Impedance of biwire-able speakers

Duece1: What model receiver are you using? Is it a stereo receiver with multiple speaker jacks or is it a multi-channel surround sound receiver? Sean
>

Thanks guys. I am using an Onkyo TX-8511 stereo receiver (no A/V or surround- it has two sets of speaker jacks (A & B) and switches to play one pair (A), the other pair (B), or both pairs of speakers (A and B). There is also a switch on the back for me to select speaker impedance - one position is for when I have 8 ohm speakers hooked up to A OR B; and the other position is for when I either have 4 ohm speakers hooked up to A OR B, or when I have 8 ohm min speakers hooked up to A AND B. This is how I got to my original question - are my new 8 ohm bi-wire speakers still acting like 8 ohm speakers when I wire the tweeters to A and the woofers to B? (When I had two pairs of speakers (1 pair 4 ohm, 1 pair 6 ohm) I never played A AND B together.)
Dave

This would be bi-wiring not bi-amping and it might not be advantageous at all.

To see if the wiring configuration of the receiver is in series or parallel, try hooking up the woofers to channel A and nothing to Channel B. Then select A+B and see if you hear anything coming out of the woofers. If you do, the speaker jacks are wired in parallel you can use both sets of speaker terminals as you intended. How much of a gain you get from this, if any, may not be worth the added cost or trouble. The only way to find out would be to try it out. Either way, it wouldn't hurt anything. The setting would still remain at 8 ohms.

If you do the A+B test and you get no sound out of the woofers, you shouldn't use both sets of terminals for the speakers. That's because the outputs are wired in series, which means that the signal would have to go from the receiver out to the woofers, back to the receiver and then out to the tweeters. This would create a time delay with increased signal smearing.

Hope this helps.... Sean
>

Sean my guess is the A+B is parrallel. That means the amp is seeing a 4 ohm load. The fact that they have only an 8 ohm tap for using A and B also suggests it is parrallel. This means that the amp is not designed for anything less than a four ohm load.

I agree with Sean there is probably no sonic benefit from what you want to do.
greg

Thanks guys - that's exactly the kind of feedback I needed.

Have a great holiday,
Dave