different volume levels

Technophobe

A friend of mine had 2 ceiling speakers installed and instructed the electrician to set the little switch on them to 8 ohms before they installed them...

When we tested them on a Friday using an (admittedly old) mini hi-fi, the sound from one speaker was definitley coming out lower than the other one....
It was more obvious at a lower volume but even ay higher volume you could hear one speaker dominating.....

These are new Ceiling speakers and werent cheap ones as far as I know..
Anyone know what might be wrong as I want to avoid this scenario myself on my own install....???

thanks

Homer

Technophobe wrote: »

A friend of mine had 2 ceiling speakers installed and instructed the electrician to set the little switch on them to 8 ohms before they installed them...

When we tested them on a Friday using an (admittedly old) mini hi-fi, the sound from one speaker was definitley coming out lower than the other one....
It was more obvious at a lower volume but even ay higher volume you could hear one speaker dominating.....

These are new Ceiling speakers and werent cheap ones as far as I know..
Anyone know what might be wrong as I want to avoid this scenario myself on my own install....???

thanks

It's unusual to have a selector switch on domestic speakers to select the impedance?
It is however common practice to have a switch on commercial speakers to allow switching between 100volt line and 8ohm or low impedance.
Can you give us the make and model of the speaker in question?
How was the cabling done? Two individual runs or were they wired in series or parallel by any chance?

Technophobe

Hi

thanks for the reply...

He tells me they are Adastra (?) and are similer to http://www.commsandsound.com/adastra-ceiling-speaker-with-control-14913-0.html


cabling was 2 individual runs..that's what they were told to do anyways...;)

Homer

Well if they are similar to the model you linked to and are both on individual runs and set to 8 ohms then there shouldn't be any noticeable difference in volume levels?
Is there a balance selector on the amp you are using maybe?
Are the runs both similar lengths and the same type of cable?

Technophobe

Hi and thanks again for the reply....

Yes, runs are similar length and same cable definitely.....

We only tried them out on an old mini hi-fi by attaching the speaker wires into them.....but also used this to try other speaker pairs and didnt notice this difference...

Speaker cable is white, with one strand with a black line running along it, so we assumed this to be ttached to the black connector and other strand to the red one.....

Would it be caused by electrician not setting one of them to 8 ohms maybe ?

cnocbui

If you have access to a multimeter, it should be fairly easy to test the impedance of each speaker circuit at the amp end. They should be the same, if not, that would imply where to look for a problem.

Richersounds.ie: John

Technophobe wrote: »

Hi and thanks again for the reply....

Yes, runs are similar length and same cable definitely.....

We only tried them out on an old mini hi-fi by attaching the speaker wires into them.....but also used this to try other speaker pairs and didnt notice this difference...

Speaker cable is white, with one strand with a black line running along it, so we assumed this to be ttached to the black connector and other strand to the red one.....

Would it be caused by electrician not setting one of them to 8 ohms maybe ?

Techno,

Vested interest here - I sell Hi-fi (I think you know that already )

It could be a number of reasons:

1. These are 100V line & * Ohm speakers with a tranny on board - it's possible that only one of these has been set to 8Ohm by your sparks - should be pretty easy to check this by popping one back out of the ceiling and resetting (or retapping) the terminals

2. You may only have one cable - I know you mentioned that there were 2 cables however I have seen so many crimes against Audio in this type of install that I would strongly recommend that you test the cables individually to ensure each of them is connected SOLELY to it's respective speaker.

3. The speaker could be faulty - I'm not knocking the brand, but they are generally budget speakers and that possibility cannot be ruled out!

Good luck with the testing and keep me posted if we can advise,

John Mc

Technophobe

thanks to all for the replies.....

I will get mate to pop the speaker out and see what story is in case its not set to 8 ohms...will update when I know...