I have six speakers in two nearby rooms, with 2 in room A and 4 in room B. I'd like to know if it's possible to wire them all to a single Wiim Amp using a combination of parallel, series or parallel/series wiring? They are all 8 ohm speakers, identical.First, Take it slow. Hooking up too many speakers to an amp can damage the amp.
The Jamo speakers are basically a left and right pair in a single speaker. You can tell that by the fact that they have connections for 4 wires, 2 for the right and 2 for the left. So, you would probably want one amp for each of those speakers.
For the living room speakers, you need to figure out if those speakers are single speakers or stereo speakers like the Jamos. If they are Jamos you basically have 12 speakers (6 pairs) in the living room. It is likely that they are 6 single speakers and they are meant to be run as 6 mono speakers rather than as 3 stereo pairs. You also have to decide if you need separate volume controls for these speakers or if they can all be run at the same volume. The Wiim amp manual says it can output either dual mono or stereo signals.
You also need to figure out which 2 wires go to each speaker. If they are not marked, that will take some expertise.
If the speakers are standard 8 ohm speakers, you probably cannot connect 3 pairs of speakers (6 total) in parallel to a Wiim amp. Each speaker has an impedance of 8 ohms and 3 in parallel will have an impedance of less than 4 ohms. The amp may or may not be able to handle that low of an impedance. There are impedance matching devices which allow multiple pairs of speakers to be connected to them and the device adjusts the impedances so that it presents a load of 4 ohms to the amp, which the Wiim can handle. The Niles SS-4 is a common one that handles up to 4 pairs of speakers. You can also get a SS-6 which handles 6 pairs. The SS-4 would work as long as the 6 speakers are not stereo speakers like the Jamos. They is also a model that comes with separate volume controls for each pair. You just connect the speakers to the box and then connect the amp to the box.
An impedance matching device will probably be necessary for the living room if you want to use just 1 amp.
Multiroom setup with in ceiling speakers
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You should consider a 6 channel amp. Feed it with a single WiiM Pro or Pro+.
Not advisable.
You could wire (per channel) 2 speakers in room B in series and 1 speaker in room A in parallel to that (theoretically resulting in 5.3 ohms per channel). But the speakers in room B would be lower in volume than those in room A and you had no means of adjusting this.
Also, speakers sold as 8 ohms often dip a lot deeper in certain frequency ranges, sometimes even below 4 ohms. The effective impedance could be below 2.7 ohms in this case!
As @Hazenhart mentioned, a 6 channel amp and a WiiM Pro Plus or WiiM Pro would make a clean solution. You'd adjust the relative volumes of all channels on the multi-channel amp and use the Pro Plus volume control from there on.
A typical rule of thumb for whole audio is that you need 15 to 20 watts per speaker for normal sound levels, assuming the speakers are relatively efficient, which most in wall/ceiling speakers are. Assuming the speakers are mono, not stereo, speakers, you can run either 3 stereo pairs or 6 individual mono speakers. In either case, you will be running 3 pairs of speakers to each channel of the amp. Running 3 speakers with one channel of the Wiim amps will present too low an impedance to the amp. You can add an impedance matching speaker selector with volume controls. Those typically present a steady 4 ohm load to the amp. And, they typically have volume controls for each pair of speakers. A 4 speaker impedance matching box would work if you are running 3 stereo pairs or 3 mono pairs. In the mono case, each volume control would control the volume of 2 speakers. If each speaker is a separate mono speaker and the volume has to adjusted separately for each, a 6 speaker box would be needed.
4 speaker impedance matching speaker selectors are pretty common (i.e. Monoprice). 6 speaker ones are not as common. Monoprice has one, but it is out of stock. Niles has them at a higher price.
A 6 channel amp with volume control on each channel will probably be more expensive and most do not have individual volume control for each channel since the common ones are meant for 5.1 home theater setups, not individual channels. As such, they are usually 5 or 7 channel, not 6. So, with a multichannel amp you may need to add a 6 channel volume control.
So,
Stereo or mono speakers?
If mono speakers, does each one need a separate volume control, or can you run 2 at the same volume?
How loud?
4 speaker impedance matching speaker selectors are pretty common (i.e. Monoprice). 6 speaker ones are not as common. Monoprice has one, but it is out of stock. Niles has them at a higher price.
A 6 channel amp with volume control on each channel will probably be more expensive and most do not have individual volume control for each channel since the common ones are meant for 5.1 home theater setups, not individual channels. As such, they are usually 5 or 7 channel, not 6. So, with a multichannel amp you may need to add a 6 channel volume control.
So,
Stereo or mono speakers?
If mono speakers, does each one need a separate volume control, or can you run 2 at the same volume?
How loud?
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