Very low speaker impedance

Fellow audiophiles, let's ask another question: very low impedances are extremely demanding with regard to amplification. 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? This choice is of course strongly influenced by marketing strategies, because otherwise their products would be very hard to sell (many amplifier and tweeter failures :-) ).

Chris

Chris, you seem to have an impedance obsession!

The only way to really answer your question is to poll every speaker manufacturer out there and ask if they made some type of compromise in their design regarding impedance. Some may have, many probably have not. Many won't tell you one way or the other as they regard their design efforts as proprietary work.

The error in your proposition is your statement:

...even if they know a low impedance design would be better instead sonically

Impedance is only one part of a complex set of issues. It may have nothing to do with a particular design's sonic goals. Or, it could even hinder achieving an important goal in a particular design. For example, low impedance draws lots of current. Current generates heat in a voice coil and that heat can damage or destroy a driver. So, in some designs, a low impedance could reduce the effective dynamic range. Many people regard improved dynamic range as sonically better than impaired dynamic range. In this "for example" the speaker may well perform better if the impedance is not low!

You need to get this one-note samba out of your head. Impedance is only one fact of many, many technical issues in a speaker design. You get a good speaker only when ALL of them are well coordinated toward the design goal.

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.

Ok, thank you all. I was just wondering why some speaker builders are designing speakers with ultra low impedances (probably they want to look which amplifier would be able to drive or to survive them..., just kidding). I think nowadays the speakers with true 1 ohm (or less than 1 ohm) impedance are very uncommon, do you agree? Probably this has to do partly with advances in driver technology, because the peak incidence of such ultra low impedance speakers was mainly situated during the eighties (Apogee, Thiel, Wilson, Kinoshita).

Chris

Chris this is not true, current Kinoshita speakers are still using under the 1 ohm loads,. even with the current technology they themself are still the worldwide reference for true monitoring.