16 ohm speakers: Pros & cons

Eldartford above, beat me to posting the second advantage of 16ohm drivers. Twl explained the first one:). Cheers

Even with solid state amps that put out more power into lower impedance loads, sometimes you get better sound driving a higher impedance load. I remember years ago building a homebrew that had two woofers, which of course I wired in parallel. Just for fun one day I wired the woofers in series on one of the speakers, scaling the crossover components accordingly and padding the tweeter way down to match sensitivities. Adjusting for equal volume, the 16-ohm version sounded better on my inexpensive NAD integrated amp than the 4-ohm version did. The sound was more effortless is my recollection (that was over 20 years ago). For some reason (better damping factor maybe) that particular solid-state amplifer sounded better driving a high impedance load. Since I didn't listen very loud and didn't need the extra headroom, I converted the other speaker to 16-ohm configuration and left them that way until the speakerbuilding bug bit me again a few months later.

Duke

Audiokinesis...You made a bunch of changes to your speaker system, so it's not definite that the improvement was due to the amp performing better with higher impedance. My review of amp specs shows that 4 ohm and 8 ohm distortion specs are the same, but 2 ohm specs (where the amp can do this) are usually degraded.

Gregm...A third advantage of 16 (or 32) ohm speakers is that lower gauge speaker wire can be used. This is a big factor if you are running 100 feet or more for some kind of a public performance, but would also apply to shorter audiophile cables.

My Dad's KLH Model 1 bass drivers/Janszen electrostats are 16 ohm. They do indeed sound better and are easier to drive with his 40Watt Citations vintage amps or with his McIntosh 2105 SS amp run on the 16ohm tap (autoformer)..His Krell KST100 although more powerful is not the best match for those speakers. Dont play as loud and actually have less bass with the Krell.