Whole home audio and XPA-2 question

[bfenster90]

Hi, I'm considering the XPA-2 and would really appreciate your recommendations. Here's my setup

This is to power my home's built in speakers (8 of them connected in-line). There are 4 rooms, each with 2 in-ceiling definitive technology UIW RSS II per room (They're basically new and I'm willing to change these out and ebay them if anyone has recommendations to upgrade - for instance I'm considering each room leaving one in and swapping the other for an in-ceiling sub). Manual volume control knobs are in each of the rooms.

Here's the problem....There are only two speaker terminations at the wall termination plate. That means all 8 speakers are wired either in serial or parallel (I have no idea how to find out which - nor do I know if it really matters)..... Hence my search for a strong 2 channel amp to power all 8 speakers. In reality, the speakers say they'll take as little as 10w each, but I'm highly skeptical that my receivers claimed 105w/channel is strong enough to sufficiently power these.

I'll probably be running these as the second zone from the Zone 2 pre-out on my Denon 2313CI. Connecting the pre-outs to the XPA-2. Or I may leave the Denon for my theater setup and just go with a Sonos Connect >> XPA-2 setup for the in-house speakers. Mainly because the zoning is a little kludgy on the Denon (not simple enough for the wife)

Anyways, would love any guidance you can give me. I'm new to this

[teaman]

You might be better suited to go with a whole home amp from Sherbourn or Speakercraft. Both have good reputations and both companies provide amps with exactly your needs in mind. They both offer 12 and 16 channel amps which allow you to use as is or bridged for higher power.

[bfenster90]

Thanks for your quick response! Since the wall termination plate only offers two channels, I assumed the speakers were wired in series and I would be looking for a 2-channel amp to power all 8, no? I only have access to a single right and left from the wall plate for all speakers (and rewiring the speakers to get access to all 8 is not really an option). I'm all new to this, so maybe I'm missing something. Anyways, thanks for your feedback - I"ll take a peek at speakercraft and sherbourn

[teaman]

In case you were not aware prior to this, Sherbourn and Emotiva shared a lot of platforms. Sherbourn was for professional installers and Emotiva was for home audio enthusiasts. Both manufactured products are beasts and highly reputable.....and reliable.

[rbk123]

Jan 29, 2016 21:13:19 GMT -5 bfenster90 said:

Thanks for your quick response! Since the wall termination plate only offers two channels, I assumed the speakers were wired in series and I would be looking for a 2-channel amp to power all 8, no? I only have access to a single right and left from the wall plate for all speakers (and rewiring the speakers to get access to all 8 is not really an option). I'm all new to this, so maybe I'm missing something. Anyways, thanks for your feedback - I"ll take a peek at speakercraft and sherbourn

You are correct in your theory, or at least that's what I would guess unless there are some hidden terminals somewhere else in the house. If your guess is the case, then a 2 channel amp of any kind would be fine but do you really want to play the music in all the rooms at the same time? I guess it would be enjoyable if you like to walk around the house alot and enjoy the seamless room-to-room synchronicity...

2 suggestions:
1) hook up any receiver to those terminals and play something. This is to confirm your suspicion or not. If not, then you just need to find the other terminals.
2) take the wall plate off and see if you can see all the wires terminating there. If so, you could get a different terminal plate and have the channels separated and then use a multi-channel amp depending on how many channels you want. If they're all terminated there, rewiring will be a piece of cake.

[jlafrenz]

Before you do anything, you need to take the cover off of the volume control knob in the room and see if it is impedance matching. Volume controls like what you describe can often be set so based on how many pairs of speakers are in the system so that you can use them with a standard amp. There are also some volume controls that are not impedance matching. In this case you would want to remove the speaker terminal by the amp and use some sort of impedance matching connecting block. The other option would be to get an amp with multiple channels. You would want a 4 zone (8 channel) amp.

[petew]

I'd suggest finding an experienced installer to figure out how it's wired up.

[garbulky]

Uh if this set is wired in a bad way you could be seeing 2 ohm loads which can also dip lower (!). I think whoever wired those speakers ...and those are expensive at $650 each (!) either was blind or had some way of not making them ridiculous 2 ohm loads. I mean he didn't expect you to buy some gargantuan amp just to power them for his mistake did he? If it really is 2 ohm loads, I suggest recabling. Those seem to be pretty nice speakers.

[jlafrenz]

Based on what the OP has stated, there is not a need to rewire. There may be a need to reconfigure how the wire is terminated at the amp location, but this is an easy fix. The key here is the volume controls themselves. If they are impedance matching and set properly, then the way it is wired will work.

[garym]

Jan 29, 2016 20:14:52 GMT -5 bfenster90 said:

There are 4 rooms, each with 2 in-ceiling definitive technology UIW RSS II per room . . . . There are only two speaker terminations at the wall termination plate. That means all 8 speakers are wired either in serial or parallel (I have no idea how to find out which - nor do I know if it really matters).....

I take it there are 4 speakers per channel (a stereo pair per room). Those are nominal 8-ohm speakers. If they're wired in series, the load is additive, so the amp will see a 32 ohm load. If they're wired in parallel, the load divides. For 4 8-ohm speakers the load will be 2 ohms, as garbulky said. If the volume controls are impedance-matching, check to be sure they're set for X4.

Here are a couple of links:

www.hometoys.com/article/2002/06/an-easy-way-to-determine-impedance-match-volume-control-settings/1540/

www.amazon.com/AudioSource-AE100VC-Impedance-Matching-Control/dp/B003H3C94W/ref=sr_1_2_m?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1454253942&sr=1-2&keywords=impedance+matching+volume

[JKCashin]

Jan 29, 2016 21:13:19 GMT -5 bfenster90 said:

Thanks for your quick response! Since the wall termination plate only offers two channels, I assumed the speakers were wired in series and I would be looking for a 2-channel amp to power all 8, no? I only have access to a single right and left from the wall plate for all speakers (and rewiring the speakers to get access to all 8 is not really an option). I'm all new to this, so maybe I'm missing something. Anyways, thanks for your feedback - I"ll take a peek at speakercraft and sherbourn

If they were in series, then the volume controls would affect all downstream speakers, would it not? My guess is that they are in parallel. Which means low impedance.