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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.

 

immatthewj
atmasphere's avatar
atmasphere
11,840 posts
 

@immatthewj To the first question, yes.

If you were using a Radio Shack meter then you were seeing readings no lower than 0.1.

immatthewj OP
2,043 posts
 

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.

 

 

 

iseland's avatar
iseland
139 posts
 

A little late on the ball , but get your self a dats v2 from dayton audio. It measures impedans. 

Plenty of information on you tube. 

emergingsoul
1,165 posts
 

Nobody understands this stuff, except for that guy sitting in the corner that nobody's talking to.

Can you imagine if cookbooks started using the word impedance in their recipes.

If you don’t understand what someone writes herein, its because they probably don’t know what they’re talking about

 

macbrett
7 posts
 

The reason a low impedance cable is "good" is that it will have less effect on the sound.  The amp will mainly "see" the speaker's actual impedance. Energy will not be reactivly stored or dissipated in the cable itself.

The reason low impedance speakers are tougher for an amp to drive is that the lower the load's impedance, the more it starts to resemble a short circuit, which means that current increases.  An amp driving such a load needs a stiff high current power supply.

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