Speaker impedance curve

I wouldn't blame you if you assumed an 8 ohm speaker is always 8 ohms, but it's not. Far from it, an 8 ohm rated speaker is actually 8 ohms only a small percentage of the time because the speaker's impedance varies , depending on the frequencies the speaker is playing at any given moment. Sometimes an 8 ohm speaker might be 7 ohms, or at times 29 ohms, or even 44 ohms. It's all over the place. All speakers have an impedance rating in ohms, which represents how difficult the speaker is to power.

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Content:

• Power amp types and the prevalence of speaker impedance curves
• How to stop worrying about speaker impedance
• Understanding Impedance Curves & Phase Angles
• Speaker Impedance Curve measurements
• Loudspeaker Impedance
• Speaker Impedance, Power Handling, and Wiring
• The Complete Guide To Speaker Impedance (2Ω, 4Ω, 8Ω & More)
• Impedance Compensation For Passive Crossovers

WATCH RELATED VIDEO: Understanding Speaker Impedance and Speaker Switches

Power amp types and the prevalence of speaker impedance curves

Part of how hard a speaker is on an amplifier depends on the actual impedance curve itself; for example, low impedance values in the octave of 10kHzkHz is generally not considered the end of the world given that real world content carries very little energy in that part of the spectrum. The speaker below has a 2. This can wreck havoc on an amplifier not capable of supplying enough output current.

Impedance curve of the Status Acoustics Titus 8T. The phase angle determines how much the current will lead or lag the voltage waveform in a reactive circuit. In a capacitive circuit, the current will lead the voltage, leading to a negative phase angle. The phase angle will resultantly determine how much apparent power the speaker will see. In one sense, you can consider the effects of phase angle being built into the frequency response which represents voltage sensitivity over the full bandwidth : whether the phase angle is 0 degrees or 60 degrees, the voltage demanded from the amplifier remains the same.

Fortunately, 45 degrees is the worst case scenario for a real world loudspeaker; both above and below this point, the amount of power an amplifier is required to dissipate falls off.

Phase; Courtesy of Sound. Remember, the voltage waveform is no longer in phase with the current, so peak current is no longer being sourced from an amplifier at the same time as peak voltage. To handle a real world loudspeaker, a good quality amplifier must be built with the challenges of a less than benign phase angle in mind.

Naturally, that takes a lot of heat sinking or active cooling and a robust output stage. It is my hope that after reading and properly digesting this article, you the reader have a better understanding of the electrical characteristics of a loudspeaker, and how they matter when selecting an amplifier.

Happy listening! Confused about what AV Gear to buy or how to set it up? Read the Complete Thread. Steve81 posts on February 19, Is it as simple as that? So 60 degrees is fine and 30 is fine, but 45 is not fine, at least if you don't have a amp with good cooling?

What would the most perfect, most ideal phase angle profile a speaker could have? If you look at the table included in that section, specifically under the Power Amp column, you'll note that as the phase angle goes up, power dissipated in the amplifier goes up until you reach 45 degrees.

At that point it falls off until you reach 90 degrees, which no real world loudspeaker will present. Nonetheless, at 30 and 60 degrees, while the power dissipated in the amplifier isn't as high as 45 degrees, it's still significantly higher than at 0 degrees, which is a purely resistive load. What I am taking from the article is that phase angles are OK as long as they don't hover around 45 degrees?

Thanks for this article, I started a thread about this very subject about a month ago, and this article has give it more clarity for me. I still have a lot more to learn yet, so I hope these sort of articles continue. Again, a big thanks!

I knew I would get the order wrong. In a capacitive circuit, current leads voltage and an in inductive circuits, current lags voltage. With a pure inductive circuit, the voltage applied across the inductor causes a field to build across the coil which in turns induces current flow. My apologies for having that mixed up earlier. Here's a pic that illustrates pure resistance, inductance, and capacitance circuits. Subscribe to our newsletter.

How to stop worrying about speaker impedance

The seemingly mysterious specification of speaker impedance should be understood in order for us to fully comprehend how speakers work. What is speaker impedance? Technically speaking, impedance is the combination of DC resistance and any reactance in an AC circuit. Because impedance acts on AC circuits rather than DC circuits, there are frequency and phase components. Every electrical device that has AC circuitry has an electrical impedance. Therefore, audio equipment, which passed AC audio signals, has impedance.

Understanding Impedance Curves & Phase Angles

Hey Arch, awesome two parter on speaker impedance. Very well explained with several real world speaker examples. It is great to see phase angle getting equal consideration. Thanks for the linkage to the Kleinhorn article and additional pics. It was fun hanging out together man!! Listening to those behemoths as art was wild! Would be interesting to see their measured impedance for sure. Nelson applied a Zobel network to his Kelinhorns. Wonder what that does to the impedance… Keep up the great writings! Cheers, Mitch.

Speaker Impedance Curve measurements

In electrical parlance, impedance, Z , is the characteristic of a device that causes a reduction in the amount of current, I , for a given voltage, V , in a circuit. Typically, this impedance is characterized by two components: resistance and reactance. However, reactance is only meaningful under AC conditions and comes in 2 main varieties: capacitance and inductance. Capacitive reactance decreases with increased frequency, whereas inductive reactance exhibits a direct proportionality with frequency.

Loudspeaker Impedance

Speaker crossover networks are always a requirement with any system using two or more loudspeaker drivers. While some high quality systems go to great lengths to get everything right, many don't, so the result is not always as expected or hoped for. For passive crossovers, the network is designed to match a resistive load across the crossover frequencies. Loudspeaker drivers are with few exceptions not resistive, but are reactive. They are truly resistive at two frequencies, resonance, and at the lowest impedance seen on the impedance curve. Examples are shown below.

Speaker Impedance, Power Handling, and Wiring

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The Complete Guide To Speaker Impedance (2Ω, 4Ω, 8Ω & More)

All pretty simple, right? The truth is, since your receiver is the source of power in your system, its impedance is negligible. Now speakers on the other hand, do in fact have measurable impedance because of the crossover network and the impedance of the drivers themselves.

Impedance Compensation For Passive Crossovers

How does speaker impedance compare to frequency response? What is speaker impedance exactly? And what other things do you need to know? Speaker impedance, measured in Ohms, is the voice coil total resistance to the flow of electric current as it operates with a musical signal.

The speaker ohm rating is an indication of the speaker's AC impedance, which varies with the frequency of the input signal. This variation of the speaker's impedance can be seen on the speaker's spec sheet impedance curve. This is why the spec sheet indicates this speaker to have an 8 ohm "nominal impedance. Most of the speakers are available in alternative ohm ratings usually 4, 8 an 16 ohm versions. This variety allows for more flexibility in matching the overall equivalent impedance of your speaker s to the output impedance of the amplifier. It is important that the output impedance of your amplifier matches the overall equivalent impedance of your speaker s for maximum power transfer and so that you do not damage the amplifier. When using more than one speaker with your amp the equivalent overall impedance changes depending on how the speakers are wired.

How to measure the speaker impedance Speaker impedance is not a single value, instead, it changes with frequency. This means that you will need a graph to accurately tell the impedance of a driver. Also, since the enclosure will affect the properties of the speaker.