What are these wires in my speaker?

[absorb333]

I thought speakers consisted of a basic positive and negative terminal for speaker wires. However, when i opened up my in ceiling speaker, this is the result.



There is a black and red terminals, but it leads to this box that spits out extra orange+white, and blue+white cables.



The two coated cables leading out of the speaker contain this,




What are these extra cables and more importantly,

how do i connect this to a receiver? This speaker was left with the house with the 2 outer cables already cut.

 

[i7Baby]

how do i connect this to a receiver? - replace them with speakers that match the required impedance for your receiver.

 

[absorb333]

how do i connect this to a receiver? - replace them with speakers that match the required impedance for your receiver.

how do i connect this to a receiver?

 

[i7Baby]

replace them with speakers that match the required impedance for your receiver.

 

[Solandri]

According to the manufacturer, it's a distribution transformer.
http/www.enforceronline.com/pdfsound/ETSERIES.PDF

Basically the idea is your receiver's output goes into a step-up transformer which boosts the voltage. This allows the signal to be passed over the (tiny) Cat5e wiring with less power loss. At the speaker the signal is stepped back down in voltage to something more appropriate for the speaker.
http/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constant-voltage_speaker_system

Pretty clever. Didn't know they made anything like that. I'll have to keep it in mind next time I need to lay down several hundred feet of speaker cable for an outdoor music performance. If you really wanted to be clever, you could balance the signal and use the twisted pairs to reject any noise the "speaker cable" picked up during that long length.

 

[absorb333]

replace them with speakers that match the required impedance for your receiver.

I dunno why you have to be an ass about this. I'm was asking how to connect THIS speaker to ANY receiver.

 

[absorb333]

According to the manufacturer, it's a distribution transformer.
http/www.enforceronline.com/pdfsound/ETSERIES.PDF

Basically the idea is your receiver's output goes into a step-up transformer which boosts the voltage. This allows the signal to be passed over the (tiny) Cat5e wiring with less power loss. At the speaker the signal is stepped back down in voltage to something more appropriate for the speaker.
http/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constant-voltage_speaker_system

Pretty clever. Didn't know they made anything like that. I'll have to keep it in mind next time I need to lay down several hundred feet of speaker cable for an outdoor music performance. If you really wanted to be clever, you could balance the signal and use the twisted pairs to reject any noise the "speaker cable" picked up during that long length.

So do you think that i can remove this distribution transformer entirely and revert back to using just the positive and negative black and red wires?

 

[i7Baby]

replace them with speakers that match the required impedance for your receiver.

I dunno why you have to be an ass about this. I'm was asking how to connect THIS speaker to ANY receiver.

They are very poor quality speakers. You need to get new speakers with impedance that matches your receiver.

 

[americanaudiophile]

You don't say how many of these there are and how they are connected. If you just remove the transformer and connect them to a receiver you could blow up the receiver. 70v speakers do not require wiring to go back to the receiver individually so they may be connected in parallel with only 1 pair of wires for left and 1pair for right. This will also depend on how the volume is controlled in each zone (in wall volume control or some distributed audio controller).

 

[Solandri]

So do you think that i can remove this distribution transformer entirely and revert back to using just the positive and negative black and red wires?

i7baby is correct in that regard. It depends on the speaker. If its impedance at the power levels needed to drive it matches what your receiver can put out, then yes you can rip off the transformer and just connect it with a red/black wire.

But it looks like the speaker was designed to be used with the transformer. So it's possible the speaker isn't capable of being used with regular stereo equipment, and the step-down transformer is different from the step-up transformer. e.g. the +/- 1V or so your receiver puts out gets stepped up to 70V for transmission along the twisted pair cables, but the speaker may be designed to take +/- 5V so the step-down transformer only takes it down to 5V rather than 1V. In which case it would have too much impedance for your receiver to drive the speaker effectively if you connected it directly with red/black speaker cable.

You'd have to find the manufacturer of the speakers and get exact specifications from them. You may need to buy the missing step-up transformers to get them to work.