Speaker wire impedance? Speaker impedance?
I finally got into the owner’s manual for the speakers I bought last May (Revel M126Be) and under "SPEAKER CABLE" Revel is saying that, "High loop resistances that exceed 0.07 Ohms (for each wire run) will cause the loudspeaker’s filter network to be mis-terminated, resulting in considerable degradation of sound quality."
I ohmed out my (longer than I think is optimal) single run (the Revels are not bi-wireable) of (what I think I remember being) Kimber 8TC and I read 0.07. My B&Ws were shotgun bi-wired, so today I also doubled up my single runs with the other bi-wire cable (so two wires are terminating on one speaker post for + and - for both speakers) and rechecked the impedance and read 0.05 ohms which I assume is a variance going in the proper direction.
But I have a probably stupid and probably very basic question (as I make NO claims of having a tight grasp on this stuff). If a lower impedance run of speaker cable makes for an easier load for an amp to drive, why is it that a speaker with higher impedance is a easier load to drive? Can this be dumbed down for me?
I apologize because I am sure this has been asked before, but I cannot find the right combination of words for a search engine that is yielding an answer.
Okay, thanks for getting back to me on that, @carlsbad2 , the reason I mentioned it is because in one of my earlier configurations, in a larger room, I bought cables that were made up to be long enough that my year was not situated between speakers but on a side wall. Therefore they are longer. |
@immatthewj As a general rule of thumb, no matter what speaker cable you have, its good practice to keep it as short as possible. This is why monoblock amplifiers are common in high end audio as it allows the shortest cable length possible. If the cable was connected to an amplifier and speaker, the reading you got isn't representative of anything. That's a pretty good meter that can read 0.05 Ohms BTW! |
@atmasphere , after I read the replies I started thinking that the fact that I had always had at least the amp end of my cables connected when I was trying to measure made my readings to not be valid. I would think that regardless of the length of the cable, the actual resistance was lower than what I thought I was reading? As far as the meter, I didn't think it was anything special--when my old Radioshack meter that I used to bias my amp, I bought a Southwire at Lowes and that's what I was using. |
@immatthewj To the first question, yes. If you were using a Radio Shack meter then you were seeing readings no lower than 0.1. |
Thanks for getting back to me @atmasphere ; oops, I see the typo I made. No, two or three years ago my old Radioshack meter failed the drop test and bit the dust. I replaced it with a Southwire meter I bought at Lowes. It was that meter that I took the readings of 0.07 with and screwed around with adding my second run that I had used for bi-wiring and then read 0.05. For now I think I can live with knowing that those readings were erroneously high (since Revel was listing 0.07 as the highest resistance for speaker wire; I would say that going by what you have told me I am below that).. I guess I can add to my list relocating my gear to speakers relationship and either buying short runs of a high quality speaker wire or cutting my Kimber at least in half and then maybe just wrapping un-insulated strands of wire around the posts at one end or the other.
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