I want to hook up an EXTRA set of speakers on the surround channels. Is this bad?

Question

I have a 5.1 chanel receiver. I already have the surround speakers hooked up. What will happen to speakers or receiver if I use those same leads to add more speakers? Is there a best way to do it?

Answer 1

Most likely there will be too much load
drawn from the receiver if you do this.

The best way to do this, is to add a 2-
channel amp to the surround channels
and connect the extra speakers to the
new amp -and voila!

H a p p y
H o m e
T h e a t e r i n g !

Answer 2

Despite the other answers, there may be a valid reason to add additional speakers to the surround channels. The only reason to do this is if you have a very large room and you need to "spread out" the surround. If the surround speakers are very far apart (as in a large room), you may actually hear individual speakers instead of the surround effect. The ideal solution would be to go to 7.1, but if you don't want to do that, add speakers in series to your existing speakers. Try to get speakers as close as possible in size and impedance to your existing speakers (ideally they should be the same kind of speaker). Make sure your connections are phased properly: if your speakers have red and black terminals, connect the black of the first to the red of the second, so the current is travelling in the same directions through both speakers. The speaker pairs carrying the same signal should be closer together than the separation between the surrounds. After you hook up the speakers, you will have to re-balance your system using the test tones, since the pair together will put out less sound than the single speaker (but not by much, if the speakers are matched).

Answer 3

That will not be a good idea. Lets assume your surround speakers are 8-ohm. There are 2 ways to connect another speaker to the same channel.....parallel or serial. If you connect 2 8-ohm speakers in parallel, you will drop the ohm rating down to 4. This will increase the wattage on the amp and play louder, however, the amp will run hotter and have more chance of burning. If you connect 2 8-ohm speakers in serial, you will double the ohm rating to 16. This will draw less power from the amp and therefore run cooler, however, there is no benefit in terms of having an extra speaker.

Best solution is to get a 7.1 channel receiver and run the 2 speakers as rears. Or if you receiver already have rear outputs, get a 2-channel amp for it.

Answer 4

its not bad persay but almost useless depending on your surround sound receiver, and how many speakers you have.

The problem with surround sound is people think the more speakers you have you win but the more you have the less sound you get because there is less power to each channel.Also never hook more than one speaker into each channel its pointless and can ruin your receiver or speakers.

Answer 5

Honestly, its pointless. Just purchase BETTER speakers to replace the old ones. Sounds are set up to be divided a certain way between the 5 speakers, so you're messing with the sound quality to do what you want to do.

Answer 6

figure out how many ohms the speakers are.
stick to the same size ohms when doing so.,
if you go with more ohms on the new speakers, you can damage the old ones,
and if you go with less on the new ones, you can damage the new ones.

also, you are loosing volume when you add more speakers,
casue the same power is now being split 4 ways instead of 2

I don't know that you would realize any benefit to be honest....

Answer 7

no it wont sound even duh!!!!!!!