Speakers, receivers, and amps, Oh my!

[Snake-Eyes]

Last Christmas, i got a small stereo/speaker "set"." Came with two dinky speakers. I don't know how much wattage it is, but i do know that it has a minimum of 8 ohms resistance. I picked up two speaker cabinets at a garage sale for 10 bucks. They have a mid-range (roughly 8 inches), a 4 inch and 2 inch tweeter. I connected them to my receiver, and they worked fine. Yesterday, picked up two more speaker cabinets from some guy's trash (he's moving). They have a 12 inch woofer (325 watt peak), a 5 1/4 inch tweeter, and a 2 inch tweeter. I hooked them up to my receiver and they worked fine (on the cabinets it said they were 8 ohm). On one of the cabinets, one of the 5 1/4 inch tweeters was broken.

My questions are as follows:

-What would you suggest i replace the tweeter with?

-Would i be able to connect all four speaker cabinets to the receiver (has only two sets of ground/hot)?

-Would it be sensible to connect all four speaker cabinets (let's say i'm able to) to my dinky little receiver?

-If the above two are no, should i get a new/larger receiver? Should i get an amplifier with it to power the 12 inch woofers?

-What's this crossover business i hear about? I know a few things about audio and setting up a system, but not a whole lot.


I understand this isn't an audio forum, so all help is highly appreciated!

 

[kfc469]

you can connect them, but look at the manual and it will tell you the max that you can have. I had a friend who started his own DJ company with just a home theater surround sound receiver, it worked fine until he tried to connect to powerful of speakers at which point the receiver caught on fire. so be careful at what you do.

 

[2fast4u]

1.what ever you like
2.well i wouldn't pair speakers together.... that would cut down the own load to 4 ohms if u had to 8 ohm speakers tegether on the same channel.
3. If your receiver has 4 channels (4 spots for speakers) then thats ok but if u can only hook 2 speakers to it, then dont use all four.
4. If you want more power and the ability to hook more speakers, get a new receiver.
5. A crossover limits the frequences played my speakers. like for instanst a tweeter only plays highs. If u were to play lows with it, it would reck the tweeter. In simplist terms, a crossover will make it sound better if hooked up properly.

 

[2fast4u]

you can connect them, but look at the manual and it will tell you the max that you can have. I had a friend who started his own DJ company with just a home theater surround sound receiver, it worked fine until he tried to connect to powerful of speakers at which point the receiver caught on fire. so be careful at what you do.

The thing that prob. made the reciever catch fire is running the ohm load too low. If you hook a powerful speaker to the reciever, the reciever will just underpower it. The speaker just uses the wattage from the amp so there for, cannot hurt a receiver unless it is the wrong kind. (like a 2-4 ohm speaker on a 6-8 ohm reciever.

 

[Crysalis]

PM ericB

 

[j12]

hey crysalis i like your new sig. did you do it yourself?

 

[molsen]

www.partsexpress.com for speaker parts

 

[EricB]

could you post a picture of your speaker, so I can help you replace the tweeter?

what kind of receiver do you have? most home receivers can't handle going below 8 ohms, but the better ones can handle a 4 ohm (which is the 2 sets of speakers hooked up) load. most yamaha's can handle 2 ohms even though they won't tell you that. yamaha don't want you to run speaker loads that low, they just implement that feature to give you more dynamic capabilities.

a crossover distribute certain frequencies to certain speakers. a woofer can't play high frenquecies well and a tweeter can't play low frequencies at all without blowing. the better the crossovers, the better the sound

 

[Snake-Eyes]

http://img134.imageshack.us/img134/6851/p1010107xp7.jpg

Truthfully, i almost don't want to call it a receiver. It's a 25W (managed to find the manual) CD player/receiver. Looking currently at this one.

Is a crossover absolutely necessary, or is it just a nice thing to have?

 

[The General]

Crossovers are ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY.