Speaker impedance switch...........what's the point?

[kexodusc]

. My towers are 8ohm but the nominal is 6ohm.I had only a Sony

Hi Pat.P,

I'm not sure I follow this statement...if your speakers are 6 ohms "nominal", they're said to be a 6 ohm speaker, that is, they behave similarly to a 6 ohm resistor. You shouldn't have a 6 ohm nominal speaker referred to as an 8 ohm speaker (but I've seen stranger things) They undoubtedly have peaks well above 12 ohms and probably below 6 ohms as well. The low number is usually the one you worry about (high impedance should be dealt with by the crossover, or we can assume it's insignificant).

The switches on receivers often only adjust the internal protection devices, so your receiver doesn't go into protection mode to early, or worse, too late. Many amps/receivers don't even bother with them.

[PAT.P]

Kexodusc I was told they would have no problem playing them on a 8 ohm receiver like the Sony I was using.Still not benefiting at this time all potential of these speaker (bi-wire and by-amp).Pat.P

[kexodusc]

That makes sense...and that's a bit different than being an 8 ohm nominal speaker. 6 ohm nominal speakers suggest that the average impedance accross all frequencies for your speaker is closer to 6 than to 8 ohms. This is fine...No speaker has a constant impedance, it varies with frequency. Even 8 ohm speakers will tend to dip belo 6 ohms, and often below 4 ohms over certain bands.

If the dips aren't too far below 6 ohms, than a 6 ohm nominal speaker "should" often work fine on 8 ohm receivers. Some 8 ohm speakers with lower impedance dips would actually be harder on the amp than the 6 ohm speaker with relatively minimal dips.

There's a lot of discretion that goes into rating the impedance of a speaker...I suspect a lot of manufacturers choose to rate them 8 ohms so not to scare potential customers off.

Electrically, theoretically, bi-wiring shouldn't yield any advantage despite what you read, and could in fact diminish performance...in practice a lot of people claim good results..