Setting up speakers (Live)

Good question

Curious. I'm interested to know the answer to this one, too.

I do know (or think I know), that the ohms is resistance and thus if you take the power coming out of your amp and run it into 4 ohms speakers, the loudness you perceive will be twice that compared to running into an 8 ohm speaker, all else being considered equal.

As always, check your equipment specs to make sure you don't blow anything.

Daisy chaining (in my estimation), should be allowed, but might have an unexpected result. But maybe not, aside from causing the 4 ohm speaker to play louder by comparison to an identical, but 8 ohm speaker, in the configuration.

Upon reflection, too, if it does matter, I think it might matter which speaker is in line before the other. Maybe? Because if the 4 ohm speaker was in line first, the power coming out of and into the 8 ohm speaker might be affected, as compared to reverse ordering?

How about it, guys? What's the answer here?
 
Not advised. The total load (which is actual IMPEDENCE, not resistance- but is most easily measured in the field with a ohmmeter as DC resistance) would be 2.7 ohms (most "Daisy chaining" puts the speakers in parallel)- unless your power amplifier manufacurer expressly says it can handle a 2-ohm load, you will likely burn it out well before the event is over.

True pro-quality amps may be made to handle a 2-ohm load, but "pro-sumer" and consumer quality amps will likely not. This is considered abuse (user's manuals are clear about this whole thing) and thus not covered by the warranty.

It does not matter what order the speakers are in, the impedence will be the same.

In short- DON'T DO IT.

If you NEEDED to run both speakers, you could make up a pigtail that would allow you to run the speakers in SERIES, which would result in a 12-ohm load. This would cut down on speaker output, but your amp would live to see another day.
 
well you're not gonna want to be daisy chaining 4 ohm speakers unless your amp is rated to 2 ohms.
Daisy chaining is the same thing as hooking 2 speakers in parallel.

So if you run two speakers of identical impedance in parallel, you divide the speakers impedance by the number of speakers you're hooking up.

So two 4 ohm speakers in parallel will give a load of 2 ohms which not every amp can handle. And daisy chaining more of them would lower the load even more.
Actually, since you use some fairly budget minded gear, I'd be surprised if it can handle 2 ohms. It might, but probably not so check.

Conversely running speakers in series is the opposite. You add the speakers' impedances. So 2 4-ohm speakers in series would give a load of 8 ohms.
You can mix and match the wiring methods in series-parallel to achieve the load you want
 
well you're not gonna want to be daisy chaining 4 ohm speakers unless your amp is rated to 2 ohms.
Daisy chaining is the same thing as hooking 2 speakers in parallel.

So if you run two speakers of identical impedance in parallel, you divide the speakers impedance by the number of speakers you're hooking up.

So two 4 ohm speakers in parallel will give a load of 2 ohms which not every amp can handle. And daisy chaining more of them would lower the load even more.
Actually, since you use some fairly budget minded gear, I'd be surprised if it can handle 2 ohms. It might, but probably not so check.

Conversely running speakers in series is the opposite. You add the speakers' impedances. So 2 4-ohm speakers in series would give a load of 8 ohms.
You can mix and match the wiring methods in series-parallel to achieve the load you want


Exactly right! And in the case of hooking 8 ohms in parallel with 4 ohms, you'll effectively have a 2.67 ohm load. If your amp can handle 2 ohms not big deal if not, could be big flash followed shortly there after by some smelly smoke :-)
 
Jeesh!
Just when I was beginning to figure it out, you pull me back in!
Here's the manual..... EUROPOWER PMP860M/PMP880S/PMP1280S
Also, I'm discovering that "Manufacturer's Specifications" don't hold a lot of water so approximations would be fine if anyone wants to make a recommendation.
Local shop has 4 used Behringer 212's for sale but wants about $200 apiece.
 
Hi Jim,

Found this link with an ohms calculator and an explanation about series or parallel connection of multiple speakers.

Simple explanation is, 2 x 8 ohm speakers in parallel = 4 ohms
2 x 8 ohm speakers in series = 16 ohms.

2 x 4 ohm speakers in parallel = 2 ohms
2 x 4 ohm speakers in series = 8 ohms.

You should always try to match the speaker ohms to the amp ohms, for example a 4 ohm amp with 4 ohms of speaker load, 1 x 4 ohm box or 2 x 8 ohm speakers in parallel. Multi speaker boxes to achieve correct ohms is common as it enables the speaker system power to match the amp output, the amp may be 1000 watts so 2 x 500 watt speaker cabs may be used.

Using speakers that are higher ohms than the amp, say 4 ohm amp with 8 ohm speaker or 16 ohm speaker is OK (unless stated by the amp manufacturer) but the power output of the amp is reduced quite a lot. 100 watt 4 ohm amp would only give about 60 watts at 8 ohms or 40 watts at 16 ohms, this is a good trick for guitar players that want to overdrive the amp at lower volume, use a 8 ohm box with the amp set to 4 ohms.

Using speakers lower ohms than the amp, 2 ohms on a 4 ohms amp or 4 ohms on a 8 ohm amp is not advised as the amp will run very hot and will eventually blow the output transistors.

When connecting multiple speakers for the first time, I always check the ohms across the speaker cable before pugging into the amp, ohms meters are cheaply available from electronics shops and everyone should have one. They are good for checking cables for shorts and breaks too.


Cheers

Alan.
 
well you're not gonna want to be daisy chaining 4 ohm speakers unless your amp is rated to 2 ohms.
Daisy chaining is the same thing as hooking 2 speakers in parallel.
With that statement in mind, there is no point in buying any more 4 Ohm speakers.

Thanks for your patience, guys.
I'm struggling away here but I think I'm catching on.
The Behringer manual clearly shows examples of stacking/chaining two speakers from each channel and when I check the specs, those speakers are way overrated for the amp at 8 Ohms.
However, if (and I think this is correct) when you chain the two 8 Ohm speakers they are in parallel and the specs on that channel changes to 600 Watts Peak Output at 4 Ohms as opposed to the 8 Ohm peak which is 300 Watts.
In other words, each channel could run one or two 300 Watt speakers at 8 Ohms.
Am I way off?
 
yes, that's essentially the case.
Typically the power output doesn't actually double as impedance halves. You're starting to see a lot of amp manufacturers reflect that in their ratings. But that's close enough for understanding your rig.
So if you run 4 speakers you'll be getting substantially more sound out of the same amp because you'll have twice the radiating area driven by almost twice as much power. A win-win really.

You could still use 4 ohm speakers but you'd have to rig up a series cable to connect them.

I, personally, prefer 8 ohm speakers for this very reason.

Something else I do is buy PA amps that are rated to 2 ohms but that's not necessary. It does open up a lot of speaker possibilities though.
 
Another trick is that you can connect 2 x 8 ohm speakers to one side of the amp to run the main PA in mono, and connect 2 x 8 ohms foldback speakers to the other side of the amp for foldback.

The front of house would be 600 watts peak and the foldback 600 watts peak.

It is amazing how much extra power you get when you match the ohms, my live bass rig is 300 watts @ 4 ohms, I have 2 single 15" cabs 8 ohms each. When running both and the load is 4 ohms the amp is running at about 1/2 on the volume control. When I get a smaller gig I sometimes take 1 cab so I am running 8 ohms. Even at a quieter playing level the volume control is now up around 3/4.

When I ran a concert PA many years ago every front of house box was 4 ohms, and each box was connected to one side of each of the power amps therefore each amp was running to its best performance. I always found it best to run more power than the speaker rating, the reason is that when amps hit their max output they square wave (distort), a square wave signal will destroy speakers quickly. A louder power amp into a lower rated speaker delivers a clean signal even during busts of power, the speaker will handle short peaks without blowing (that's why you see things like 300 watts RMS 600 watts peak on the rating plates), speakers only blow if you continually overdrive them (abuse them) and you can hear this happening, you don't always hear square wave signals.

Cheers

Alan.
 
Another trick is that you can connect 2 x 8 ohm speakers to one side of the amp to run the main PA in mono, and connect 2 x 8 ohms foldback speakers to the other side of the amp for foldback.
Or the 4 Ohm pair, right?
Well I think I finally understand it.
I'll hang on to my 100 Watt speakers as loaners, standbys and monitors etc..
It's still hard to trust the specs on the speakers I'm looking at and the same goes with the amp.
There are however, some very affordable 3 way speakers and I'll choose a set in a couple of weeks.
Absolute overkill, by the way but a certain party (not mentioning any ranks) says I have to. ☺
Still waiting for the amp to arrive too.
It's been in customs for a week.
 
Another trick is that you can connect 2 x 8 ohm speakers to one side of the amp to run the main PA in mono, and connect 2 x 8 ohms foldback speakers to the other side of the amp for foldback.

The front of house would be 600 watts peak and the foldback 600 watts peak.

The PMP 1280S has a switch (mon-mono position) to do exactly what I said about main PA and foldback, with separate EQ, very handy.

Cheers

Alan.
 
I'm going to pretend I know what "Fold-back" is.
I'm guessing it's about crossing the sound in front of you, from the sides.
Anyway:
The amp arrived and I love it. I chickened out of buying a pair of 250 Watt RMS speakers because they are about 35 watts too much per speaker and instead, bought a pair of 4 Ohm, 300 Watt, Dual 10" speakers from Seismic audio. I know... "4 Ohms" .... but I don't need monitors very often.
The speakers are absolutely marvelous and the company are extremely helpful.
Next I bought a used pair of 12" speakers (for markets and outdoor stuff) from a guy on Used Victoria. They weren't much to begin with but the 160 Watt speakers have been replaced at some point with a 75 Watt and a 50 Watt and one of the tweeters was blown. They also looked and smelled like scratching posts. I've cleaned them up and replaced the tweeter. I'll get back to them later.
Last night, I bid on a pair of 8" 100 Watt RMS speakers and when my Paypal account replenishes itself, I'll go back and order those 12" 250 Watt speakers.
Then I can daisy chain the 8's to them and still have 100 Watts to spare.
See? Yous learned me right well.
Hey Stevie B:
You said
"If you NEEDED to run both speakers, you could make up a pigtail that would allow you to run the speakers in SERIES, which would result in a 12-ohm load. This would cut down on speaker output, but your amp would live to see another day."
You're sure that's safe, right?
I could pigtail my 4 Ohm speakers on one channel and run whatever I want on the other.
I would do that at some point if I was sure about it.
 
if you do it correctly, making a series pigtail and running two 4 ohm speakers on it would give a load of 8 ohms.
 
"Fold back" is "British" for monitor.

More recent responses than mine are factual and I am sure helpful- I tried to keep it simple for you.

You can get an approximation of impendence with a DC ohmmeter- resistance of the speaker circuit (measure at the terminals, with nothing else plugged into it) of
> 4 ohms = 4 ohm impendence
4.1 to under 8 ohms = 8 ohm impedence

Lt. Bob is correct about a series pigtail, but I have found such pigtails to be a bit unwieldy if going with more than two speakers. With careful combining of both series and parallel loads, you can get loads closer to 4, 8 or 16 ohms. No danger in having a load HIGHER than specs for your amp (4 ohms instead of 2, 8 ohms instead of 4, etc.) but you will get a lower maximum volume level. This would mean you are pushing your amp harder, but as long as it is dissapating the heat, you should be okay. (Correct me if wrong, folks.)

To answer your question posed directly to me:
Run one connector from amp pos. to speaker A (8 ohm) positive.
Run one connector from speaker A neg. to speaker B (4 ohm) pos.
Run one connector from speaker b neg to amp neg.
Result: 12 ohm load, safe for your amp.
Run other amp's side to one 8-ohm speaker.

Does that help?
 
Keeping it simple:
Just a regular splitter (Speakon). Would that do it or would I have to know a lot more about wiring? Hence the term "Series Pigtail".

Couple of observations about this amp, by the way.
Stereo is nice but mono has a lot more punch.
In "Mono" the monitor channel is noticeably louder than the main channel.
Something to do with where the processing goes on and all of the extra circuits, I suppose?
Anyway: I'm glad Lt. Bob talked me into upgrading. It's all about headroom.
I passed my old system on to a local Free Masons group who needed it and have hired me a number of times.
(That rustling sound is my father, spinning in his grave.)
Heh, heh!
 
a regular splitter would be parallel.
So if you were to run 2 4-ohm speakers on a parallel pigtail you'd end up with 2 ohms ...... NOT what you're wanting.

Look ..... someone else is gonna come along and put up a link to series/parallel and that's cool but to a layman here it is.

Take two speakers and run two wires to the + and - of one and also 2 wires to the + and - of the other (or 2 wires from the + and - of the 1st speaker to the + and - of the second speaker.). If one speaker burnt out the other would still work because you have seperate wires to each speakers' + and - . Each speaker is independently connected to the amp. The output of the amp is essentially split between the two speakers. ..... follow me?
That's parallel.

Now take a wire and hook it to the + of one speaker and then run a wire from the - of that same speaker to the + of the second speaker and finally from the - of that second speaker back to the amp.
Now the speakers are NOT independently connected because the output of the amp goes thru both speakers before returning to the amp.
If you were to have one speaker burn out the other would also quit working because there isn't a separate connection for each speaker ....... only a single path that goes thru one and then the other.
That's series..
So you'd want a pigtail that would have the same set up ...... + from the amp to the + of one jack ..... the - of that same jack hooked to the + of the second jack and the last - back to the amp.
Note that a series pigtail will ONLY work if you do have the 2 speakers hooked up. If one is not connected, then the circuit is not complete so you couldn't leave a series pigtail in place and only hook up one speaker if you didn't need the second.

And the easiest way for you to look at it for right now, since you don't know about it yet, is that you take the impedance of the speakers (assuming they're all the same impedance) and you divide that by the number of speakers if it's parallel and multiply it by the number of speakers if it's series.
So 2 4-ohm speakers parallel is 2 ohms total and the same 4-ohm speakers is series would be 8 ohms total.

When you mix different impedances (say a 4 ohm and an 8 ohm) it gets more complicated to figure out the exact impedance (in this case 2.6 ohms) but in parallel, the total load will always be lower than the individual loads and since you don't want to go below 4 ohms ...... ANY speaker you hook up in a parallel pigtail will lower the total load below 4 ohms so you have to go with series.

Also ...... we're talking about a single amp ...... if you're mixer is stereo ....... simply treat each side as a totally separate amp when calculating loads.

It can really be a lot more technical than that but this is a good enough way to visualize the differences.
 
"Fold back" is "British" for monitor.

Sorry about the confusion, we call it Foldback here (Australia) most of the time and Monitor is used as well.

My tip with the whole speaker thing is "Don't make it too complicated".

Buy a couple of 8 ohm speaker cabs that are rated for the power of the amp. You can use 1 speaker a side (8 ohms a side) most of the time, the amp will loose some power (from it's 4 ohm rating) but it will sound fine. If you need more power, buy (or hire) a second set of 8 ohm cabs and run 2 a side (or 2 on 1 side for the main PA and 2 for stage Monitor). Using 8 ohm Cabs this way is a very flexible set up.

Cheers

Alan.
 
Thanks everybody:
Anything that complicated, Lt. Bob, I won't do but thanks again for the tips.
I am extremely happy with the new 4 Ohm speakers and they will be my main speakers from now on. It was a good purchase.
I'll just go with powered monitor/speakers if I have the need.
This amp has plenty of "Outs" for them.

Also: By the time I need to run 4 speakers (Which is about once every 2 years) I'll also have enough 8 Ohm cabinets lying around, to do the job.
 
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