In reply to:

If I switched to 8ohm on the receiver, would that damage the speakers.



Shouldn't. It should just turn off the receiver, assuming good fault protection.

In reply to:

If anyone has links on info explaining ohms, and speakers and watts I would like to read. I understand slightly, just not completly.



Electrical Engineering 101 (VERY simplified):

An Ohm is a rating of resistance. You could sort of think of it like weight. The higher the weight, the harder you have to push to move it. Voltage, rated in Volts, is the electrical potential on both sides of the load (rated in Ohms). Current, is kind of like how much water moves through a stream. I know I'm mixing my metaphors, but I'm trying to leave the office.

Ohms law:

Voltage = Current * Resistance.

Watts are the unit of measurement for the amount of power something has. Power is calculated by multiplying the voltage potential by the current.

What does this mean to you?

The wattage spec'ed by a receiver is theoretically how much power it's capable of putting out. The more power, the louder your speaker will go, in general (how sensitive it is to that power plays a big part in how loud it actually gets). The wattage rating on a speaker is the maximum amount of power it can take. So long as the speaker can take enough and your receiver can put out enough power that you're never near the maximum of both, you won't have any trouble. If you hit the maximum power output of the receiver, it will no longer be able to correctly amplify the signal, sending some very dangerous and very ugly signals to your speakers. We call this clipping. If you try to force too much power through a speaker that can't take it, you'll fry the poor little components of the speaker.

What the resistance means to you:

Using the equations I mentioned before, the lower the resistance, the more current it will draw.

If V=I*R, and P=V*I, P=I^2/R

Therefore, at a given current, the increase in power is proportional to the decrease in resistance.

All this means that a receiver should be able to put out more juice to a speaker with a lower resistance rating. In reality, you run into the capabilities of the amplifier and you can draw too much power, hence the fault circuitry you're looking at.

If you want more detailed info, I suggest you pick up an introductory circuits book and laugh at my gross over simplification.

Regards,
Semi