My guess is that, in the case of the big Konishita speakers, the designers perceive a worthwhile advantage in wiring many voice coils in parallel instead of using some other configuration. For one thing, the amplifiers will deliver a lot of wattage into this configuration - or die trying!
When confronted with having to choose between wiring for a 4-ohm load vs a 16-ohm load, I chose the 16-ohm configuration. My priority was compatibility with specialty tube amps, and I think that even solid state amps sound better into a high impedance load as long as the result isn't premature clipping. Apparently I'm very much in the minority here.
Seldom is the impedance curve one of the primary driving factors in a loudspeaker design; usually other things are higher priority and the impedance falls where it falls. In unusual cases (Apogee, Konishita, InnerSound/Sanders Sound panels), the speaker's impedance curve falls outside the comfort zone of most amplifiers, but in that case there are usually still specialty amplifiers that will work well, though the number of choices will of course be more limited.
Rating amplifiers by their 2.83 volt sensitivity rather than their 1-watt efficiency gives an advantage to lower-impedance speakers, at least on paper. Wired for 16 ohms my speakers are 89 dB/2.83 volts, but wired for 4 ohms they'd be 95 dB/2.83 volts. In either case, they're 92 dB/1 watt.
Duke
When confronted with having to choose between wiring for a 4-ohm load vs a 16-ohm load, I chose the 16-ohm configuration. My priority was compatibility with specialty tube amps, and I think that even solid state amps sound better into a high impedance load as long as the result isn't premature clipping. Apparently I'm very much in the minority here.
Seldom is the impedance curve one of the primary driving factors in a loudspeaker design; usually other things are higher priority and the impedance falls where it falls. In unusual cases (Apogee, Konishita, InnerSound/Sanders Sound panels), the speaker's impedance curve falls outside the comfort zone of most amplifiers, but in that case there are usually still specialty amplifiers that will work well, though the number of choices will of course be more limited.
Rating amplifiers by their 2.83 volt sensitivity rather than their 1-watt efficiency gives an advantage to lower-impedance speakers, at least on paper. Wired for 16 ohms my speakers are 89 dB/2.83 volts, but wired for 4 ohms they'd be 95 dB/2.83 volts. In either case, they're 92 dB/1 watt.
Duke