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Connecting Speakers to a Valve
Amplifier
Connecting
a single pair of speakers
You should never turn your amplifier on without any speakers connected.
Valve amplifiers do not like open connections in the same way transistor amplifiers don’t like short circuits.
Switching
on a valve amplifier without speakers connected can damage the amplifier.
Always use good quality speaker cable, this will affect the quality of sound! We would advise that as a rough average you should spend about
10% of the value of your hi-fi system on cables (speaker, interconnections and power).
Your speaker cables should be of equal length.
Some cables are directional, this means you should connect them only in
one direction, check your cables and if so make sure you have them the
right way around.
You need to check what your speakers impedance is, this will usually be
marked on the rear of the speakers and will be something like:
4 Ohm (or 4O)
6 Ohm (or 6O)
8 Ohm (or 8O)
etc.
Your amplifier has speaker terminal for either 4 or 8 Ohm and in
general you should use the closest value to match your speakers.
If your speakers have 4 Ohm impedance then use the 4 Ohm terminal.
Almost all speakers can be connected to the 4 Ohm speaker terminal so
if your speakers are 6 or 8 Ohm you can still try the 4 Ohm terminal if
you like.
The 8 Ohm speaker terminal produces
more “open and spacious” sound, but less base.
The 4 Ohm
speaker terminal produces more base, but it may sound a little
”shut in”.
Connect your speaker cable so the
BLACK NEGATIVE speaker terminal is
connected to the NEGATIVE TERMINAL on your speakers.
RED POSITIVE (4 or 8 Ohm) speaker terminal is connected to the POSITIVE
TERMINAL on your speakers.
Bi-wiring your speakers
Most of the audio signal going to the
speakers, drives the base units. Where one cable feeds both bass and
treble units, this heavy base current can modulate the high
frequencies. Using separate cables for treble and bass units reduces
inter-modulation effects and improves headroom and clarity. This
technique of wiring is known as bi-wiring. To bi-wire, you will need to
install two lengths of twin core cable between the amplifier and each
loudspeaker.
Where feasible we would recommend bi-wiring.
The speaker binding posts
the plugs on the rear are banana plug type which also unscrew to allow
cables to be attached.
Connecting more than
one pair of speakers to a Valve Amplifier
Separo amplifiers can handle more
than one set of speakers although it only has two sets of speaker
binding posts, but there are a couple of issues to consider.
If you want to be able to turn off and on different sets of speakers
you need to purchase a speaker splitter such as
there are many different ones around and they basically act like a
switch between your speakers.
If you want all to connect all your speakers at once to any amplifier
you will need to consider the impedance of the speakers i.e. 4 ohm, 8
ohm etc. If you connect 3 pairs of 4 ohm speakers to an amplifier at
once you will get an impedance of 4/3 ohms which would be too low for
most amplifiers.
You can connect speakers in parallel or in series. If you connect
speakers in parallel then divide the impedance by how many speakers
there are, if you connect them in series then add the impedance’s
together.
You should aim to get to an impedance close to the 4 or 8 ohm output
specification of the speaker terminals.
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