4 Ohm Advantages

Murray1

Appears LSi family of speakers are 4 ohm. Since they require an additional amp to drive them efficiently, what is the advantage of 4 ohm. Are most competitor speakers also 4 ohm?

mmadden28

Welcome to Club Polk. I can't answer whether or not there is an advantage of 4 vs 8 ohms (I'm not sure there is-I think its just a design difference), but just so you know, the LSi's (at least the LSi9's) can dip below 2 ohms at certain frequencies. 4ohms is the nominal imedance rating. Actually all speakers no matter there nominal rating vary imedance at different frequencies if I understand it all correctly.

EDIT:
Here's a link to a chart on the LSi9. Look at Chart #4 for the impedance curve-its lowest at ~50Hz.

mmadden28

hmm, I can't find my printed copy. But it appears that the whole site is down-perhaps it will be back. Maybe they forgot to renew the domain name.

mmadden28

Well I found that they changed thier domain name, here is the link to the original page:
http://www.soundstage.com/revequip/polk_lsi9.htm
But it appears that the link is still coded to go to the old name.

danz1906

Murray1 wrote: »

Appears LSi family of speakers are 4 ohm. Since they require an additional amp to drive them efficiently, what is the advantage of 4 ohm. Are most competitor speakers also 4 ohm?

Very good question, I have Linn speakers and they are also 4ohms.
I think that all Linn speakers are 4ohms.

thuffman03

I am sure there is a good reason for this. I am not an EE or a speaker designer so I can only guess on what and why.

Then again there might be no reason. It all might be a conspiracy for us to have to go out and buy higher end equipment that can handle the lower impediences.

messiah

There is no "advantage" for speakers to run at 4 ohms vs 8 ohms. On the contrary, it is less stressful to the amplifier to run higher ohm rated speakers. It is what it is though, and if you want the sound that the Lsi's produce, be prepared to get an amp that is comfortable with a nominal impedence of 4 ohms.

McLoki

This should take you there.... (web archive to the rescue again)

Michael


Edit - 4 or 8 ohm is not a quality determination, simply an engineering decision based on drivers used and crossover design. (I do wonder if they design a speaker as 4 ohm at least in part so there is a better chance it will end up being driven by more than a cheap AVR though - The LSi's certainly benefit from a decent amp.....)

Face

Much of the problem today is that most tweeters are 4ohms, especially mid and high end models.

wizzy

Well, if your amp is capable, you get more watts out of the amp versus eight ohms.

messiah

Face wrote: »

Much of the problem today is that most tweeters are 4ohms, especially mid and high end models.

This is true. Or conversely it could be stated that the biggest problem is that most receivers aren't 4 ohm stable:cool:

ben62670

wizzy wrote: »

Well, if your amp is capable, you get more watts out of the amp versus eight ohms.

Thank you. If you are stepping up to higher end audio you should have an amp capable of running 4ohms. I like 4ohms myself. The problem is with LSI's they are priced too low, and the idiots that sell them 9 times out of 10 have them setup wrong.

mmadden28

McLoki wrote: »

This should take you there.... (web archive to the rescue again)

...

Sweet-I'll have to bookmark that archive site.

For archive's sake of my own,

Here is the Impedance Chart both linked to my photobucket and attached.