TimBlanchard
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it's all a matter of choice.
Sound 101
- Thread starter Crysalis
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DawnOfDoom
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Whats next? Wiring!
Let's say you've got some sweet speakers and a really sweet amp. Rock on eh? Car install, home theater, whatever... wiring it all up goes here! There are a few different ways to wire things up, but first we gotta understand the basics:Let's start with resistance! This can be quite the challenge, but its quite simple. Every speaker has a level of resistance, called impedence. Impedence is measured in what's called Ohm's. Now, we could get crazy and go into Ohm's Law, but theres really no point without going into some advanced stuff. Just so you can see it, here is the Ohm's Law chart:
- Ohms (impedence or resistance)
- Wattage
- Load
- Phase
This is used for figuring Impedence (resistance), wattage, voltage, and current. Simple math as long as you know the information. Anyways, back to resistance. You know how on your amplifier it says it can handle X amount of ohms? Well, thats what is called Load. 8ohms and 4ohms are the most common, but there are components that run even lower than that. How do we figure out load? Well, that all depends on how things are wired up. There are three ways to wire: Series, Parallel, and Series Parallel (I know, scary... don't worry). When hooking up more than one speaker, you have to use one of these wiring methods. Though it may seem obvious, but "black goes to black and red goes to red". These are the positive and negative leads. This gets into phase, which we'll learn a bit later.
Series:
As you can see, there are two 8ohm speakers hooked up. When you wire them in series method, you add the resistance of all of the speakers, and you get your load. In this case, 8+8= 16ohm load. REMEMBER! The higher the resistance, the lower the output. Why? Most amplifiers can handle high loads. The less resistance there is, the more power the speakers will draw from the amp, the more output (and we all know what that means... LOUDER!). The smaller load rating on the amp, the better. If the amp can handle 2 ohms, you better be sure it can give you more than enough power for any application. In the case of the picture above, it won't be very hard at all for the amp to drive those two speakers, but keep in mind that it sure isn't going to get that loud. It may be better to wire it in a different method, such as parallel!
Parallel:
Here we have the same to speakers, but wired differently. When wiring in parallel, you multiply the resistance of all of the speakers, and divide it by the sum of all the resistance of the speakers. This will give you your load rating. Here we have two 8ohm speakers wired in parallel. So, we take 8 * 8 = 64 ---- 64 / 16 = 4 ---- This gives us a load of 4ohms. If we were to hook up this to the same amplifier as we did with series, we would get a much high output since it is drawing much more power from the amp.
Series Parallel
....MORE TO COME LATER....
Ok so what you mean here is that the less the load is like 4ohms the more power your speakers will get there for meaning louder?
sorry for the noob question I'm trying to understand it the first part was a piece of cake but wiring/circuit design has not been my cup o tea.
DawnOfDoom
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and thats on the amp correct? so if my amp is rated for as low as 2ohms i could string up x amount of Speakers in parallel that are y ohms and when you put the x and y into the formula to figure out your load it comes out to 2ohms it should be a pretty kickin system right?
sometimes it's on the amp. most home receiver can play down to 8 ohm load. better one play down to 4 ohms. the best (very few) receiver (NAD, yamaha) can play down to 2 ohms
most car amps play down to 2 ohms
DawnOfDoom
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Yea my friend was looking at this Ampeg Bass Head and Cab setup and it was 2ohms, and the one i have is 4ohms.
DawnOfDoom
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sweet where should i look for buying some good Subs/Satellites for my PC? any recomended sites?
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