Question about Bi-amping

[V-ROD]

I never done that, how do you do that. Also, how do you know when speakers are 4 ohms, 2 ohms and 8 ohms if it doesn't state it on the back of the speaker? I have a pretty good idea about a daisy chain but i'm still not clear.

Can someone help me ?

Peace V-ROD

[DeesKo]

Based on my car/home stereo knowledge, most non-vehicle speakers are 8 ohm. I asked a while back to verify club speaker ohm loads but didn't hear anything definitive back...

As for bi-amping, it does depend on the quality of your amplifier and the ohm ratings on your speakers, here's a quick/easy breakdown of the difference in wiring and the ohm load results (again from a car stereo aspect)

running in "parallel" :

You hook postive to positive, negative to negative and it drops your ohm load by half at the amp...

ie, you have two 4 ohm speakers, hook postive to positive, negative to negative and then you hook one positive and one negative to the amp and in the end, you'll be pushing a 2ohm load at the amp.

Speaker A positive lead to speaker B postive lead and then on to the amplifier positive terminal
Speaker A negative lead to speaker B negative lead and then on to the amplifier negative terminal would be running in parallel.


running in "series"

You hook the postive from speaker A to the positive on the amp, hook the negative from speaker B to the negative on the amp. Then you connect the negative from speaker A to the positive from speaker B.

This will result in doubling your ohm load, ie if you have two 4 ohm speakers running in series, your amp will be running an 8 ohm load.

Then you get into the diff between bridging an amp, etc but its a little late and I'm a little toasty so I'll have to get back to you tomorrow on that.

Peace

[V-ROD]

^^^

[DeesKo]

I would imagine any ole cheap Ohm meter would help in figuring out the ohm rating for a speaker or stack of speakers....

peace

[MusicFilter]

Check the internet for the specs on your speakers. You don't want to run 4 ohm speakers with an 8 ohm amp. (or unequaled)

I did that once doing a party for Jones Commercial High School back in '81. The after an hour the speakers sucked all the power out of my amp and in half hour intervals my amp would clip, stoping all activity on the dance floor for 5 minutes.

I learned a valuable lesson that night.

Surprisingly enough, the people that hired me were thoroughly pleased.

I had informed them before hiring me that what they had to pay me wasn't enough to get me the type of sound system that I thought would fill the gym acoustically.

They said it was okay because this was a fund-raiser and to do the best with what they could pay for. They sold-out the refreshments and I got paid $50 more.

I was still embaressed though. :rolleyes:

[V-ROD]

I feel so stupid asking these questions. In my time being a DJ, the only serious things i've done to connect speakers to amps was to connect one speaker to the left side and the other to right, that's it!

Here is another stupid question: What exactly, or should I say how do you bridge speakers, amps, to get that amplified mono sound.

Is there a book on this that you guys can recommened?


Peace V-ROD

[DeesKo]

Originally posted by V-ROD:
I feel so stupid asking these questions. In my time being a DJ, the only serious things i've done to connect speakers to amps was to connect one speaker to the left side and the other to right, that's it!

Here is another stupid question: What exactly, or should I say how do you bridge speakers, amps, to get that amplified mono sound.

Is there a book on this that you guys can recommened?


Peace V-ROD V-Rod,

I'm working on some diagrams for you right now, very very basic, very top level pictures showing the different wiring schemes for bridging an amp and running speakers in series or in parallel...

I meant to have em done yesterday but got caught up with real 9-5 job BS (how dare they).

I'm not positive it will answer all of your questions but it should give you at least a basic starting point.

One question, when you mention Bi-Amping, do you mean trying to run one speaker off of two amps, or are you just referring to bridging and the different options for wiring up speakers to adjust ohm loads ?

I don't know that running one speaker with 2 amps is possible (it wasn't in the car stereo world, don't know if club speakers/amps have some special set up to allow this but the saying I remember was "you can't run power into power" )

I'll post those pics shortly.

Peace

[DeesKo]

First and foremost, you need to verify the ohm load of your speakers, and verify what ohm load your amp can handle safely.... nowadays most car amps can hold 2 ohm loads with no problems, certain competition amps are known for holding all the way down to .5 ohms but I don't think home/club amps can go that low....

verify that first...


Also, please note I'm doing this while working on 4 other things, so the OHM loads and the wiring plans will be correct, but the power output levels were an after-thought so if I made any typo errors on the power output portion, someone let me know and I'll fix it.


here are the pics :

http://www.ineci.com/pictures/speaker2.jpg

http://www.ineci.com/pictures/speaker3.jpg

http://www.ineci.com/pictures/speaker4.jpg

[V-ROD]

bunmpy bunmp!!!