8 Ohms vs 4 Ohms: Which is Better for Audio?

okay today I want to talk about a topic that is long long overdue and that is the topic of 4-ohm vs. 8 ohms and which one do you want to own do you want to own you want to own the 4 ohm speaker or the 8 ohm speaker now I'm going to preface this video by making a statement and the statement is simply this everything that I want to show you and teach you today is based upon a loudspeaker designer's point of view not an amplifier designer not anything else just coming from strictly a loudspeaker designer point of view now it's no secret that Tecton design we focus on designing high performance loudspeakers and I emphasize that again high performance loudspeakers not mid performance not low performance we want to make high efficiency high performance loudspeakers I believe that that is the closest thing that can be replicated when we compare this to real music now the next thing I want to say is that I am of the opinion that the 8 ohm loudspeaker and even higher 16 ohm those were popular impedances in the 1950s and the 60s and most of the 70s I am of the opinion that 8 ohms is and you can hold me to this 8 ohms is an obsolete impedance and so if you call me on the phone and say which one do I want I'm the first thing I'm gonna say is you want the 4 ohm impedance so I've got a bit of an elaborate explanation here I believe it's totally valid I think it's a good parallel and I think it's a very good teaching tool so here we go if we look in electronics 101 you'll see that one of the first things that happens when you learn about electronics and the way current flows is there's a fluid analogy so it's just like plumbing and pipes and water pressure okay so think of a domes as a small diameter pipe and forums as a pipe that has twice the diameter now I'm gonna do some comparison here we've got a couple of cylinder heads that are destined for one of our race cars eventually right now they're just sitting on the shelf but I think I can make it really good just I want to use this to explain to you what I'm talking about so here we have a vintage Camelback Chevy heads anybody that knows anything about muscle cars from the 60s and 70s knows exactly what the Camelback is little camel humps on it and this little guy's famous now this now before I get too far into this go back to the the plumbing analogy and the pipe size okay so you can see that this is where the intake the air and the fuel goes into this and that's gonna how well this breeds is going to determine how much horsepower we can make what its potential is so you can see we have a really modern racing head here that's got big breathers and we have something that was designed in the mid 1960s just like a domes that's a medium-sized breeder now to put this into perspective this guy on the best day of the year matched with the right components is got the potential to make about 500 horsepower I'm gonna stand this thing up now we're looking at the the cylinder itself and we have the intake valve if a domes this old thing that can only flow half as half as much that would be our valve event our opening of the valve that happens thousands of times in a racing engine okay now that would be 8 ohms 4 ohms double just carve that in the stump that's how this works so think of a dome 4 o fold new modern this guy on the best day of the year can make about 500 horsepower this guy here can make a thousand horsepower with one hand tied behind its back and depending on the power adders ie a blower or a turbocharger nitrous injection things like that it's got that potential they easily make 2,000 horsepower and that's what we're talking about okay so we're done talking about the engines and the breathing analogy so I'm gonna move right on to loud speakers here so I'll make this really easy I've got two identical drivers this one's four ohms this one's 8 ohms in a minute we're gonna compare the two and the output of each but let me make this really simple the first thing I'm going to do is we're gonna listen to this with white noise at 4 ohms a true 4 ohms so here we go we'll play this for a few seconds so if you want to know the difference of the difference between a town reporter oh here we go here's a 4 ohm resistor that's it plain example okay for our next explanation once again I have a forum driver here and I have an a tone driver here now you're we're gonna post these measurements you'll see that it's close to a 3 DB difference not exactly and the reason why even though these are visually identical and this is a 4 ohm this is an 8 ohm the DC resistance is gonna vary a little bit between the two but it should be very self-explanatory so here's the 4 ohm we're just gonna give it a couple of sweeps here here we go what what what what what right and now we'll switch over to our 8 ohm right right right right right okay there we go okay I hope this has been at least a bit informative I have a couple other thoughts that I'd like to share with you John curl talks about how when he was in the process of developing products years ago that the forum impedance had more seven and nine order harmonic distortion those are things that have been overcome so we don't have the fidelity problems by working in the realm of forum and then in with all due respect I am NOT trying to hurt anybody's feelings I know there's a lot of you that love the 8 ohm impedance with the a dome vintage amplifier the tube topology and there's so many of those that are not made with 4 ohm taps hopefully you guys will spend more time with their electronics and get a little more for own things going anyway I hope you've enjoyed this feel free to post your opinions your thoughts and that's it for today

Channel: Tekton Design

Views: 368,799

Keywords: tekton design, home audio, audiophiles, ohms, speaker resistance

Id: tMAO9LPsups

Length: 7min 54sec (474 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 07 2019