Expert: Wayne Tapia - 9/15/2010

Question
i was wondering if it would be possible to run 4 speakers off of a cd player style stereo, that was designed (and came with) only 2 speakers. my idea is to take 2 left speakers, and 2 right speakers and twisting the copper wires together, since there are only 2 possitive, and 2 negative holes in the back of the cd player. do you think this would work?
thank you for your time.
Jordan.

Answer
That is not a good idea. To put it as simply as possible, I doubt that the combined speaker impedance (ohms) is going to match the stereo's output impedance. Mismatches like this can lead to serious damage to your stereo and/or speakers.
I could be very in-depth about this answer, but it would be boring. you can find many articles online about matching amp to speaker impedance, and they are written 100 times better than I could do...
What you're describing is something I did many years ago (before I knew any better), and I toasted a $500 amplifier in about 3 minutes.