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speaker impeadance question

Hi everyone, 

Out of curiosity I was playing around with the 4 and 8 ohm taps on my Mcintosh MC601 mono blocks last night. I currently use Sonus Faber Olympica iii speakers which have a nominal impedance of 4 ohms. I have run them on 4 ohm from day one (non bi-wired), but I was quite surprised to hear that there is a very distinct difference in SQ (positive) moving from the 4 ohm taps to the 8 ohm. So after doing a little digging I was able to find the impedance plot for the speaker and according to the plot I can see why they are rated at 4 ohm but what I don't understand is why they sound so much better at 8 ohm. What I am concerned about is the huge spike at 3khz ..see link below:

https://www.soundstagenetwork.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1285:nrc-meas...

So I thought I would throw this out on the forum to see what you guys think in regards to using the 8 ohm taps based on this plot. 

Thanks in advance

-Keith
barnettk

Showing 1 response by mijostyn

mijostyn's avatar
mijostyn
8,570 posts
 
Keith, yes it is likely that the speakers will sound brighter on the 8 ohm tap and it might also be more sibilant. Depends of your room. But you are not going to hurt anything running them on the 8 ohm tap. It is all about what sounds most natural to you. But, if female voices and violins hurt too much you might go back to the 4 ohm tap.
It is not unusual at all for speakers to have wide impedance swings. Going too low bothers amps the most in term of stability. Higher and the amp just has less work to do.

Mike
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