4, 6, 8 ohm Little Help

[stomachmonkey]

In the new house.

Had downstairs wired 5.1 and upstairs media room 7.1

Picked up a Yamaha 5.1 to replace the old unit which was getting flakey.

Kept previous speakers.

They are rated 4 ohm

Yamaha unit will run 6 or 8 ohm.

Do I have an issue running Yamaha at 6 with 4 speakers?

Second issue.

Yamaha has RCA out for sub.

Low power guys ran coax for the sub. Never heard of that one.

Sub used to connect with standard + - wires.

Picked up RCA to Coax connections for one end and coax to RCA to 2 wire at the sub.

No workey.

Plugged sub directly into Yamaha with the RCA/2 wire adaptor, no workey.

So either sub is dead or ????

[Gogar]

1. Each output is rated for 6 or 8 ohms, it doesn't really matter how many speakers you hook up (in total) unless you're piggybacking speakers on a single output. "Only" using 4 speakers doesn't really change the idea that you're mismatching it.

It will "probably" work with your 4-ohm speakers, just watch out for heat.

If you ARE piggybacking speakers (hooking up more than one speaker to a single output) you CAN run them in series (+ out of the receiver into + of the first speaker; - out of the first speaker into the + of the second, - of the second speaker into - of the receiver.) Doing so will make 2 4-ohm speakers a total of 8 ohms.

2. Is your old sub POWERED? Like, does it have an AC cord running into it? Your explanation is kinda confusing, but I'm guessing your OLD system came as a set and the receiver supplied POWER (i.e. Speaker level) for the sub, and I'm guessing the sub DOESN'T have an AC cable running into it. And, your Yamaha likely does not provide a speaker-level output for SUB. Most don't. So, just hooking up the line-level RCA from the Yamaha into your sub won't do anything, you'll need a power amp for the sub, or a POWERED sub.