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Several months ago I had 4 sets of high quality in wall speakers
installed in my home by an electrician. Each set of speakers is in a
different room in the house with a separate volume control installed.
I have a "Multi-Room Speaker Selector" that the four sets of speaker
wires connect to and then the speaker selector is connected to my
Technics Receiver.

Periodically the system shuts down and triggers the overload message
on the receiver. I had the electrician back out several times and
they couldn't find anything wrong with what they wired.

I went out and purchased two different new high end receivers from
BestBuy and it made no difference as the overload was still
triggered. I purchased a new speaker selector and that only seemed to
make matters worse as the overload now triggers even quicker.

Any advice for what I can check? How can I determine/measure if there
is a short some where in all of the wiring?

Other suggestions?

Thanks!
Jamie

[Kalman Rubinson]

On 17 May 2007 23:06:45 GMT, wrote:

Several months ago I had 4 sets of high quality in wall speakers
installed in my home by an electrician. Each set of speakers is in a
different room in the house with a separate volume control installed.
I have a "Multi-Room Speaker Selector" that the four sets of speaker
wires connect to and then the speaker selector is connected to my
Technics Receiver.

Periodically the system shuts down and triggers the overload message
on the receiver. I had the electrician back out several times and
they couldn't find anything wrong with what they wired.

I went out and purchased two different new high end receivers from
BestBuy and it made no difference as the overload was still
triggered. I purchased a new speaker selector and that only seemed to
make matters worse as the overload now triggers even quicker.

Any advice for what I can check? How can I determine/measure if there
is a short some where in all of the wiring?

Other suggestions?

Regular receivers are not able to handle multiple parallel loads as
represented by the four sets of speakers. Does the receiver shut down
only when you use multiple speakers simultaneously or even when you
use only one set? If the former, I am not surprised and you would be
advised to consider installing small amps to drive each set
separately. If the latter, you have a short in the wiring.

Kal

[erich]

On Thu, 17 May 2007 23:06:45 +0000, Jamie.Davidson1 wrote:

Several months ago I had 4 sets of high quality in wall speakers installed
in my home by an electrician. Each set of speakers is in a different room
in the house with a separate volume control installed. I have a
"Multi-Room Speaker Selector" that the four sets of speaker wires connect
to and then the speaker selector is connected to my Technics Receiver.

Periodically the system shuts down and triggers the overload message on
the receiver. I had the electrician back out several times and they
couldn't find anything wrong with what they wired.


An ohmmeter would be what you would want use to detect a short. Home
centers, Radio Shack carry these. One question about your selector - does
it allow you to turn your speaker pairs off and on individually? If so do
you get an overload with just one pair of speakers on?

If your wiring is such that the speakers are in parallel the resistance
with all four pairs would probably be too low for any reciever to handle.
Mostly the solution to this sort of problem is an amp per pair of
speakers. Some higher end amps have multizone capabilities which
essentially means they have dedicated amps to more than one pair of
speakers.

[Peter Wieck]

On May 17, 7:06 pm, wrote:
Several months ago I had 4 sets of high quality in wall speakers
installed in my home by an electrician. Each set of speakers is in a
different room in the house with a separate volume control installed.
I have a "Multi-Room Speaker Selector" that the four sets of speaker
wires connect to and then the speaker selector is connected to my
Technics Receiver.

Periodically the system shuts down and triggers the overload message
on the receiver. I had the electrician back out several times and
they couldn't find anything wrong with what they wired.

I went out and purchased two different new high end receivers from
BestBuy and it made no difference as the overload was still
triggered. I purchased a new speaker selector and that only seemed to
make matters worse as the overload now triggers even quicker.

Any advice for what I can check? How can I determine/measure if there
is a short some where in all of the wiring?

Other suggestions?

Thanks!
Jamie

Jamie:

A couple of things with respect, not to belittle either your choices
or your electrician:

a) Many receivers do not like loads with too low an impedance. More on
this later.
b) Some (but not all) multi-room speaker switches account for this,
but such switches are usually quite expensive, starting at least at
$50 and can go much more.
c) Wire gauge becomes quite important with long runs.

So, unless you have an "impedance matching" speaker selector switch,
use wire of the correct gauge, and are very careful with phasing,
speaker loads and so forth, you will run into problems with such
systems as you describe.

Verify that you have an "impedance matching" switch, preferably one
with some level of overload protection internally.

Switch over to 12ga. wire (at least) and be very careful of phasing.

Check for stray strands and other potential shorting situations.
Perhaps even tin the ends to prevent fraying.

This should take care of the problems electrically. But you need to
understand one basic rule with audio: The receiver puts out but so-
much power. So, asking it to drive eight speakers simultaneously at a
(relatively) high volume will cause overload even when the impedance
is properly matched (you run out of 'headroom' in a hurry under those
sorts of conditions). You may need to get a _VERY_ powerful amplifier
that is stable to low-impedance loads if you really want to 'fill a
house' with sound from a single source.

Peter Wieck
Wyncote, PA

[[email protected]]

On May 17, 6:06 pm, wrote:
Several months ago I had 4 sets of high quality in wall speakers
installed in my home by an electrician. Each set of speakers is in a
different room in the house with a separate volume control installed.
I have a "Multi-Room Speaker Selector" that the four sets of speaker
wires connect to and then the speaker selector is connected to my
Technics Receiver.

Periodically the system shuts down and triggers the overload message
on the receiver. I had the electrician back out several times and
they couldn't find anything wrong with what they wired.

I went out and purchased two different new high end receivers from
BestBuy and it made no difference as the overload was still
triggered. I purchased a new speaker selector and that only seemed to
make matters worse as the overload now triggers even quicker.

Any advice for what I can check? How can I determine/measure if there
is a short some where in all of the wiring?

Other suggestions?

Thanks!
Jamie

How many of the eight speakers are you trying to drive (listen to) at
the same time? Sounds like the speakers are presenting a difficult
load that the receiver can't handle. If they are wired in parallel,
the impedence will be too low. They should be wired in series. Or do
I have that backwards?

Jeff

Jeff