whats an ohm? what does it mean? what does it do?

 

Ok i won't make fun of ya for asking this cause its a very legitimate question.

Electrical resistance is measured in units of Ohms just like lenght is measured in inches.

The relevance of this in the audio case is speakers all have a certain electrical resistance, and this affects the output of the amp. Very high resistance aka impedence will affect the output of your amp. Lower impedence will draw more power out of the amp, but it will be more prone to distorting and overheating if the ohm load is below what the amp is rated as stable at. Higher impedence will be more stable but have a little less output.

Most speakers are rated at 4 Ohms, some are 8. In the musical instrument world, lots of speakers for guitar amps are 16 ohm. Depending on how you wire a goup of speakers together will make drastic changes in the ohm load, but thats a whole nother thing.


This is kinda oversimplified and somone else will probably follow up with a better post, but i figured i'd at least take a crack at the general idea.