Hey guys, I am starting to do a lot of my own stereo stuff and I am wondering if any of you guys could give me a little breakdown of powering of speakers. <BR>What is it (Ohms)? <BR>What should you look for in amps or speakers? <BR>Do they always have to be the same or can you have speakers with 4 Ohm and an amp at 2 or the reverse? <BR> <BR>Any or all other info is great. I dont want to screw up the stuff that I am getting... <BR> <BR>Thanks in advance

ohms are a measure of resistance. <BR>a 4 ohm speaker needs a 4 ohm amp, but 2 4 ohm subs run in series are 2 ohm and will need a 2 ohm amp <BR> <BR>that;s the basics and i understand, i know there are lots of people on here that can explain it better than me

So when you put speakers in a series the load decreases by half? I think that I am folowing ya so far... thanks

hey man i understand all that <font color="ff0000">•</font><font color="ff0000">•</font><font color="ff0000">•</font><font color="ff0000">•</font><font color="ff0000">•</font><font color="ff0000">•</font><font color="ff0000">•</font><font color="ff0000">•</font> to good at explaining it but entrust is right..but if u want good deep bass that sounds nice get a 2ohm woofers and then for all your mids highs and tower speakers get u a 4 channel amp thats the way i roll in my boat and its loud..some amps u can buy with like 4 channels and a channel made for just like one woofer...o yeah i would try to stick with like if u have a 2ohm woofer i would get like a 2 channel amp...look in for amps the wattage and if it 2 channel or 4 channel etc.. and also in speakers check out the watch cause underpowering speakers is bad and over powering them is bad to..

It is important to understand that if you you get a 4 ohm amp and your ohm load drops below 4 your amp will get hot and shut off fast. if you go with 2 ohm you can go over without a negative result. I am running 3 comp zapco amp and they are all 2 ohm

and if you run speakers in parrell the ohm load doubles. i recently ran into an ohm issue in my boat. i was running a single 12" 4ohm sub with a bridged 2 channel amp, i pulled out the 12 and put in 2 10" 4 ohm subs in series so they were one 2 ohm single but my amp wouldn't run it so i got a 2 ohm stable mono amp. the nice thing about running 2 ohms is that you get double the power since it's half the resistance. my amp is 150watts at 4ohm but 300watts at 2 ohm so it sounds pretty good going to the 2 10s

I think that actually parallel wiring cuts the ohm load in half. Two 4 ohm drivers run in parallel would give you a 2 ohm load while running in series would give an 8 ohm load. You are alright running a 4 ohm load on an amp rated to be stable at 2 ohms, which most decent multi channel amps can do as long as you are not bridging the channels. Once your ohm load drops below what the amp is rated to be stable at, you will start to have problems. Most will go into a protect mode and shut down. Some high quality amps will keep going since a lot of time they will take more punishment than what they are rated for.

Just for clarifcation could you define the difference between running in parallel and in a series. <BR>thanks a ton for the help, this is exactly what i was looking for <img src="http://www.wakeworld.com/MB/Discus/clipart/biggrin.gif" border=0>

sorry i was mistaking, parallel splits it in half and series doubles <BR> <BR>paralllel means runing positive to positive and negative to negative <BR>series mean running positive to negative and negative to positive <BR>

From Speaker to speaker right? <BR>IS this what you mean, could you tell me what one is what in terms of right and left <BR> <BR> <!--attachment: seriesVSparallel-323475.unk*attachment_icon.gif*image/bmp*117.0*Upload*seriesVSparallel%2ebmp --><center><table border=1><tr><td><img src="http://www.wakeworld.com/MB/Discus/icons/attachment_icon.gif" align=left alt="image/bmp">Upload<br><a href="http://www.wakeworld.com/MB/Discus/messages/65921/seriesVSparallel-323475.unk" target="_blank"><b>seriesVSparallel.bmp</b></a> (117.0 k)</td></tr></table></center><!--/attachment--> <BR> <BR>Sorry about the crude paint drawing...

JB, looks like you and I are battling the same topic. Check out my posts as well, might help. <BR> <BR><a href="http://www.wakeworld.com/MB/Discus/messages/3183/323438.html?1146721939" target="_blank">http://www.wakeworld.com/MB/Discus/messages/3183/323438.html?1146721939</a> <BR>

All voice coils on speakers act as resistor. the resitance of each VC will dictate the ohm load your amp sees. The ohm load on the amp has nothing to do with the amp itself just the speaekers. The majority of amps these days are stable down to 2ohms (stereo) 4 ohms (bridged) Think of an amp seeing a 2ohm load as opening the floodgates on a dam. An amp that is bridged is already running pretty hard.

I couldn't get your file to work, so I'll give it a try by explaning. <BR> <BR>Parallel- If you are running two speakers in parallel, picture running a seperate set of wires from each speaker to the same channel on the amp. You get the same effect, but it's easier to wire if the speakers are close together if you simply run your wire from the amp to speaker A and from speaker A you run a wire from the negative lead to the negative lead of speaker B. Same with the positive wiring. <BR> <BR>Series - picture putting batteries into a mag light. The positive lead from battery 1 contacts the negative side of battery 2. The positive wire goes from the amp to the positive lead of speaker 1. The negative lead of speaker 1 is then wired to the positive lead of speaker 2. The negative lead of speaker 2 is then run back to the negative connection on the amp.

Thanks for a wonderful description. I wish my third grade teacher was that good...

Hey one last question. If you run 2 4 ohm speakers in a series they become 8 ohms. Can you run these 8 ohms off of a 4 ohm amp? Or should you try to do everything the same?

yes you can run them in 8 ohms but why? your power will be little to nothing (wasting the amps power) Try and keep it between 2-4 ohms. <BR> <BR>Example , amp has 100 RMS per ch into 4ohms, only 50 RMS in 8ohms, split by the two speakers, each speaker sees approx 25 watts RMS...... <BR> <BR>(Message edited by acurtis_ttu on May 05, 2006)

just a theroretical question. just trying to get the idea. thanks