Okay, if this is you, raise your hand.  Cold drinks are in the cooler on the patio or deck, every lawn chair you own has been pulled out from their hiding places.The fine plastic dinnerware is out, the bowls are full of snacks and the cooler has the drinks in it.You have lawn games out of the attic and the citronella candles all lit.  Now you need to get the finishing touch running, the tunes!  You go to your living room and take your tower speakers to the window and prop them up to blast your favorite tunes out to your yard.  Wow, your party is set now!  So let’s discuss how this situation can be much easier on you and your wallet! First of all, I am not saying there is anything wrong with putting your speakers in the window.Don’t think I haven’t done this before!  There is a better way and I want to tell you how and why.Now you’re ready to hear it? Speakers in the windows will get the music out of the house, just barely…  The amount of power that it takes to get music to cut though the outside air to the far reaches of your yard is mind boggling, to say the least.Home stereo’s do not have the proper electronics required to handle the amount of power to do this.  The distance from your speakers in the windows to your listening area can be much reduced by placing speakers in your yard or landscape closest to your listening area.  This will require much less power from the amp to get the sound to your ears.  Which in turn saves your amplifier and extends its life tremendously!

outdoor speakers

Now you could take your home stereo speakers out of your living room and put them down on your patio or setting them up in your yard, but is this the right thing to do?  (wow, that was a long sentence!)  If you don’t mind letting the moisture from the ground or the night air eat away at the cabinets on your speakers.  Or if you don’t mind the creepy bugs crawling into them and then letting themselves loose in your house after you bring them back in.Go ahead, if the option of spilled drinks, fly baseballs or knock over from running kids doesn’t bother you!Taking you home speakers outside can damage them, so let’s discuss why!Hopefully you don! Outdoor speakers have many advantages in this respect.  They are water resistant, capable of handling being left outdoors for all the seasons.Placement of these speakers can be vital, so put them where you will be listening most.  And as I explained before, this helps save your amplifier and extend its life by not having to be cranked up just to hear the music.  They are smaller in size and can be hidden or camouflaged to blend into you landscape, gardens or patio.  And last but not least, once you set up your outdoor speakers, you never have to tear them down or reset them up again for the next party.  And that leaves you more time to find that old lawn darts set you have hiding in the attic! The Outdoor Speaker Guy

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So you are sitting on your patio, with the sounds of your favorite tunes playing through your outdoor speakers. It sounds wonderful! You there relaxing, enjoying a cold beverage in your lazy chair. This is the life isn’t it? You decide to get up and take a stroll through your garden, and then suddenly you realize that your wonderful music can no longer be heard! “What can I do?” you say to yourself. Well no worries again! The Outdoor Speaker Guy is here to help.

Okay, so you have experience with hooking up your outdoor stereo speakers. Now you want to add more speakers to your sound system, but you don’t know how? In this session we will discuss the ins and outs of hooking up multiple speakers to an amplifier. So before you go trying to just hook up 3, 4, 5 or 6 speakers on to your amplifier, there are some things you need to know before you destroy that amplifier you spent hundreds of dollars on! You want to get the music to more areas of your landscape but you just can’t go hooking up speakers all willy-nilly! There are some rules you need to follow.

Speakers are made to handle specific wattage’s. This is the number that most people pay attention to when picking out their speakers. Speakers are advertised with the wattage they can handle on the front of the package. And of course we all want the ones that will handle the most, cause we will be rockin’ these babies till the neighbors call, right? Speaker wattage is not what we are most worried about when it comes to hooking up multiple sets or pairs of speakers. The real killer is the resistance that comes with added speakers. Most home speakers, whether they are for in your home or outdoor speakers, are rated for 8 ohms resistance. This can be found on the packaging or in the specifications for each individual model. Some other options available for outdoor speakers and car audio speakers are: 6, 4, 2 or even 0 ohm resistance. Most home stereo amplifiers are rated at 8 ohms. Notice I said “most”. You can get amplifiers that are rated for 6, 4, 2 and 0 ohms as well. You just need to know what to look for in you planning stages.

wireless outdoor speaker

So let us try to explain resistance in terms the average homeowner can understand, shall we? Think of it like this: one speaker connected to your amplifier is like hooking your garden hose up to the faucet, the pressure from the waterline feeding your house is, let’s say, 8 ohms. No matter how much you open the valve on the faucet, the pressure of the water coming out of the end of the hose can never get any faster. This is because the resistance of the hose is its diameter, or how big around the hole is through the hose. The pressure flowing through the hose allows the water to shoot out the end about four feet before it hits the ground. Now if we add speakers to the line, it is like taking that hose and doubling the inside hole diameter. Now when we have the water turned all the way up, the water coming out the end is the same size as the hose, but only shoots out about two feet before it hits the ground. Then half that when you add another speaker and double the size of that hose. And so on. The resistance goes down by half when you add another speaker, which requires your amplifier to work 2x harder to get the same amount of wattage to both speakers on that line. Add a third speaker, it works 3x harder. Add a fourth speaker, it works 4x harder. Get the idea?

To sum it all up; if you add speakers, you decrease the resistance on the amplifier causing it to have to produce the same amount of wattage, faster and harder. If your amplifier is not designed to work at these resistance levels, you will burn it out faster than say, trying to light a cigarette with a blow torch! Amplifiers are designed to work at certain resistance levels only. If they state that they are stable down to 4, 2, or 0 ohms, then they are made with different circuitry to handle higher loads. You will need to keep this in mind when you want to start adding more outdoor speakers to your garden or landscape.

Totally confused yet? Don’t worry, most stereo home amplifiers have two sets of outputs labeled “A” and “B” which you can hook a second set of speakers up to and you don’t need to worry about resistance issues. I know, I could have told you this at the beginning, but you would never have learned anything about resistance. I know, call be crazy, but I have a feeling you are reading this to make yourself more-smarter, right?

There are ways to keep the amplifier you have and still add more speakers without blowing it up from the resistance. It has to do with running speakers with different resistances in series or parallel to match your amplifiers, but that is for another time I think! So join me next time and I will take you on another amazing outdoor speaker journey! The Outdoor Speaker Guy

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