4 ohm or 8 ohm for 6 ohm speakers?

[euganot]

I was trying to upgrade my speaker wire and I'm not happy with the results.

I have a Ming DA 368 35w integrated tube with Wharefdale 10.1 speakers, rated at 6 ohms.

My original setup I was outputting at 4ohms at 12 foot length 16 awg radioshack wire.

The bass sounded great and full and a sane person would have left it at that.

But of course, I thought I could make it better.

So I bought 10 awg wire, 12 ft length, and connected it at 4ohms. It sounded like a peavy practice amp.

I changed it to 8ohms, and sound better than the 4 ohms, but now my bass isn't as deep as it was with my original setup.

Should I switch it back to the 16 awg wire?

Is there some some crazy math that the sweet spot of my system could be 4ohms with 16awg wire at 12feet into a 6ohm speaker?

 

[j_garcia]

At the lengths you are talking about, the wire should have zero influence even with 4 Ohm speakers.

Speaker Wire

 

[slipperybidness]

If it is quality wire and truly 10awg, then nothing should have changed.

Now, impedance matching on the other hand is a different story. If your speakers are truly 6ohm, then I would go with the 4ohm tap. You certainly don't want the load to be of lower impedance than the output of the amp. For maximum power transfer, the output impedance of the amp and the input impedance of the speakers should match.

From the info that you have given us here, I suspect that something else is going on. Perhaps swap back to the 16 and see if anything changes. But I don't think the wire is your problem, unless is is defective.