Help 4ohm or 8ohm

PaPa Jim

Knowing that 4ohm is better than 8 ohm for performance, can my system handle a 4ohm set up?:rolleyes: :rolleyes:

Sony STR-DG1000
Rti-6 Mains
Csi5 center
Fxi5 rear
Psw 505

reeltrouble1

It might but not very well, and 4 ohm is not by design necessarily better than 8 ohm. There are just alot of nice 4 ohm speakers. There are also many high quality audiophile grade speakers with 8 ohm resistance.

RT1

scottvamp

It depends what your speakers ohm spec's are. That is what you operate at. Most home speakers are 8 or 6. Car speakers are 4. Your amp also has to be rated to operate at 4 ohms.
How do you plan to run your system at 4 ohms?????

read-alot

He is probably looking at these.http://www.polkaudio.com/homeaudio/specs/lsi15/
Which give 4 ohm as the load.

I don't see in the Sony spec sheet where that unit can carry a 4 ohm load.

PaPa Jim

Polk specs say 8ohm nominal on all speakers.
The amp manual says it will operate as follows
At 8 ohms and also at 4 ohms
Front 120w + 120w
Center 120w
Surround 120w + 120w
Surround Back 120w + 120w

PaPa Jim

Fronts (RTi6)
Overall Frequency Response 40Hz-27kHz
Lower -3dB Limit 50Hz
Upper -3dB Limit 26kHz
Nominal Impedance 8 ohms
Recommended Amplifier Power 20-125 w/channel
Efficiency 89 dB
Crossover 2.8kHz, 12dB/octave high and low pass
Inputs Dual (bi-amp) gold plated 5-way binding posts
Surrounds (FXi5)
Overall Frequency Response 45Hz-27kHz
Lower -3dB Limit 55Hz
Upper -3dB Limit 26kHz
Nominal Impedance 8 ohms
Recommended Amplifier Power 20-125 w/channel
Efficiency 89 dB
Crossover 2nd order LP/ HP complement 2.3kHz
Inputs Gold plated 5-way binding posts
Center (CSi5)
Overall Frequency Response 45Hz-27kHz
Lower -3dB Limit 55Hz
Upper -3dB Limit 26kHz
Nominal Impedance 8 ohms
Recommended Amplifier Power 20-200 w/channel
Efficiency 90 dB
Inputs Dual (bi-amp) gold plated 5-way binding posts

The Amp also has 4 or 8 ohms option in the setup screen

scottvamp

If you run 8 ohm speakers at 4 than you increase the chance of burning up your speakers voice coils. Your reciever will also run much hotter.
In your case, with your equipment, 8ohms is what you need to stay at.

PaPa Jim

:eek: Thanks :eek:
good thing I asked first

scottvamp

PaPa Jim wrote:

:eek: Thanks :eek:
good thing I asked first

Welcome to the forum!!!!!!!

McLoki

scottvamp wrote:

If you run 8 ohm speakers at 4 than you increase the chance of burning up your speakers voice coils. Your reciever will also run much hotter.
In your case, with your equipment, 8ohms is what you need to stay at.

I think he means what happens if he sets the switch on his AVR to 4 ohms when running his 8 ohm speakers.

If that is the case - all the 4 ohm switch does is throttle the amount of current that your AVR can produce (so it won't go into protect mode as easily with a 4 ohm load). It will work with the 4 ohm setting, but doing so may limit the power, current and dynamics of the amp when it really does not need to.

It shouldn't break anything though.

Michael

(and yes - welcome to club polk)

Lowell_M

I accidentally ran my POS JVC receiver switched to 4 ohm for over a year and didn't notice any difference.