I have a crazy idea…currently for my rear surround speakers I am using an S300 and pair of ML FX2 speakers (5 ohm, 93db, 1x 6.5" woofer 2x folded motion tweeter)
Love the sound and am very happy with them. I will be going into a slightly larger room and do believe my rear set up does not match my other speakers (performance wise). IE when watching a movie like Ready Player One with loud heavy sounds coming out of the rear, I fear I am working my speakers too hard. Could I purchase a 2nd pair of FX2s, stack them on top of my current pair and power all 4 speakers with 1 S300?
In series I believe it would be a 10 ohm load, likely with 100 watts of power (??). In parallel it would be a 2.5 ohm load, but I doubt it would be more than 400/450 watts. The ICE website does show the S300 module good to 2.5 ohms, so maybe I am safe???
Currently speakers are set -16db from ‘0’, so the amp still has lots of power I assume. But adding a 2nd set of speakers would increase my gain by 3db (???) so since I don’t want louder, but rather LARGER and easier, the speakers will still be playing at 85db per pair at calibration. Does the added DB offset some of the additional power?
Basically can I do it without sending the amp into protection? And if so should I do series or parallel?
You certainly have quite a quandary. There aren’t many films that push the rears hard, certainly not continuously (the film Senna puts some loud engine noises to the rear right but only a few times).
I’d try them in series first then if you don’t think it loud enough try them in parallel - it’ll probably work well either way on the basis that the rears often don’t do a lot (and the speakers are very sensitive) - having said that you obviously feel they’ll struggle so you’ll want to do something. Might be worth picking up some used larger speakers. Years ago I tried a large and heavy Rel subwoofer - it just got lost and couldn’t compete with the main system.
Thanks so much Dan! With Large electrostatic mains, center and surround speakers, the rears just sound to me like a ‘smaller’ sound than I have come to prefer. Not only that, but I have a heavy house curve, and don’t want to ask too much from a single 6.5 in a compact enclosure. I will say with the dual semi opposing tweeter I LOVE the width and diffuse sound of these in particular, something a large box speaker I find didnt have. Hence my hope to just use 2 pairs.
If anyone else has anything to say for or against this I am all ears.
You may end up with bigger speakers. I have very large floor level speakers but for the four ceiling they’re small (too many downlights and panels to get bigger heavier ceiling speakers) - they just get lost and I rarely hear anything from them (even though they measure the same as the others when I do a level test) and are driven by 120 watts each).
Maybe you can experiment by hooking both up speakers to one channel in both series and parallel and seeing how the S300 handles that and what sound levels you get.