Mixing Ohms.

Musicman61

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I Recently bought a Emovita 3 channel amp for powering the front 3 channels of my aventage 2080. Main fronts and center.. I am using martinlogan motion series speakers rated at 4ohms. The Emotiva is able to handle 4ohms but the yamaha can only do 4ohms in the 2 main channels but not the surrounds. The yamaha only goes down to 6 Ohms so it is powering the surrounds using 6 Ohms and the amp is powering the front with 4 Ohms. Is this going to be a problem down the road or am I safe as long as I don't blast it at reference levels? The Emotiva does 300 watts into 4 Ohms and Yamaha does 140 into 2 channels at 8 Ohms.
 
Using 4 Ohm speakers on an amplifier rated for 6 Ohms is not recommended, but provided you are careful and as you say, keep an eye on the levels, you should be ok.

Check for excessive heat buildup in the amplifier and any signs of clipping or distortion. As you are not using the front channels ontheYamaha, this frees up power supply and cooling capability for the surround channels.

And just to say you are not "powering" the speakers with 6 Ohms, but loading the amplifier with 6 Ohms. This just means that for a given output voltage, the amplifier will need to supply more current and work harder, that's all.
 
Do you think I should play it safe and just send out the emotiva for added channels? This way everything with be on the amp and the yamaha will be used as nothing but a pre-amp
 
A second Emotiva will no doubt drive the speakers better, so it's if you think it's worth the investment.
 
You say you are driving the front 3 channels with emotiva. Therefore you should be fine as most of the power is need in these channels. The. Rears should be fine as your av is not doing much of the heavy lift anymore
 
A second Emotiva will no doubt drive the speakers better, so it's if you think it's worth the investment.
Yeah I'm not so much worried about driving the speakers better as I am have all speakers using 4 ohms. Actually though it wouldn't be a second emotiva but rather I'd be sending it out to have more channels/modules put in to it, making it a 7 channel amp instead of just 3. Thanks for the input.
 

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