[sdiy] SOT: speakers & theory...

[mcb, inc.]

On Sun, 5 Jun 2005, Nils Pipenbrinck wrote:

> Yes! Give me the long story, please.

Speakers aren't simple resistive loads, they have a reactive
component as well.  It used to be that manufacturers and reviewers
would give proper technical information and you'd get a nice
polar plot of impedance versus frequency for your speakers.  And
they tended to dance around quite a bit:  magnitude variations
of -50%/+100% over nominal rating with an inductive component
varying quite a bit.  Put two different speakers in series and
you have a strange little reactive circuit with each speaker
acting a bit like a LP filter (or something uglier) for the other.
Put two different speakers in parallel or series, and one will be
dumping energy into the other at unexpected times.  Running
parallel gives a little less interaction.  Separate final
amplifiers gives more.  Then there's the audiophile solution of
an amplifer per speaker each fed from a different powerstation.

--
Monty Brandenberg