4 speakers in a large room

Thank you all for the suggestions. The house is still under construction and I am planning ahead. But I think I can try both methods and then choose what I prefer - the A+B from one amplifier or the way Dekay suggests.

@dekay I don't have any answer for you .

If it's mainly for ambient music, you could get an old AVR (you can find them cheap nowadays and some very good brands), then play around with the different surround sound modes. I did that in my workshop. Sounds fine for background music. You don't need to hook up the center speaker unless you have a place for it, same for a sub. I have it with 2 sets of mis-matched speakers, I tried all the surround-sound modes (Movie, Stadium, Hall, etc. that most AVR's have) and it sounds quite good.

Yeah, might be a bit odd of a solution, but it works very well, and would definitely sound better then mono or an A+B setup. Plus you don't have to worry about wiring it weird/wrong or the Ohms. Just an idea that works for me.

Just found this simple test on Quora (though I've read similar takes elsewhere).

"Almost always the speakers were just paralleled.

It's easy to tell. With just one set of speakers on A,

if A+B parallels them then the speakers will continue to work going from A to A+B

If A+B places them in series then switching from A to A+B will silence the speakers."

DeKay

Something else to consider...

I used a vintage KLH Model Twenty-One table radio in various apartment/house kitchens from the late 70’s up to the early 90’s.

Now there are nice vintage/retro look BT ready radios (and powered speakers "only" that look like radios) available which could be placed in the kitchen area and mated to an iPod or something similar.

With this method you could better implement whatever system you place in the main area.

Even though in some of the homes the main stereo was easy enough to hear in the kitchen area I didn’t wan’t to fuss with the good gear (tape/LP sources) while cooking, thus the radio.

When entertaining guests seemed to like listening to the KLH, though after dinner we would usually listen to the main setup (up until I purchased a TV with a screen larger that 6" in the mid 80’s;-).

This said, I’ve never owned a smart phone, never streamed aside from listening to music on the iMac - if that’s even considered to be streaming, and my wife’s iPod has only been used to take photos - so maybe it’s a dumb idea.

DeKay