We often get asked if a lower impedance is better.
In case you are wondering impedance is simply the resistance in an electrical circuit and measured in ohms. All electrical circuits have some form of impedance measurement or all you see is sparks for a few seconds and something melted. For example; a subwoofer connected to an amp is an electrical circuit and can be measured in ohms. Most car audio speakers rest at a 4ohm load when connected to a single channel on an amplifier. The amp will usually deliver it's rated power to the sub-woofer and you will hear sound. What's interesting is that by lowering the impedance of the circuit you can squeeze more power out of the amp which in turn gives you more sound.
The only ways to get more sound out of your system is to add more cone area, more power and/or add sound damping products to quiet the road noise. It would seem logical then to want the lowest possible impedance with blowing anything up or melting your gear because this delivers the most power right? Why wouldn't the manufacturers make all amps stable to 1 ohm or even 1/2 ohm just to get that extra juice?
Well there is trade off. When you drop impedance in half you typically get double the power but the power you get is different. It's sloppier then the power you had at a higher impedance. We have a fancy name for this sloppiness and it's called damping factor. If you could imagine the movement of the speaker cone it moves very fast back and forth and just like anything else carries momentum. This momentum becomes harder to control as the impedance drops and the damping factor goes up. This damping factor becomes elevated when the impedance drops and this is the conundrum.
Do we sacrifice clean bass for loud bass? There is no good answer here. You can achieve both however at a higher cost with better equipment.
So which is better? 1 ohm or 2 ohm?
The home stereo guys do 8ohm! What's that tell you?
We want to hear what you think. I know what I think but I want to hear from you.
Contact Us for More Information