New house, need help with ceiling speakers

[Jefferson Steelflex]

Hi all, I moved house last week and have been slowly working my way around learning a few bits. I expected the previous owner (as i did with our buyer) to leave some instructions on a few bits but alas not. So, to the question…I have three speakers in the ceiling in the kitchen


|https://thumbsnap.com/RtRkcVRw[/url]



Which i’ve deduced are these Monitor C180 ceiling speakers
https://www.monitoraudio.com/en/product-ranges/cor...

I then found these three cut cables in a cupboard in the kitchen (alongside a plug socket and an ethernet cable, not sure if it works) so i assume the previous owner had an amp there. My assumption is that these three cables are for the speakers, although one of them has additional wiring.



So, can anyone help with my options here? I have a large Sonos collection already consisting of a Play5 and six Play1s all over the house so my ideal is to bet a Sonia Amp but i’m not sure they work on 3 speakers.

ETA - Can anyone help me know how i’d figure out which cable goes to which speaker? Could i just wire a pair if needed?

Thanks

Edited by Jefferson Steelflex on Monday 25th July 16:54

[robbieduncan]

I'd guess one of the speakers is a single speaker that is "stereo" hence the 4 connectors in one cable.

[beanoir78]

You could try a trial and error with an amp and see what is connected to which speaker, or better still, pop the speakers out of the ceiling and have a look and see which wires are connected to the speakers?

The 4 way wire isn’t immediately obvious.

[Some Gump]

Yes dead easy.
First, I agree with the poster above that says the single speaker will be stereo. Most likely red and black is one, and green / white is the other.

To detect, either attach to amp or, you can use a 9v battery and just hold one wire on + and tap the other briefly on - and the speaker will thump. Don’t hold it on for long, you’ll be fine.

[Jefferson Steelflex]

Thanks all, i’ll see if i can bag a cheap amp to test it out first, be good to hear the speakers working.

[Crackie]

Alternatively you could buy a low cost meter to check the resistance across each set of red / blacks and also the green white pair. https://www.amazon.co.uk/ULTRICS%C3%82-Digital-Mul...

Meter will come in handy for other stuff in future too...........battery health check continuity check etc etc

[Captain_Morgan]

With the dual channel speaker you need to be aware of the phase of the two channels.

If you get the phase wrong one speaker pushes as the other pulls as they are 180° apart.

If this was a pair of normal speakers not so much of a issue as the worse impact is the sound, bass particularly is impacted.

In the dual speaker you have two coils driving the base cone & it’s not good to feed those out of phase as you’ll have one pushing while the other try’s pulling while they are both attached to the same cone.

If possible I’d drop the speaker & check how the cables are wired to the + & - left & right terminals.

[Jefferson Steelflex]

Just to update, bought myself a cheapish bluetooth amp over the weekend and wired up the two normal left/right speakers. It all worked fine, the sound is first-class and was really surprised with the quality.

I didn’t wire up the four-wire cable, thanks for the advice on that and will work out what’s what before connecting it. I’m actually rooting around in the floor above over the next week or so (curiously there a dip/hole in the floor right above that centre speaker) so should be able to get a view of the wiring that way, else i’ll pull it out of the ceiling and check it that way.

[Some Gump]

Jefferson Steelflex said:

Just to update, bought myself a cheapish bluetooth amp over the weekend and wired up the two normal left/right speakers. It all worked fine, the sound is first-class and was really surprised with the quality.

I didn’t wire up the four-wire cable, thanks for the advice on that and will work out what’s what before connecting it. I’m actually rooting around in the floor above over the next week or so (curiously there a dip/hole in the floor right above that centre speaker) so should be able to get a view of the wiring that way, else i’ll pull it out of the ceiling and check it that way.

Just 9v battery trick it, with a mate to act as "spotter". It'll either jump in, or jump out. Wire both so +ve is out, and bingo.