Magpie0001

Forgive my cluelesness,
I was looking for a set of speakers & I figured that wattage was good. THe more watts the better. Thing is I naint got a clue what this Ohm thing means.
Amps say shit like 8 by 8 ohms or something. So I was thinking "Wow!, This ones got Ohms as well as Watts! must be good!" & what kinda speakers should I get to go with this CRAAAAAZy amp with Ohms. What kind of Ohmage/wattage is too much?

Also, why are car speakers waaay cheaper than Hi-Fi speakers? Is it the cabinets? Would it be possible to make cabinets with car speakers for a Hi-fi set up (&save$$$).

Thanks for your time.

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mercury-hg

whew, where to start?

Ohms: unit of resistance. speakers are typically rated at 8 ohms (some are 4 ohms). really, this is nothing for you to worry about at this point.

Watts: unit of power. for speakers, it is the power they are capable of handling from an amplifier. typically you want the power handling for the speakers to exceed the power delivered by your amp (receiver).

higher wattage is going to imply a louder system, but there's many more factors involved. essentially any receiver is going to put out plenty of power for your speakers, you just have to make sure your speakers can handle it. comparing how speakers sound (with your ears) is much much more productive than comparing specs such as wattage, SNR, etc.

as far as car speakers go, they're cheaper because they don't come in an enclosure, so not only is there less material, there's less R&D that goes into making the speaker.

are you looking for speakers for a home theater? strictly music? your car?

digby

Actually, you want your amp to be able to put out 1.5 to 2 times what your speakers can handle. A speaker rating is given in a root mean square (RMS) value. This is more or less an average. The peak voltage that the speaker can take is roughly 1.4 times this value. You want your amp to be able to push your speakers to their limit before it begins to distort. There's also some stuff about transfer characteristics, but I don't think you really want a physics lecture. Ohms and amps are related... the more ohms you have, the less current can flow:

Voltage=Current(amps) x Resistance(ohms)

Anything in your car runs at 14 volts, so as you have more resistive speakers, you need more current output. Any speaker in the 4-12 ohm range should be appropriate for consumer purposes.

All that being said, everyone should just buy some grado headphones. They're a lot better than even the $60k speakers I used in the studio.

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Magpie0001

Thanks for the info Merc & Dig.
I used to have a decent set of speakers & amp but in the move to save space I sold em. Its not a home theatre exactly. I wanna buy an amp & speakers for my apartment. Firstly I wanna hook up my turntables (through a mixer) to it. On top of that I want to hook up the pooter so I can listen to games, DVD's, music software, & music Cd's through the pooter. A PS2, a reel-to-reel and a few assorted bits & bobs are on the horizon too but that stuff can wait.
My place is pretty big but I dont wanna blast the neighbours.

Also, I have another question, well 2 questions.

1. Should I get a bass unit, Y'know those sexy boxes that rumble the floor. I see people with tiny speakers and a bass (what are they called?) thingy & the sound is pretty good. I always thought big speakers = good. Another thing, I heard a long time ago that those things should always be put on the floor but recently Ive seen people with them on a shelf or beside the TV. so which is it??

2. Maybe this is crazy but I was thinking about getting my hands on a pair of oscilloscopes & hooking each one up to the two channels (turntable 1 & 2) going into my mixer. Is it possible to analize audio through an oscilloscope? It may be a bit gimicky but I thought it might be nice to see the music from each channel in real time.

BTW, digby, I agree with you about the headphones, I get funny looks in the street when Im wearing my cans but they sound so much better than earphones (spits).

Thanks for your time.

__________________
Music is my first love & It will be my last.

digby

let's see...

That depends on the rest of your setup. If you get speakers that have a bad low frequency response, then adding a subwoofer could improve the quality significantly.

What you've heard is true. When placing a sub near a hard surface, the reflections give constructive interference on the magnitude of about +3dB. In a corner (3 hard surfaces: floor, wall, wall) you will gain +9dB (i.e. almost twice as much bass with no additional power consumption)

You're right. That's crazy. Seriously, though, it's not worth it. I assume that your looking for some sort of amplitude vs frequency visualization like you see on computers, or some waveform plot. Some oscilloscopes can do these, but you don't want to spend that kind of money. I've used some $5000 oscilloscopes and they still have tiny little green screens that you have to put your nose against to read... well, not quite, but you get the idea.

And for the stuff at the top that I forgot about:

You're going to need some sort of reciever with a lot of extra inputs. Or you could do what I want and just buy a mixer. I know a few people who use a little Mackie mixer for all their audio routing, and it would work quite well. I recently came across the SoundCraft E Series which has 10 stereo inputs, but again this may not be what you're planning to do. As for speakers, you can find some small ones that have a great full range sound, but you'll have to pay for them. In this line of equipment, you really do get what you pay for. If I had a lot of money, I'd buy some Tannoy reference moniters and I've heard good things about the Mackie HR24's. Both are expensive and can be found on eBay.

Let me know if you want to know anything else.

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mercury-hg

are speaker ratings always given in RMS? i'd always assumed that speaker companies would use the marketing ploy of listing peak power handling in their specs, as amp companies do. good to know if that's the case.

Most any receiver you can buy will have 6-8 inputs, so you shouldn't have a problem with those 4 inputs you listed. And like digby said, an oscilloscope, though sweet, would be as expensive as sin.

digby

I don't think I've ever seen a speaker not listed as RMS, but I've also seen very few that didn't list peak voltage as well.

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Magpie0001

Yeah thats what I thought, I was in a pub a while back & they had it hanging on the wall. I suppouse that goes for home cinema setups too? A friend of mine has the whole surround dealy going with a bass thingy too but Its next to the TV & the volume controls for the whole thing are on the bass whotsit. If it was in a corner It'd be a bit of a pain to turn the volume up or down wouldnt it?


The idea was to get a visual representation of the beats, telling me if one record was lagging/racing. I really dont know how it would work or if it would help at all, I dont really need help mixing department.


Im not looking for a pro studio moneywise its not an option, I have contacts that can get me oscilloscopes If i want them & I have a rake old mixers that I figure could be daisychained, so inputs arent really a problem.

Thanks a million for your help.

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Music is my first love & It will be my last.

Glory's Sun

my friend has a 10 inch audiobahn sub that handles 1400 rms and 2200 peak at 1 ohm. His amp is 1200 rms and it's at 1 ohm also.. that thing is packin some major sound. it's all about the ohms and rms in the end I guess

clonmult

Speaker location is also heavily based on the room dimensions ... and shape .... although when it comes down to it, just move them around until you're happy with the sound.

I used to spend hours/days/weeks adjusting speaker location to improve the sound. Then ages were spent mass loading the speaker stands, then adjusting the location again .... it was entertaining in a nerdy sorta way.

My neighbour came round to listen to some music/watch some movies, the whole thing kicked ass. And that was with a rated 50 WPC RMS.

Ohms and RMS are only a small part of the equation. A buddy had an Audio Note valve amp years back rated at a coupla watts, running into some Audio Note/Rogers/BBC LS design speakers. Sound was natural, awesome, out of this freakin' world.

brandon11983

Don't forget about efficiency ratings, either. That is the output of the speaker with 1 watt of input power. The higher the number, the more effective the speaker is at converting power into sound. Speakers with a high efficiency (also known as SPL) rating, will perform better with your "day in day out" receivers, such as your Sony, Pioneer, JVC, etc..... Klipsch makes a nice sounding, very efficient (like 96 dB per 1 watt) speaker. Now when you go to "real" components, such as Denon and Yamaha, you can go with a less efficient speaker, because the amps in the receivers produce much, much more power.

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