Speakers, Ohms, Amps help please!

johnny918

Hi everyone thanks for reading
I have bought a Panasonic SC-UX100E-K and looking for some help with the speaker set up.
It comes with 2 speakers which I use inside but I am looking to use it for 4 speakers outdoors. I am aware that there are issues with different speaker Ohms and blowing the unit so looking for ideas for which speakers to buy to link up to it and in which way to wire them up (series or parallel)

Thank you 😁

a

if your speakers are 8ohms, you can put 2x4ohm speakers in series, or 2x16ohms in parallel. The problem with this is that each speaker will use and lose power to internal workings (nothing is 100% efficient) that is why a small speaker will sound louder than a bigger speaker on the same system. Bigger the speaker, bigger the losses.

Ideally you would want to take the signal amplify it through another unit, then add on speakers

[Deleted User]

Looking at the spec, it has 4 ohm speakers:

As per above comment, If you run another set of 4 ohm in series, you will get 8 ohms but the amp will now only produce half the rated power (75W per channel rather than 150W) in to double impedance, so they aren't going to be as loud if that is going to matter to you. This is the safe option.

Running in parallel will drop that to 2 ohms - probably a bit too low for most amps. Not sure of the minimum ohm spec for the amp from the details so not clear whether it will be an issue for the amp, depends how well protected the amplifier circuitry is and how hard you drive it but this is the option that could cause issues - very unlikely to 'blow up' as you say - but may overheat if driven at high volume settings and distort the sound which may in turn damage the speakers.

It is important that your 2 extra speakers are the same ohm rating otherwise you will get different sound levels out of them, and also similar dB/W sensitivity.

Heedtheadvice

As above from tallman6 and yes, spec is for a 4ohm speaker load.

I would purchase four 8 ohm speakers and wire each left and right pair in parallel.

Speaker specs for impedence are at a specific frequency and that gives the nominal impedence. It varies significantly with frequency and speaker design. Two 8ohms in parallel is of course a nominal 4 ohm load!

At times therefore it can be lower than the quoted (4ohms in your case ) impedence. What you do not want is it being too low for three reasons firstly you may turn up the output high and try to drive too much current -the amp limits might be reached. Secondly you could run into severe distortion and if you drive a speaker too hard with very distorted sound they can be damaged. Thirdly there is a thing called damping factor (amplifier impedance is significantly less than speaker) which improves sound by stopping cone vibrations (damping them anyway!). As you lower the speaker impedence the damping gets less and cabke impedence starts to come more into play. Panasonic will have specced the cable to be reasonable for the system and it's length consistent with price. If you need to run longer cable for outdoors you should beef up the cable in the same or better ratio to their lengths (extended cable length/ original length) i.e. wire cross sectional area.

Putting speakers in series lowers the sound level and stops the damping to a large extent though no damage should occur. You will find that sound level outdoors is dispered more so you might need all you can get! Information is probably not available for budget speakers but speaker sensitivity varies too! In ideal times you might have listened to them to compare!

Lastly do buy speakers that are designed for outside use to cope with moisture/rain etc Rating at IP66 is probably the best you will get. That will be fine in bad weather... and stop tiny beasties crawling inside!! Outside speakers often have mylar or fibreglass cones. Old fashioned paper ones were often a problem inside cars owing to moisture!

Heedtheadvice

p.s. would you like to clarify your statement @a?  "that is why a small speaker will sound louder than a bigger speaker on the same system."