ok i have a decent understanding of car audio but i never really grasped the ohm thing...i know the standard for subs is usually 8 ohms right? and if you have 2 subs wired in parallel it will cut the ohms in half, correct?? (like 2 8 ohm subs in parallel gives a 4 ohm load) now what exactly is parallel wiring??? i believe it is running 2 speakers off of one wire....but is there many ways to do this? and does each have a different effect? thanks for the help

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Yeah, the whole car audio thing can be confusing, i know a few things myself.

As for the ohms, actually, almost all car audio is 4 ohms. its rare when you see more than that (i know the awesome eclipse woofers have a 6 ohm svc)

as i recall, http://www.crutchfield.com has a little tech section on explaining ohms, and series/parrell wire configurations.

Good place to get stuff from too, they rock! ive e-mailed them dozens of times about audio related questions, and have always reciever a quick, polite response. and that was before i even ordered anything from them!

hope i helped!

 

When you parallel a circuit, you create two paths of electricity that start from the same power source and go to the same ground. In theory when you parallel a circuit you decrease the impedance by 1/2. (parallel an 8 ohm ckt and you have two 4 ohm ckts). You also double the amount of current flow (power or watts)

The risk of doing this is the increase in power which is drawn from the power source (an amp) and through the components in the circuit path (speakers) If your amp/speakers cannot support the changed impedance you will destroy them (usually by overheating).

I hope this helps

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To find impedance in a parallel circuit, use the formula 1/[(1/Za)+(1/Zb)+...] with Za being the impedance of the first speaker, Zb the impedance of the second, and so on and so forth. Taking the impedance of 1 speaker and dividing by the number of speakers will only work if all the impedances are the same.

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There can be only one!!

[This message has been edited by Justins86bird (edited December 14, 2000).]

 

yeah, u can also find the impedance of the system by doing product over sum of the speakers...

say, for example u have 2 4ohm spkrs wired in parallel (which means u have one wire going in to the loads (speakers) and one wire leaving the loads to/from the amp or whatever.

-------|-------|
|......../........./
=........\z1.......\z2
=es....../........./
|........\.........\
---------------|

(the periods (.) are blanks so the picture will come out right, the bug sqwiggly line labeled z1 and z2 are the two speakers, and the = is the voltage source - an amp or whatever).

im not sure how the above text thingie will come in but its a simple schematic of two speakers wired in paralle, es is the voltage source (amp, head unit, whatever), z1 is the impedance of speaker 1 and z2 is for speaker two, both of which are 4ohms a'pieace. now take z1 and multipy it by z2 which comes to 16ohms. now take the sum of (z1+z2) which equals 8ohm's. take the product, which was 16ohms and divide it by the sum, which was 8ohm's and u will get 2ohms. that the simple math for why the ohms drop when u wire speakers in parallel.

maybe this helps, prolly not, im bad at explaining stuff, haha.

[This message has been edited by edin (edited December 16, 2000).]

[This message has been edited by edin (edited December 16, 2000).]

[This message has been edited by edin (edited December 17, 2000).]

 

www.JLAudio.com has some great F.A.Q.s on all of this. very easy to read