speakers of 8 ohms and connect them into that output jack as follows:

Center Channel Left - Hot to Red wires of two speakers
- call them speakers A and B.
Take Black wires of speakers A and B, connect them to
the red wires of speakers C and D.
Then Take both black wires of speakers C and D and run them together to Center Channel Left - Grd
That arrangement gives you Mono sound to 4 speakers
using one side of a Stereo Center Channel Output.

Two speakers of 8 ohms in Series = 16 Ohms
placed in parallel with
Two speakers of 8 ohms in Series = 16 ohms
Total impedance of connected speakers = 8 Ohms.

Run the remaining (ninth) speaker direct to
Center Channel - Right jack.

This might be enough to get you in business with
what ever equipment units you purchase.

If not, feel free to EMail me at
zahbudar at yahoo dot com
any time you like.

Kindest regards,
Zah


The wiring of the