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sound less full from 4 speakers than with 2 ?? help!

clairtone

clairtone

ballers clique
So i connected my 2 new speakers together into my system and got this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMfJzBNqQi8

pretty cool huh - but theres a problem

playing any one of the set of speakers at a time (only one set at a time) gives more bass (and a louder and fuller sound) than playing two sets at once. I made sure theyre all wired correctly (reds and blacks) then I thought to myself maybe the polarities of one set of speakers are reversed inside the speakers, so I connected one set in reverse to the other but that wasn't the answer either. what could be the explanation for this? it really kinda ruined my parade haha :(

im playing them out of the A and B speaker outputs of the sansui power amp you see in the vid.
 
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clairtone said:
So i connected my 2 new speakers together into my system and got this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMfJzBNqQi8

pretty cool huh - but theres a problem

playing any one of the set of speakers at a time (only one set at a time) gives more bass (and a louder and fuller sound) than playing two sets at once. I made sure theyre all wired correctly (reds and blacks) then I thought to myself maybe the polarities of one set of speakers are reversed inside the speakers, so I connected one set in reverse to the other but that wasn't the answer either. what could be the explanation for this? it really kinda ruined my parade haha :(

im playing them out of the A and B speaker outputs of the sansui power amp you see in the vid.
Click to expand...
less power divided up between the four than with two....
I never play more than two at a time. I would suggest a more powerful amp or simply play two at a time and swap them out from time to time.
Bill
 
Doesn't running two sets of speakers at once cut the overall wpc in half? So if you had, for instance, an 80wpc x2 amp, then running 4 speakers will reduce it to 40wpc x4 and everything will be quieter.
 
cableguy said:
less power divided up between the four than with two....
I never play more than two at a time. I would suggest a more powerful amp or simply play two at a time and swap them out from time to time.
Bill
Click to expand...

Ha, beat me!
 
Permanent Waves said:
Doesn't running two sets of speakers at once cut the overall wpc in half? So if you had, for instance, an 80wpc x2 amp, then running 4 speakers will reduce it to 40wpc x4 and everything will be quieter.
Click to expand...

yes of course, but I didn't mean overall volume, what I mean is im getting a sound which is similar to the effect you get when you switch the + - on one speaker around, kinda an empty sound. its not full like when I play both at a time. These are reasonably efficient speakers and that amp is quite powerfull - I don't think thats the problem. Its not ohmage either because they are in seperate plugs A and B.

kinda saddening really :( defeats the whole purpose of my cool looking stack of speakers.
 
Man, this is weird. I've experienced the same exact thing! I have a pair of Klipsch KLF10's that I really like. Had them hooked to my Sansui G-901DB and thought they sounded great. Clear and crisp with punchy bass. Well, a friend of mine had a pair of the same speakers that he wanted to get rid of, cheap. Hmmmm.. one pair is good, two pair must be better, right? I bought them, hooked them to the "B" speakers on the 'sui and man was I disappointed! Like Clairtone said, it was like they were hooked up out of phase. I double-checked and they weren't. I thought it might be placement so I moved them arround, no change. It is like there is a big hole sucking the sound out of the sound. Anemic mids, bass all but gone. It's not a volume thing, the sound is different, sucky. If I switch to just one pair, the good sounds return. Any ideas?
 
Congratulations to both of you on successfully making this empirical determination and accurately assessing the results. :yes:

I've posted it several times here, now, with illustrative links in glorious color, but nobody apparently wants to get it.

It's AXIOMATIC: play multiple sources of the same program material in any given listening space, and they will interfere with each other. There's reinforcements and cancellations (nodes and nulls) throughout the frequency spectrum when you do that. That's the physics of sound propagation in action.

It's one of the primary functions of a crossover in a speaker to PREVENT the drivers from overlapping the frequencies they play and interfering with each other. Stacking defeats the engineer's design objective of providing a phase-coherent sound source.

HELLO, folks, stacking's a BAD idea, the only known benefit being they will play louder with the same distortion. It also makes a sonic mess of everything, and that's what you're hearing.

Answer: If louder's your objective, buy better, louder speakers and use THEM to accelerate your hearing loss.... :thmbsp:

[More is NOT better when it comes to speakers, nope.... ]
 
So to take this to its ultimate end, and I'm not trying to sound like an a$$, a single driver would (should) sound best of all?
 
My guess is that your Sansui connects the A & B speakers in series vs. parallel. A series connection will theoretically halve the power output. A parallel connection with theoretically double it. If my guess is correct, I wouldn't suggest hard wiring the speakers in parallel either, as the amp may not tolerate the resulting 4 ohm (I assume) load. Which amp is this?
 
resnatron said:
So to take this to its ultimate end, and I'm not trying to sound like an a$$, a single driver would (should) sound best of all?
Click to expand...
You would be absolutely correct. A pair of full-range drivers is a well-appreciated approach, and there's threads here on AK describing how to do it. Gettiing truly "full-range" out of a single driver is difficult, so we often "augment" with UHF drivers and/or subs, as required.

Next best would be coaxials, if it were possible to make them full-range without other compromises. Well, that IS possible, but not using conventional design approaches. There's plenty of contemporary research going on with that.

Two-ways are next. It's easier to get pretty close doing those employing carefully selected driver combinations (and some design "tricks") to cover the full audio spectrum. Two-ways sound good for good reasons.

The more drivers you use to achieve accuracy, the tougher it becomes integrating them. Three-ways have traditionally been the most acceptable (and economical) compromise.

Four-ways and more are a REALLY tough nut. Everything's gotta be absolutely "right," and it may take a lifetime of tweaking to accomplish that....
 
thanks zilch for the answer - it was boggling my mind!

altho u kinda ruined my fun in terms of having a cool stacked system :( I guess I can give my dad the speakers now ahahaha - one more question though - why do they bother having more than 2 speakers in nightclubs tho? Is it because the area is bigger? that shouldn't really make a difference. Maybe I should open a nightclub consulting service with this new found knowledge lol

honestly I might even build an external crossover and give the 220's all the bass, then play the mids and tweeters thru the 602's and give my dad the 560's since they wont really be neccesary anymore - does that sound like a good idea?
 
I've had this happen when one of my amps runs the b speaker in parellell as opposed to series to keep the ohms from dipping to much. Maybe try using a separate amp to run each set of speakers. I've had great result with that and I can blend in the speakers with different characteristics to suit my needs at the time. Who cares about being a total purist. Mixing and matching is part of the fun of this hobby. I'm a stacker and a 4 corner speaker guy and when you get everything working in synergy now that's an accomplishment and well worth the effort.
 
clairtone said:
One more question though - why do they bother having more than 2 speakers in nightclubs tho? Is it because the area is bigger? that shouldn't really make a difference.
Click to expand...
You have good insight here. Contrary to what many might believe, you can't get decent sound throughout a public space, no matter the size, merely by adding more speakers. Dance clubs, churches, football stadiums, theaters, auditoriums, or recording studios, the rules all derive from the science of how sound operates.

Sound reinforcement installations are highly engineered, according to these very principles. Wherever multiple sources are used to distribute the SPL as required for the space, great care is taken in the design to minimize overlap using controlled-directivity speakers. Go here to read up on this stuff, if interested. Nobody's more generous with their research and knowledge than JBL Pro, though lots of good stuff can also be found on other pro sound websites:

http://www.jblpro.com/pages/tech_lib.htm

clairtone said:
honestly I might even build an external crossover and give the 220's all the bass, then play the mids and tweeters thru the 602's and give my dad the 560's since they wont really be neccesary anymore - does that sound like a good idea?
Click to expand...
Yes, you're getting it already. Low frequencies operate according to their own set of rules, due to the longer wavelengths. Look up "Mutual coupling" in the Sound System Design Manual at the JBL Pro tech library. Using mid/high boxes in combination with subwoofers is an excellent approach.

This is all even MORE fun, once you understand the basics.... :thmbsp:
 
An interesting twist on the principles Zilch describes is the Rectilinear III approach: a 4-way speaker with 6 drivers trying as much as possible to mimic a phase-coherent single driver.

I'm no expert, so please correct me if I'm wrong here, but as I understand it, rectilinear used a Philips full-range driver for its mid-range, and used very low and very high crossover points to the woofer and the four tweeters. That way, most of the audible spectrum is coming from that single full-range driver. The four tweeters are actually all running series/parallel off of the same signal, but two of them naturally roll off around 12,000, while the other two act as super-tweeters, making it effectively 4-way.
 
I haven't been on AK very long, but there seems to be an underlying presumption in many posts here that there's little of substance to speakers. I mean, how much can there be to understand about a transducer stuck in a box?

I hope members are getting my message here: there's plenty to learn and practice regarding loudpeaker technology; people devote their life's work to it. You can earn an advanced degree in this.

But most importantly, the hobby itself can be SO much more fun with minimal investment in learning the basics of how it all works and how to do it ourselves, and there are plenty of resources online for that. Here's just one: http://sound.westhost.com/articles.htm

Clearly the engineers at Rectilinear were versed in the art and science of speaker design, and I bet they had one Hell of a fun time doing it, too.... :thmbsp:
 
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