Question OHM's Brain picking time!!!

Paul D

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Ok. It's been a while since i had my head around the OHM's subject.
I have a KEF passive sound bar housing the L/C/R speakers. I was wondering if it can be wired just to act as a centre speaker. It's a good speaker/passive sound bar, but just doesn't give good/enough physical separation.

Each speaker Left/Centre/Right is rated at 8 OHM's.

If i just connected them in parallel, does it reduce the OHM's to the receiver? (ie just daisy chain the red posts, same with black posts etc)
2 OHM's?

Or...

If i wire the centre speaker as normal to the receiver, then go red (off the centre speaker red post etc) to the next speakers red post. Then come of its black post to the red post of the last speaker. The come off it's black post back to the centre black post. (i hope this makes sense!)

What will the OHM's to the receiver be then?
I was thinking 8 OHM's for the centre. 16 OHM's for the series pair. Divided by two loads equals 12 OHM's.

Or...

Just wire them in series. Red to black to red to black etc

Is this even possible? Will the receiver be happy/safe?

Only thinking out loud, so no real desire to do it...
 
Personally I would just wire the centre as normal and then use the cables that go to the L/R speakers to the new speakers i.e. do not use the L/R speakers on the passive soundbar. One reason for this is the ohms but the other reason is that having all those drivers pushing the same sound out will potentially give you issues with sound reinforcement and cancellation. Just because it does a good job as a front 3 set of speakers does not mean it will do a good job with all the speakers doing the centre duty.
To answer you question:
All in series is ohn total= 8 + 8 + 8 =24 ohms
All in parallel is 1/ohms total=1/8 + 1/8 + 1/8 = 3/8 = 2.66 ohms
centre in parallel to L/R is 1/ohm total = 1/8 +1/16 = 3/16 =5.3 ohms
The issue with the centre in parallel to L/R is that there is different resistances on the 2 parallel sections which will affect the current seen by each speaker, then on the L/R side the 2 drivers will see different voltages (and has the potential to be out of phase as well) so I can not see it sounding balanced or good.
 

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