tyler.avis wrote:The incorrect information you provided in an almost rude manner deals with the latter part of your comment.
When someone makes a correction on the forum to misinformation, try not to take it personally. In the interest of not spreading misinformation on this forum, we frequently butt in to make corrections. Again, please don't take it personally. What you've written you may know from personal experience, but you've made some generalizations that don't hold for every case, and you've made some errors. Let's clear them up.
tyler.avis wrote:…replacing any speaker that isn't 2ohms with a 2ohm speaker will instantly sound better/louder/clearer, because the monsoon performs best at 2ohms.. The monsoon system isn't designed for a 4ohm load, if it was, replacing a 2ohm speaker in the car with a 4ohm speaker would sound better, but because the monsoon is a 2ohm system, it doesn't.
You can't make a generalization that replacing an X ohm speaker with a Y ohm speaker will [always] sound better/worse or louder/quieter. Speakers have many differences among different models as there are many variables a manufacturer can play with when designing and building a speaker. A wildly more efficient 4ohm speaker will be louder than a wildly less efficient 2ohm speaker when both are driven with the same signal and amplifier. A speaker is just an active load to an amplifier. The rating of 2ohms or 4ohms is really just an average, as the actual impedance of a speaker is different at any given frequency. But if you idealize it as a static 2 ohm load -vs- a static 4 ohm load, the only thing you can say with any accuracy is that the 2 ohm load will draw twice the current from the amplifier as the 4 ohm load, if everything else remains the same.
tyler.avis wrote:The only reason clipping occurs is when you go mix the wrong impedance of a speaker to an amp, because the monsoon is more of a 2ohm system than a 4ohm, adding a 2ohm speaker will never be the cause of clipping in a monsoon amp.
This just isn't true. Amplifier clipping actually has nothing to do with the load. Clipping occurs in a [working] amplifier because you drive a signal to gain greater than the available voltage supply can produce. (That is, the combination of your source material + your volume knob setting is driving the amplifier output beyond the power supply's voltage rails.) This will even happen with no speakers connected at all, with *NO* load (which is technically an infinite load) while drawing NO current from the amplifier. It literally has nothing to do with choosing 2ohm or 4ohm speakers.
tyler.avis wrote:And putting a 2ohm speaker actually does make the amp work less; if you added a 8ohm speaker, which would be a higher impedance than the amp is rated for, the amp has to work harder to push the load. By adding a 2ohm speaker you're allowing more current to the speaker, not forcing, allowing.
Please do not take this personally, but you have some misconceptions of how amplifiers and loads work together. I can see what you're getting at, but an amplifier doesn't work in quite the way you've described. An 8 ohm load doesn't make an amplifier work harder than a 2 ohm load. I see what you're thinking, as if an 8 ohm load represents a greater resistance to be overcome, like bicycling up a steep hill, -vs- a slight incline, you'd have to work harder. But that's not how an amplifier reacts to a load. An electrical load to an amplifier causes a draw of current -a stream of electrons, if you will. All a higher impedance load does to an amplifier is draw a smaller current than a lower impedance would draw. And when it comes to amplifiers, pushing a small current is *EASY*, they can do it pretty much perpetually without any troubles. What's difficult, however, is to push a large current. A low impedance causes an amplifier to push a large current. Pushing a large current can pose a significant stress to the electronic components of an amplifier. Pushing large currents produces lots of heat in driver transistors or mosfets. A well-designed amplifier has enough heatsinking capability, component quality, and build quality to deal with the heat produced when pushing large currents within the design limitations, but it is often trivial to exceed the design limitations and have something fail. Using a *lower* impedance load than an amplifier is designed for can cause an amp to blow pretty quickly. Using a *higher* impedance load will basically *never* blow an amplifier.
Now with respect to the Monsoon amp, using "higher impedance [speakers] than the amp is rated for" would pretty much pose no risk, threat, or stress to the amplifier at all. As to whether the sound you'd get would be better or worse using higher impedance speakers than stock, it would depend entirely on the particular speaker being used, and the only way you'll know for certain if a given speaker sounds better or worse is to try it. Again, you can't say that it would be louder or not, because speakers can vary wildly in efficiency from one model to another.
Considering that one generalization you *can* make with car speakers is that it's pretty trivial to find better aftermarket speakers than almost any stock speaker, it may be *well* worth the effort to try various speakers with a Bonneville's stock Monsoon head unit, and I'd hate to discourage people from doing that based on an impedance rating alone.
PontiacDad at WCBF `08: "By any chance, was his name. . .Radomir?"
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`05 Mercedes S500
3.The HU I would want is out of my price range right now anyway.
