@immatthewj To the first question, yes.
If you were using a Radio Shack meter then you were seeing readings no lower than 0.1.
Speaker wire impedance? Speaker impedance?
I finally got into the owner’s manual for the speakers I bought last May (Revel M126Be) and under "SPEAKER CABLE" Revel is saying that, "High loop resistances that exceed 0.07 Ohms (for each wire run) will cause the loudspeaker’s filter network to be mis-terminated, resulting in considerable degradation of sound quality."
I ohmed out my (longer than I think is optimal) single run (the Revels are not bi-wireable) of (what I think I remember being) Kimber 8TC and I read 0.07. My B&Ws were shotgun bi-wired, so today I also doubled up my single runs with the other bi-wire cable (so two wires are terminating on one speaker post for + and - for both speakers) and rechecked the impedance and read 0.05 ohms which I assume is a variance going in the proper direction.
But I have a probably stupid and probably very basic question (as I make NO claims of having a tight grasp on this stuff). If a lower impedance run of speaker cable makes for an easier load for an amp to drive, why is it that a speaker with higher impedance is a easier load to drive? Can this be dumbed down for me?
I apologize because I am sure this has been asked before, but I cannot find the right combination of words for a search engine that is yielding an answer.
Showing 3 responses by atmasphere
@immatthewj As a general rule of thumb, no matter what speaker cable you have, its good practice to keep it as short as possible. This is why monoblock amplifiers are common in high end audio as it allows the shortest cable length possible. If the cable was connected to an amplifier and speaker, the reading you got isn't representative of anything. That's a pretty good meter that can read 0.05 Ohms BTW! |
basically you are saying that measurements I took with my meter set to ohms are probably not accurate? @immatthewj Yes. You need a really special Ohmmeter to read the actual resistance of most speaker cables! You were far more likely reading the contact resistance of your probes and probe wires than you were the speaker cables. To read a speaker cable you need an Ohmmeter that can read differences in resistance of only 0.0001 Ohms. That's an expensive and specialized Ohmmeter that can do that! |