What is speaker impedance

Speaker Impedance is usually expressed by, or measured using, OHMs. OHMs is a meaningful and helpful term for speaker specification and unit of measurement and when used and understood correctly by manufacturers and consumers. Speakers generally have an impedance rating of 4, 8 or 16 OHMs.

The best way to visually understand speaker impedance and OHMs is with water. Some explain the science of speaker impedance with water piping and water. Lifewire Technology Review Board Member. Article reviewed on Mar 05, Tweet Share Email. In This Article. About Speaker Impedance. Can Your System Handle It? About the Impedance Switch. Impedance of Car Speakers. Was this page helpful? Thanks for letting us know!

Email Address Sign up There was an error. Please try again. You're in! Thanks for signing up. There was an error. Tell us why! More from Lifewire. Who Needs a Dedicated Subwoofer Amplifier? The 8 Best Affordable Bookshelf Speakers of Beginner's Guide to Car Audio Systems. When selecting products to use with your amplifier, you have to make sure their impedance is compatible with the load the amp is comfortable with.

You need to make sure the impedance value is below or on par with the acceptable range for the amplifier. However, you should avoid products of 10 or 12 ohms. Equipment with lower impedance like a 4-ohm speaker or 8-ohm speaker tends to produce better sound anyway. Improper matching can yield some pretty negative results, so you should always make sure to only pair two pieces of equipment that are meant for simultaneous use.

If you connect speakers with too high of a resistance rating to your amplifier, one of three things will occur. For the rest of the frequency response, the impedance is well above 6 ohms. For further reading, you can check out more technical details behind speaker impedance here. So going back to the original question, why did we make a 6 ohm speaker when we could have just designed an 8 ohm speaker and had it draw less power?

The honest truth is that we would have had to make sacrifices in terms of sound in order to get the impedance higher. Which is more important, a speaker that we feel delivers the signature Aperion sound that our customers know and love, or a speaker that is slightly easier to drive?

Of course we chose sound as the most crucial attribute for our speakers. Fudging specs aside, even a speaker that is unquestionable 8 ohms would not draw that much less power than our Verus II Grand Bookshelf.

Especially when you consider that listening volumes are a much larger factor. Johnny Rocker who listens to his 8 ohm speakers at dB is absolutely taxing his amp more than someone listening to a 6 ohm speaker at a reasonable volume.

Wait, my receiver has an impedance setting?