Hello, I have a gp-20 that I am installing a sound decoder in. I have a dummy gp20"B" unit that I can put the speaker in. There is enough room so that I could put 2 speakers in the dummy unit. My question is: can I run 2 speakers off of one decoder? I it is possible, what do I need to be aware of regarding speaker selection, power consumption etc... Also, can I just attach the speakers by splicing the speaker wires together? thanks
The output of a decoder is much like any audio system speaker output, so there are some basic rules to follow. 1) The impedance presented by the speaker(s) should never be less than the rated value for the decoder. So if the spec says use an 8 Ohm speaker don't allow less - more is OK, but not a huge amount, like 10 times. Simple examples, if the decoder is 8 Ohm and you have two 16 Ohm speakers you can connect them in parallel, which will give 8 Ohms total. If you have two 8 Ohm speakers connecting in parallel would give 4 Ohms - don't do it. Connect them in series to give 16 Ohms total which is fine. 2) Keep the phasing of the speakers. Basically, if you are wiring in parallel connect the same decoder wire to both +ve speaker terminals and the other decoder wire to both -ve terminals. If series connecting go from decoder to + on speaker 1, then from - on speaker 1 to + on speaker 2, and finally from - on speaker 2 to the other decoder wire. This makes sure that both speakers are pushing and pulling together and not trying to cancel each other out.
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