Ohm question

Heh

Well, i wouldnt have to worry about crossovers at least.

I was curious if this could be done with those new Magnepan on-wall ESL speakers. at 4 ohms each, they have no crossovers, no "drivers" per se, and have equal ratings.

a good 8ohm 7 foot column of electrostatic bliss.



yeah i know. im weird.
Im just really wondering if this could be done

In a parallel circuit, voltage stays the same across both loads but current drops. You are right that two 10 ohm loads in parallel presents itself as a 5 ohm load. Each speaker would have half the current flowing through it (i.e., the total current load is what goes through the first speaker plus the second).

Putting two dissimilar speakers together could sound funky and mess up the soundstage plus you could definately get peaks in frequency response since the cross-overs are not matched. Who knows -- maybe those peaks will compensate perfectly for the room acoustics. Chances are, it won't sound too good. But there is a very slim chance that it will. As long as the combined impedence isn't too low (i.e., don't put two 4 ohm loads in parallel), you could always give it a shot and see what happens.

Great answer Ozfly!
It might be an interesting experiment some time, but doesent seem like something worth doing unless the speakers are meant to be stacked

i'll still probably give it a shot sometime. :)

The question of mixing speakers in parallel comes up so often and the formula is so simple that everyone should memorize it or jot it down:

R1 X R2 "R" is the speaker impedence in ohms. If the
------- Speakers were 8 ohm and 6 ohm it would be 8 X 6
R1 + R2 = 48 divided by 8 + 6 = 14 for an answer of
3.43

Write it down. Really. You'll need it sometime in the future.

uhm....
that is not the quetion i asked Elgordo, i was curious about wattage and current, and any adverse audible affects on the speakers.

im not even talking about mixing speakers, im talking about identical speakers, and it looks like my math already was correct.

Thanks though