using 6ohm speakers with 4ohm receiver?

[crazycarl]

so i have a set of surround speakers from my old Sharp surround sound component system, which suffered some melted capacitors. they are pretty nice speakers & i'd like to use them. the problem is that the impedence on the front & center speakers is 6ohms and the rear 12ohm, while almost every receiver seems to be set for front/center 4 ohm and rear 8ohm.
what would happen if i just went ahead and plugged the 6ohm/12ohm speakers into a 4/8 receiver? i cannot for the life of me find an affordable 6/12 receiver...
thanks everyone for your input..

also, another question... most receievers seem to have 100 watts/channel... the front speakers i have only are 60 watts, the center 30 watts, and the rear 15 watts... will this be a problem or should i just keep the volume low?

 

[LordSnailz]

sorry no help here, just a noob question -- why do you need to match the impedance?

 

[Kenazo]

You'll be fine. Plugging a 6/12 receiver into 4/8 speakers would be more of a problem, though your volume will probably be lower than it could be.

 

[ToeJam13]

Agreed. Using a higher impedance speaker is fine. Less current will flow, so you will need to turn up the volume higher to counter it.

Its going the other way around that can be dangerous. If you have low impedance speakers for a receiver or amp that is rated for higher speakers, too much current could flow and components could overheat.

There are some tricks you can do to match impedance:
Running two speakers with equal impedance in serial will raise the overall impedance (Z.Total == Z1 + Z2)
Running two speakers with equal impedance in parallel will lower the overall impedance (Z.Total == (Z1 * Z2) / (Z1 + Z2))

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

Originally posted by: ToeJam13
Agreed. Using a higher impedance speaker is fine. Less current will flow, so you will need to turn up the volume higher to counter it.

Its going the other way around that can be dangerous. If you have low impedance speakers for a receiver or amp that is rated for higher speakers, too much current could flow and components could overheat.

There are some tricks you can do to match impedance:
Running two speakers with equal impedance in serial will raise the overall impedance (Z.Total == Z1 + Z2)
Running two speakers with equal impedance in parallel will lower the overall impedance (Z.Total == (Z1 * Z2) / (Z1 + Z2))

True, with the caveat that higher quality amplifiers which can handle substantial current often run 4 ohms nicely even if officially rated at 8. Problem is it's hard to know which ones they are. For that I would suggest checking in at AVS forums or one like it. I know the HK 630 can do this.

 

[JohnCU]

Originally posted by: LordSnailz
sorry no help here, just a noob question -- why do you need to match the impedance?

When you match the impedances you get the highest amount of power available.

 

[Preyhunter]

Originally posted by: ToeJam13
There are some tricks you can do to match impedance:
Running two speakers with equal impedance in serial will raise the overall impedance (Z.Total == Z1 + Z2)
Running two speakers with equal impedance in parallel will lower the overall impedance (Z.Total == (Z1 * Z2) / (Z1 + Z2))

That works for single channel. It would not be beneficial in this case because it is a surround system. In this case, he would have to buy an additional speaker for each channel and run 10 speakers in a 5 channel setup (which still wouldn't work in this case due to the impedence ratings of the speakers vs the receiver). It would be better to just go ahead and run the higher impedence speakers on the lower impedence channel outputs.

 

[crazycarl]

sweet, thanks for the advice yall, much appreciated =)

 

[thomsbrain]

yup, no problem. you'll just have less power output from the receiver.