Can I do this with speakers?

[Hellfromabove]

Well, I saw that what OSCAR did on his cab. He took some speakers and took the wires and put them on speakers. I was wondering if I could like splice those wires and make them like 3 each to make it so they play on more than one speaker. Is it possible? Thanx.

-See Ya!!!

[OSCAR]

This looks like you are wiring the speakers in parallel, which may overload the amp.  To be on the safe side I would wire the speakers in series.  You will probably have to crank up the volume a bit, but I doubt that would cause any damage.

[MaximRecoil]

Not sure what you are trying to do here. You want to wire together three speakers to act as a single speaker? Probably not a good plan unless it has really been thought out. What are you using for an amp? What impedance is the amp stable to? What impedance are your speakers.

For the sake of discussion I'll assume that you have a 4 ohm stable amp and 4 ohm speakers. You have 2 wiring choices here if you want them to act as a single speaker. Series or parallel (series/parallel is not an option with 3 SVC speakers).

Series would be completely safe but you wouldn't get much volume out of them. Let's say you have a 20 watt x 1 @ 4 ohms amp and three 4 ohm speakers.  So this single channel will make 20 watts into a 4 ohm load. Now you wire the three speakers in series. Now your amp will see a 12 ohm load. So that strips away 2/3 of the power that your amp can make. Now your amp is making less than 7 watts and then divide that by 3 and each speaker will be getting about 2 watts.

Parallel is not a good idea. Your amp will see a 1.33 ohm load and it will more than likely fail quickly on you.

[paigeoliver]

Also, exactly what effect are you going for?

It may be safer and more effective to get an audio cable splitter and run more than one set of speakers/amps.

Back when I got my first car ('84 Turbo Regal BABY!), I smoked the stereo by hooking up like a zillion speakers to it.

[Hellfromabove]

Yeah I guess I am gonna use spliters. Wondering if this was possible:

Thanx.

-See Ya!!!

[hooded_paladin]

Yeah I guess I am gonna use spliters.

this is a big waste mechanically for an identical situation electrically.  Those splitters will cost a lot, and since you'll be soldering to those speakers you should be comfortable with soldering a couple extra wires.

(yay for engineering)

[grafixmonkey]

I have put multiple speakers in series on a single speaker-out from an amp before.  It works okay, but it is quieter.  What would be more effective would be to find three speakers of a lower resistance...   they are usually 8 ohms, but I think there are 6-ohm speakers too, and possibly even lower resistances.  Then you'd have 18 ohms or less to drive instead of 24, if you put three in series.  You also might find something like 16 ohm or 24 ohm speakers, which would produce an 8 ohm equivalent load put in parallel, and look like a single speaker to the amp circuit.  The amp might have trouble driving three 8-ohm speakers in parallel, but then again it might not.  If you don't care about the amp, you can try it.  You can also try locating the components that provide the power, probably a large transistor with a metal backplate, but there are many other sources of amplification that are harder to identify, and add extra cooling to them.  If it's a transistor-powered amp, adding the extra cooling on the transistor and putting the speakers in parallel would probably work fine.

The best bet to get three speakers to be driven from one speaker wire is to get an amp that can supply a lot more volume than you want to use.  Like, my cab amp is unpleasantly loud with its volume knob 1/3 of the way up.  It wakes the neighbors upacross the street at half volume, and begins audibly rattling the windows and knocking loose objects off tables at 3/4 volume.  (full volume has never been tried, for fear of never needing a stereo again the rest of my life)  So putting three speakers in series would just make me crank the volume a bit more to get comfortable volume.

Keep in mind that computer speakers are built to be integrated systems with no unknowns - not like home stereo amps where you're supposed to be able to get your own choice of speaker.  So, changing what's on the speaker wire may throw the rest of the circuit off and make odd things happen, so don't expect sure-fire good results even if nothing burns out.  I don't think problems are likely, but I've asked Boston Accoustics engineers about using some of their PC satellites in special ways before, and they have cautioned me that they don't behave like "normal" home audio speakers, and plugging them in to any system but the one they're designed for is iffy.  He even claimed that substituting other speakers for the satellites would not work.  (in my system the satellites are nothing but speakers - the amp and everything else is contained in the sub)

[jdsony]

It looks like you plan on using 3 sets of speakers. There should be no problem hooking all those up to your computer's audio jack. If you don't mind hacking them up you can avoid the splitters by cutting all the 1/8" jacks off and soldering them to one jack. You won't cause any harm with the output from the computer going to the 3 seperate amps built into the speakers. Even wiring more speakers off of one amp is usually fine, I did it for years. Just depends on the speakers and amp etc.

[CadeFreak]

I'll be trying out this next week so i'll let ye know what happens 

[ami-man]

Hi,

If you use four speakers you can wire them in series/parallel.
Two set of speakers wired in series and then wired in parallel that way the overall impeadance is the same as one speaker.

Regards
Alan Hood
ami-man
UK