Which speaker impedance should I select for my KX-200?

[IanMcI]

I've been reconfiguring my system and am now back to hooking up my speakers to my Fisher KX-200.

My speakers are your typical 8-ohm speakers (rated as such on the back of each speaker).

I haven't given his much thought in the past, but I now have a wiring option on the amp's speaker-output posts of selecting 4, 8 or 16 ohms (plus common).

I've always taken it for granted that a pair of 8 ohm speakers will show an 8-ohm impedance to an amp. That is, the pair of speakers, each showing a rating of 8-ohms on the back, will somehow provide the amp with an 8-ohm load.

But I figure that on this beast I'll be attaching the speaker wires to the available 8-ohm post (rather than either the 4 or 16 ohm posts).

I get the series/parallel thing, but haven't had to seriously consider this, as I never really had the option.

Ian
SF Bay Area

 

[shelly_d]

Placing them on the 4 ohm will provide reduced distortion at the expense of a small loss in power. Using the 8 ohm terminals will provide the most power out of the amp but at the expense of a bit more distortion. Don't use the 16 ohm terminals, that will produce too small a load on the amp.

 

[IanMcI]

Wow! Fast response! Awesome!

I am using this setup in a very near-field environment: speakers are on my desktop - five feet grill-center to grill-center and toed-in to my sweet spot about four feet to each respective ear. I never crank this up.

So, if I use the 4-ohm post, I may benefit from an increase in fidelity at a loss of some power that I'm not using. This sounds like a fair trade-off!

I was using the 8-ohm posts before and would use this setup hooked up to my computer as an all-round audio/music source - maybe turning it up a bit when playing along with an electric bass.

I will now use this as a dedicated CD amp (I don't have a turntable at this time). I thought I'd try to get the best out of this, so CDs rather than the more compressed computer source.

Ian
SF Bay Area