Alpha 3 amp - outside speakers

[ianh64]

With the start of the good weather, time to connect up the outside speakers again. They are bose 150? environmental which I think are rated at 4 ohm.

In recent years they have been connected to a cr@ppy all in 1 unit that did not have any external inputs and only one set of speakers outputs. I had taken the risk of connecting them via a 1->2 speaker switch box so the resistance was probably less than 4 ohm.

Wanting to connect my Squeezebox, thinking that my old Alpha 3 amp had 2 sets of outputs, I decided to rescue it from the loft. Unfortunately it does not have speaker A/B output but 2 sets of bindings for switched and direct.

The minimum output of the amp is 4 ohm. My other speakers that I could use are Warfdale Diamond 3's which I think were 8 ohm.

1. Can I run two sets of speakers from the Arcam outputs, 1 pr 8 ohm, 1pr 4 ohm.

2. What is the best way of switching off the unwanted pair? The switched par apparently are disabled when the headphone socket is used.

3. How can I obtain a spare manual - printed or electronic - its gone missing asa result of a few moves and a tidy wife.

I would rather not use the existing speaker switchbox. It sometimes crackles and one stereo side goes off. Not sure if this a fault in the switchbox or as a result of have too little load (<4 ohm as it is a parallel switchbox)

My thought is to connect outside via direct via switchbox to simply turn it on/off. The other pair would be connected direct and if I did want to turn them off, I would just put a blank jack plug in the headphone socket.

4. Presumably in this scenario with only one set of speakers connected to the switchbox, the load remains unchanged?

5. So the success comes down to the answer to Q1 above?

6. Can the Alpha 3 be easily modified for A/B speaker switching

Thanks


Ian