How many 16 ohm speakers can you connect to one channel of a 2 ohm amplifier?

Corey Houghton
By Corey Houghton
Questions and Answers

Know if you connect 8 ohms to an 8 ohm box in parallel that you get 4 ohms. We also know that you make 4 ohms to 4 ohms 2 ohms. Also that 16 ohms to 16 ohms in parallel makes 8 ohms. Our question then is: how many 16 ohm boxes can you connect in parallel to a 2 ohm amplifier. That is ?? boxes per channel (one amplifier has 2 channels).

Asker: Dennis, 34 years old

Answer

Hello,

Many confuse impedance and resistance with each other. An impedance is the combination of resistance, capacitance and inductance. With a loudspeaker this is a special phenomenon, depending on the frequency this impedance can change. For example, you may measure 16 ohms, but the impedance can decrease to, for example, 4 ohms.

Second, the output impedance of 2 ohms for an amplifier means that this is the minimum allowed impedance that you can connect to the amplifier. If you connect a lower impedance, the amplifier will go into protection and the sound will be distorted.

So in principle you can connect many speakers to one channel, the amplifier will go into protection and the sound will distort.

The most ideal is that you always connect one suitable loudspeaker to one amplifier.

Secondly, if you connect 2 loudspeakers to one amplifier, you will hardly hear any difference in volume, because we only hear a sound increase at +3db, which is just equal to 2 loudspeakers in parallel.

Here a further explanation by a specialist amplifiers/speakers.

The indication “2 Ohms” on the amplifier is usually the “maximum allowable load”. Knowing that an impedance of a LS /should /supply/specify at 1kHz sine….and that you are talking about an impedance…that impedance will therefore vary in function of the frequency.

Depending on the type of loudspeaker, such an impedance curve is quite “erratic”.
Since you usually do not know the impedance profile of your LS, it is not really advisable to connect LS devices in parallel to one channel. wss. 2 x 16 Ohm LS // will not “provide” any “problems”, but 4 x 16 Ohm LS // places will at bep. freqs mean that the imp. “drops” below 2 Ohms.
Most amps then protect themselves by “soft clipping”: the amp goes into “current limiting”. The amplifier will therefore not fail, but will no longer reproduce the sound correctly (=distort).
It’s whatever you want: a lot of noise from many speakers or more quality from few speakers.
And to anticipate the next question, is it better to place them in series (or a combination of series and parallel):
NO
One speaker acts as a “filter” for the other (and vice versa).
Or to put it another way: an LS “plays” correctly when “powered” with a source with Zo=0 Ohm (whereby in theory the resistive part may even be negative; see “experiments” 1960s). If you look at the “Thevenin source” from one loudspeaker, you see the series connection of the other LS’s impedance with the amplifier’s output impedance: the two (series-connected) LS-ers influence each other as a result, because each LS separately has a relatively high impedance/frequency dependent source “sees”.
Result: bad sound.
Quality costs money….
But if the sound source comes from some MP3 / Telenet decoder (also MP3) you probably won’t hear it at all. It’s digital sound then: you do or not “noise” 😉

How many 16 ohm speakers can you connect to one channel of a 2 ohm amplifier?

Answered by

ing. Rik Hostyn

Electronics ICT

Catholic University of Vives
Doorniksesteenweg 145 8500 Kortrijk
http://www.vives.be

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