Actually I have two so I hope everyone can bear with my ignorance. I am new to the home theater scene and am in the process of building my system. I wanted to know what people think of the Sony ES STR-DA4ES receiver and can I run the QS-8 6 ohm speaker on a receiver that runs only 4 or 8 ohms? ANy help and or advice would be greatly appreciated!

The sony is an "OK" receiver. Honestly, I think you can do better if you look around some (ie. Denon and H/K). And yes, that receiver would handle a 6 ohm quite well, even a 4 ohm load if the volume is not abused over an extended period of time.

Bestboy4

Thanks for the info. I am also looking at the Denon 3802, seems to be a fav of most.

Hi reddish,

See my answer to your post in Home Theater section. Understand that a speaker's "nominal" impedance is a kind of average that favors the lowest impedance a speaker dips to over a certain range of frequencies.

In other words, speaker impedances are not fixed. They vary all over the place with frequency, so an impedance curve has hills and valleys depending on the frequency. But if it dips to 4 ohms, especially in the low frequencies, then the speaker will demand a lot more current from the amplifier, which means the output transistors will run hotter (because low bass frequencies use lots of amplifier watts). Your speaker is a kind of electro-acoustical motor, and it uses lots of power to pump out bass frequencies. Midrange is, relatively, a piece of cake for most amps.

If a receiver or amplifier is rated to drive 4-ohm or "low impedances", it will have no difficulty at all driving 6-ohm speakers.

Regards,

Thank you very much, your advice has been extremely helpful!