speaker impeadance question


Hi everyone, 

Out of curiosity I was playing around with the 4 and 8 ohm taps on my Mcintosh MC601 mono blocks last night. I currently use Sonus Faber Olympica iii speakers which have a nominal impedance of 4 ohms. I have run them on 4 ohm from day one (non bi-wired), but I was quite surprised to hear that there is a very distinct difference in SQ (positive) moving from the 4 ohm taps to the 8 ohm. So after doing a little digging I was able to find the impedance plot for the speaker and according to the plot I can see why they are rated at 4 ohm but what I don't understand is why they sound so much better at 8 ohm. What I am concerned about is the huge spike at 3khz ..see link below:

https://www.soundstagenetwork.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1285:nrc-meas...

So I thought I would throw this out on the forum to see what you guys think in regards to using the 8 ohm taps based on this plot. 

Thanks in advance

-Keith
barnettk

Showing 1 response by ieales

I have already made that determination on which way sounds better.
I note that the OP accomplished the selection in a day or two. In decades of tube amp ownership, I've never found it to be so cut and dried, often taking many weeks / months to come to a determination. 

I find myself switching back and forth all the time
Whist I have marked levels on program for decades, I settle on a transformer tap for a particular speaker for a selection of well recorded material and be done with it. One might argue that if one continually switches, neither is ideal.

Examine Fig 1 response curve here in https://www.stereophile.com/content/mcintosh-mc501-monoblock-power-amplifier-measurements-0 for an AutoFormer MC501 and Fig 1 here https://www.stereophile.com/content/audio-research-reference-150-power-amplifier-measurements for a Ref150 and this https://www.stereophile.com/content/parasound-halo-jc-1-monoblock-power-amplifier-measurements for a SS JC-1

Now examine the schematic and impedance/phase diagrams for Stereophile's simulated load here https://www.stereophile.com/reference/60/index.html. [Oh, how I wish Stereophile would run 'transformer' amps into the simulated load from all taps.]

Compare how the three WELL REGARDED amps react to the impedance curve of the simulated load: JC-1 barely, MC501 some and Ref150 plenty. Amps do not have a constant output impedance across the power band. Coupled to a non-constant loudspeaker impedance, the combination of the two are a tone control.

Looking at the phase diagram for the SF Olyiii, we see it leading the 500 to 2k region and abruptly lags @ ≈3k. Given a selection of transformer amps, some may sound best on 4Ω, others on 8Ω [2Ω/16Ω anyone?] and some not at all depending how their impedance reacts with that of the loudspeaker IN THE SYSTEM.

Combined with program phase and level anomalies one has the makings for a Sisyphean task of finding an ideal solution.