Which speaker companies are honest when rating their impedance, and which companies lie?

[DD66000]

Unless an amp doubles down on the 4Ω rating, I would not call it robust...maybe adequate might be closer to the truth.

 

[lsiberian]

I personally think active speakers are the solution. There are numerous advantages, but wireless tech needs improvements before it can be safely implemented.

 

[Pyrrho]

The IEC standard is pretty set for speaker impedance.

Loudspeaker Measurements Standard: Our Procedure for Objectively Analyzing Speaker Performance | Audioholics

Honestly people beat up receiver manufacturers about power ratings when those companies are giving you every technology under the sun for dirt cheap and essentially throwing in a decent amp section for free. Meanwhile, there are some subwoofer companies claiming a 2400 watt amp will do 8kwatts and nobody really gives them and grief.

While fudged specs are part of the game in any industry, since this topic deals with speakers [emphasis added], I'd say that many speaker companies like to play around with impedance and sensitivity ratings to give their products a marketing edge. This is why 3rd party verification is such a necessary asset when choosing between speakers.

Thank you very much for your post.

You are absolutely right that 3rd party measurements of speakers are extremely important for amplifier matching, because many manufacturers of speakers willfully try to mislead people about their products. (Some speaker makers appear to be trustworthy, and I was hoping that this thread would generate a list so that the honest could be distinguished from the dishonest, but that is obviously not going to happen now with this thread.) It would be good if every speaker manufacturer followed a useful standard for rating impedance (and the IEC standard would be quite useful), but given how common human greed and dishonesty are, the only way that impedance ratings generally could be trusted is if they were legally required to follow some standard.

I would say, though, that although I intended for this thread to be about speakers, so many people have crapped into it trying to make it about amplifiers instead that I am not so inclined to think it really is a thread about speakers at this point.

 

[Pyrrho]

I don't think he is saying that at all. He is simply saying there are 8/6.4 ohm speakers can be good speakers, that does not mean 8/4 ohm speakers are bad.

It is ironic that I have been accused of supposing that the impedance of a speaker determines quality, when, as you rightly observe, I stated no such thing, and yet that is exactly what someone else claimed, but was not criticized for it by the person who criticized me for it (again, even though I stated no such thing). See:

... You are not going to find an 8 ohm speaker these days and you would not want one if you could.
...

Evidently, TLS Guy believes that a speaker being 8 ohms makes it necessarily bad.


To be perfectly clear, for the record, I do not think that there is any necessary connection between the impedance of a speaker and its sound quality. But the impedance does matter when matching a speaker with an amplifier. Of course, that is not the only thing that matters, but it is one of the things that matters for proper amplifier matching.

Nor do I have any problem with a speaker manufacturer choosing to make a speaker of any impedance whatsoever. Indeed, my favorite speakers that I have owned are nominally, and properly, 3 ohms. The objection I have is in making a speaker of low impedance and then misrepresenting it as something that it is not. Even in that case, it does not mean that the speaker is a bad speaker. But it is a dishonest company that labels a low impedance speaker as if it were a high impedance speaker. This is really a very simple concept. My objection is to dishonesty and misrepresentation, and that is all my objection is from the opening post.

It is entirely a mystery to me why anyone would defend dishonesty and misrepresentation of manufactured products, but that is exactly what has occurred in this thread. It is even more mysterious to me that someone would blame companies not telling lies for the lies that other companies tell, but that, too, has occurred in this thread.

But given that I was blamed for something I did not state, and someone else who did actually state such a thing was not blamed for it, it would appear that normal ideas have no bearing on what is posted and who is blamed in threads.

 

[PENG]

Unless an amp doubles down on the 4Ω rating, I would not call it robust...maybe adequate might be closer to the truth.

I haven't seen any real double down amps base on lab measurements. On paper, Krell amps do double down but it is easy to just under state the 8 ohm rating to give the appearance. Double down is not really theoretically possible, but yes there are techniques to get close to it though such techniques could also have other side effects.

 

[TLS Guy]

It is ironic that I have been accused of supposing that the impedance of a speaker determines quality, when, as you rightly observe, I stated no such thing, and yet that is exactly what someone else claimed, but was not criticized for it by the person who criticized me for it (again, even though I stated no such thing). See:



Evidently, TLS Guy believes that a speaker being 8 ohms makes it necessarily bad.


To be perfectly clear, for the record, I do not think that there is any necessary connection between the impedance of a speaker and its sound quality. But the impedance does matter when matching a speaker with an amplifier. Of course, that is not the only thing that matters, but it is one of the things that matters for proper amplifier matching.

Nor do I have any problem with a speaker manufacturer choosing to make a speaker of any impedance whatsoever. Indeed, my favorite speakers that I have owned are nominally, and properly, 3 ohms. The objection I have is in making a speaker of low impedance and then misrepresenting it as something that it is not. Even in that case, it does not mean that the speaker is a bad speaker. But it is a dishonest company that labels a low impedance speaker as if it were a high impedance speaker. This is really a very simple concept. My objection is to dishonesty and misrepresentation, and that is all my objection is from the opening post.

It is entirely a mystery to me why anyone would defend dishonesty and misrepresentation of manufactured products, but that is exactly what has occurred in this thread. It is even more mysterious to me that someone would blame companies not telling lies for the lies that other companies tell, but that, too, has occurred in this thread.

But given that I was blamed for something I did not state, and someone else who did actually state such a thing was not blamed for it, it would appear that normal ideas have no bearing on what is posted and who is blamed in threads.

If you use 8 ohm drivers and end up with an 8 ohm impedance there will be no BSC compensation. With a passive crossover you can only do this by dropping impedance.

If you use a couple of 16 ohm drivers you can do it, but the drivers will have to be high sensitivity. There aren't many 16 ohm drivers around these days.

Basically it seems you can connect any speaker you like to a receiver, just don't blast it.

 

[fmw]

I haven't seen any real double down amps base on lab measurements. On paper, Krell amps do double down but it is easy to just under state the 8 ohm rating to give the appearance. Double down is not really theoretically possible, but yes there are techniques to get close to it though such techniques could also have other side effects.

Right, you always lose something to heat and all amplifiers dissipate heat.

 

[3db]

Right, you always lose something to heat and all amplifiers dissipate heat.

Don't forget transformer efficiency and saturation in the power supply will also play a significant factor.

 

[BrettMendes]

Well... I don't know if anyone is interested in the original question still, but B&W appears to be dishonest with their impedance ratings, although they do specify both nominal and minimum impedance which I've found helpful lately. Magico, YG Acoustics, MartinLogan, Status Acoustics and most other "high end" manufacturers seem to be pretty honest with their ratings.