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Very low speaker impedance

Hi folks, I would like to know what is the reason that some speaker designs have such a low impedance. For example the lowest impedance of Kinoshita studio monitor speakers is less than 1 ohm (near short)! Why does the manufacturer choose for this kind of ridiculously low impedances? Do speakers with low impedances sound better than speakers with normal (between 4-8 ohm) impedance? Some of those speakers do sound excellent: Apogee Scintilla, Kinoshita studio monitors, the old Thiel CS5i. If the answer to this question is: yes, then most today's speaker manufacturers are compromising the sound of their designs for a more benign impedance behaviour, so the consumers won't be having trouble with their amplifiers. With other words, the choice would be a commercial rather than audiophile one. Are there speaker designers out there who want to give their response?

Chris
dazzdax
johnk's avatar
johnk
1,976 posts
 
Your question (Do many speaker manufacturers choose for a "safer" (more benign) impedance behaviour even if they know a low impedance design would be better instead sonically?) I feel stable 16 ohms is far better so the answer for me is no. If 1-2 ohms designs where better sonically I would design such,not hard at all to do so.
dazzdax OP
599 posts
 
Ok, thank you all. I was just wondering why some speaker builders are designing speakers with ultra low impedances (probably they want to look which amplifier would be able to drive or to survive them..., just kidding). I think nowadays the speakers with true 1 ohm (or less than 1 ohm) impedance are very uncommon, do you agree? Probably this has to do partly with advances in driver technology, because the peak incidence of such ultra low impedance speakers was mainly situated during the eighties (Apogee, Thiel, Wilson, Kinoshita).

Chris
rademaker
88 posts
 
Chris this is not true, current Kinoshita speakers are still using under the 1 ohm loads,. even with the current technology they themself are still the worldwide reference for true monitoring.
rademaker
88 posts
 
The ultra low 1 ohm loads has really nothing to do with outdated technology, it is simply what the designer intended to design and tninks what sounds best according to his opinion.
Chris you should not thinks to theoretically, it is the total design which makes a speaker sounds beautiful,and that is far more complex then the 1 ohm load only, so many other factors !!!
dazzdax OP
599 posts
 
Let me put it this way (and this would be my last question before I shut up): Is it with today's technology necessary to implement an ultra low impedance into ones design to get excellent sound?

Chris
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