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drockbo · May 1, 2009, 05:28 PM

Hi!

I recently purchased a new home that came pre-wired for audio in four rooms. We purchased 5 Polk in-celing speakers for the living room along with a subwoofer (all on the 2nd floor), 2 Polk in-ceiling speakers for each bedroom (one on ground floor and one on third floor) and 2 Polk indoor/outdoor speakers for the roof deck. I also purchased a Yamaha 5.1 Channel Receiver with an iPod dock. We managed to install the 5 speakers with the sub in the living room and the 2 speakers on the roof deck, but the roof deck speakers are not very loud AT ALL! We also have a splitter of sorts to split the main signal from the receiver before going to the roof deck speakers.

My question is: Is there a way to amplify the signal going to the two speakers on my deck without purchasing another receiver?? I don't want to spend a lot more money, so I'm trying to figure out the best way to approach this. By the way, I do have an in-wall volume control unit, and the speakers are still quiet with it turned all the way up.

DanielF · May 1, 2009, 09:32 PM

We'd need more details on the 'splitter of sorts' to help you out, as this is likely to be the problem. What is this splitter, and how is it wired to the receiver? And how are all the other rooms wired to the receiver?

Daniel

Perito · May 2, 2009, 06:25 AM

My question is: Is there a way to amplify the signal going to the two speakers on my deck without purchasing another receiver?? I don't want to spend a lot more money, so I'm trying to figure out the best way to approach this. By the way, I do have an in-wall volume control unit, and the speakers are still quiet with it turned all the way up.

The in-wall volume control unit is simply an attenuator. It can reduce the signal, but cannot amplify it.

You can get amplifiers to amplify the signal. You'd have to mount it either on the deck (fed from the signal coming to the speakers) or after the receiver before it goes into the network of wires. I'm not sure if this one will be suitable or not. It's the first thing that came up when I googled "audio amplifiers". It may not have the proper input levels for your application. You can get small transformers to fix that, however.

AudioSource Amp 100 Amplifier

drockbo · May 2, 2009, 01:16 PM

Originally Posted by DanielF

We'd need more details on the 'splitter of sorts' to help you out, as this is likely to be the problem. What is this splitter, and how is it wired to the receiver? And how are all the other rooms wired to the reciever?

Daniel

It is a 4-Way Speaker Selector Switch (also says High Power Stereo Speaker Control Unit on the front). It has 4 switches (A, B, C and D). I have this hooked to the receiver and the wires from the wall (that go to the speakers upstairs) hooked to the back of the unit. This Switch does not plug into the electric outlet however.

DanielF · May 2, 2009, 04:48 PM

OK, if it's just a switch, then that wouldn't explain the loss of power to your deck speakers. If the deck speakers are the same impedance (typically 8 ohms) as the ones in the other rooms, I can't explain why they're softer, unless their design is much less efficient than the others.

Did you buy/install the speaker selector, or was it already there when you bought the place? If the latter, there's a possibility someone modified it - open it up and look inside. For example, if the previous owner had noise complaints from the neighbours when the deck speakers were in use, they might have added series resistors to the deck speaker selector output to limit their volume.

Daniel

drockbo · May 2, 2009, 04:55 PM

Originally Posted by DanielF

OK, if it's just a switch, then that wouldn't explain the loss of power to your deck speakers. If the deck speakers are the same impedance (typically 8 ohms) as the ones in the other rooms, I can't explain why they're softer, unless their design is much less efficient than the others.

Did you buy/install the speaker selector, or was it already there when you bought the place? If the latter, there's a possibility someone modified it - open it up and look inside. For example, if the previous owner had noise complaints from the neighbours when the deck speakers were in use, they might have added series resistors to the deck speaker selector output to limit their volume.

Daniel

It's a new construction home, so everything is original and not modified. I did, however, purchase the switch myself. There were not enough ouputs from the back of the Yamaha receiver, so I had to get the switch in order to have another place to plug in the additional speakers. Everyone is telling me that the signal is softer on the roof because the receiver doesn't have enough wattage to power the five speakers in the living room as well as two additional speakers that are two floors away. Do you know of an amplifier that would remedy the situation?

Derek

DanielF · May 2, 2009, 06:16 PM

(Mis-post - see next posting.)

Daniel

DanielF · May 2, 2009, 06:17 PM

Derek,

No, I don't know of a single amplifier that would fix that situation. It may be that the wires running to the roof are too thin and are thus dropping much of the signal voltage due to their resistance.

Other than rewiring the house with thicker wire, I don't see any simple solution apart from buying a second amplifier for the roof speakers. This needn't be a complete 'receiver', just a simple stereo amp would do (like the one Perito identified). You'd probably pick up something cheaper via eBay.

Daniel