First off, I’m a professional sound engineer for live and recorded music, but I have ZERO experience with home stuff, so I apologize if I get terminology wrong.

I inherited a lot of A/V stuff in this house when we bought it back in 2020. Most of it has been useless as I can’t login to it, but I did manage to get into the Sonos Connect upstairs which was connected to a Sonance DSP2-150 MkII power amp and that appears to drive the Sonarray 8.1 speakers out by the pool.

I think 4 of the 8 speakers are Left, 4 are right, and the sub appears to be wired mono, though there are only LR outputs from the power amp, so it’s not clear exactly how the sub is connected - but I don’t think it’s super relevant to my issue.

Half of the small speakers have always been out - actually just really, really quiet by comparison. Recently the power amp failed, so I grabbed an old studio power amp out of my closet and plugged it in…

To my surprise, *regardless of input side* (I tried both) whichever output drives the Left speakers will clip almost immediately, while whichever side of the power amp drives the right speakers, those will sound fine and not clip. Again, if I switch the speaker wires, the opposite side of the power amp will clip.

So there is something in the wiring of these speakers messing up the impedance or something, I can’t tell exactly. My next step is, quite literally, digging up the wires in the back and trying to figure out what’s going on, so before I do that, does this sound like something anyone here as experienced and can you tell me what the problem was and how I can fix it?

I hope I’ve given enough info, but please let me know if you need anything else and I’ll do my best to provide info.