Very low speaker impedance


Hi folks, I would like to know what is the reason that some speaker designs have such a low impedance. For example the lowest impedance of Kinoshita studio monitor speakers is less than 1 ohm (near short)! Why does the manufacturer choose for this kind of ridiculously low impedances? Do speakers with low impedances sound better than speakers with normal (between 4-8 ohm) impedance? Some of those speakers do sound excellent: Apogee Scintilla, Kinoshita studio monitors, the old Thiel CS5i. If the answer to this question is: yes, then most today's speaker manufacturers are compromising the sound of their designs for a more benign impedance behaviour, so the consumers won't be having trouble with their amplifiers. With other words, the choice would be a commercial rather than audiophile one. Are there speaker designers out there who want to give their response?

Chris
dazzdax

Showing 2 responses by johnk

Many ways to design a loudspeaker focusing in on any one spec and proclaiming it to be the only way to design for best performance is just wrong thinking. 1 ohm doesnt offer any benifits its just a design choice and I feel a wrong one at that....But see Mlsstl responce hes got it right. Loudspeaker designers all make such choices. So many variables to loudspeaker design why it interests me so. To me loudspeaker and audio design is one of the few places a bit of arts left in electronic design.
Your question (Do many speaker manufacturers choose for a "safer" (more benign) impedance behaviour even if they know a low impedance design would be better instead sonically?) I feel stable 16 ohms is far better so the answer for me is no. If 1-2 ohms designs where better sonically I would design such,not hard at all to do so.