If you Bi-Amp a 4 ohm speaker = Ohms????


If you bi-amp a 4 ohm speaker what is the amp seeing? In other words is the non-bi-amped 4 ohms the result of two 2 ohm speaker sets in series, two 8 ohm speaker sets in parallel, or could it be anything? Or would the resulting resistence be 4 ohms on both the high and low pass? Or could it be all different combinations? Is there a way to tell? I plan on running the left signal on one amp, the right on another. If there is a difference between the high and low pass could that be a problem if the amp sees 2 ohms on the left (my low pass signal) and 8 ohms on the right (high pass)???? Also consider I have an active crossover before the amps so only the low signal will be seen by the left side of each amp, the high on the right. But I guess my main question is just what should I expect the amps to see once the 4 ohm speakers are bi-amped. Maybe it is a dumb question, I don't know.......
a71spud

Showing 1 response by south_park

The posts above are all correct. Your speakers have a low impedance at a certain frequency and you don't know which frequency, so if you go with the amps per channel approach you are stuck at that freq. on each channel. However, if you isolate the problem to a frequency, and split up the amps over channels you can have a bigger amp take over ath the critical place.

You mid-fi stuff is really excellent!! At one time I thought the Kappa 9's were the best value in HIFI meaning the most drivers and woofer square inches for the buck. Congrats!


To measure with your multimeter you need a signal generator as well. Generate singals from 20 hz to 20Khz (very low power though!! (don't kill the tweeters)) and measure the voltage drop over a 2 ohm series resistor (which gives you current and knowing v=ir you can figure it all out). You will be able to calcualte the impedance per frequency and graph it as well. This will tell you the problem frequencies with low impedance.


From your post, you appear to be getting the program. I recommend to you to give up on your plans. Go high-end. Get a good amplifier and CD player and cables and eventually new speaks (no!). I bet a BAT or Classe or Krell or Ayre with a 24/96 cd player would sound better than the proposed system. You would also not be stuck with more midfi when you decide to upgrade.


good luck and keep trying!