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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 1 response by sogood51

sogood51
2,157 posts
 
The Apogee Scintilla did come in two flavors, a 1 ohm version, and a 1-4 ohm version (both options, on the latter). By all accounts the one ohm version sounds better.

The extra padding down, required on the ribbons, to bring their output in line with the bass panel, takes away some of the magic from the ribbons, in the 4 ohm configuration. Of course you could do an active biamp to get around this, but...$$$$

The 1 ohm Scintilla ribbon, does not need it's output padded down to blend ....in the 1 ohm version.

Note: This is what I read....I've never owned the Scintilla.

Dave
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