# 16Ω Drivers



## Broshi (Jun 9, 2012)

I personally don't think I would use any, but I think this would strike a good conversation among the HLCD crowd. Because we use such high efficiency drivers, I question this. 

Refer to this thread if you want.

Since 16Ω drivers are said to be more efficient, wouldn't it be better to run 16Ω drivers over 8Ω and 4Ω *IF* you could power them correctly? If I am reading correctly, an 8Ω driver would be louder than a 4Ω driver if both are receiving the exact same amount of wattage. 

This of course poses one problem. Not many amps out there produce the wattage required to properly power these types of drivers. Heck my T600x2 is only giving my 18Sound 6nd430-8s 90 watts. Of course you could use two separate monoblocks to power individual drivers, but that doesn't sound realistic, does it?

Discuss.


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## Eric Stevens (Dec 29, 2007)

Impedance of the driver has little to do with sensitivity or efficiency. On an amplifier though, load impedance has a significant effect on efficiency.

Eric


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## minbari (Mar 3, 2011)

as Eric said. the driver is not going to be magically more sensitive because is has a high impedance. If a driver has 95db 1w/1m then it could be 4ohm, 8ohm, 16ohm. it puts out 95db at 1w.

as mentioned, if you have a 2ohm stable amplifier that is running at 16 ohm, it will be more efficient. With a class A/B I would say you might get 5-10% (totally guessing) BUT, you will be losing 8x your power too  So if you have a 200watt/ch @ 2ohm amplifier you will be down to 25watts @ 16ohm.

with a class D I would be hesitant to run a nominal 16 ohm load. I realize that speakers will go higher impedance with music than nominal, but if you are starting at 16 ohms, a class D might start seeing some interesting high freq traits.


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## Eric Stevens (Dec 29, 2007)

The output filter on a class D is set according to the intended load impedance and will normally roll off at high frequencies with lower impedance loads, and have a rising response or boosted high frequencies at higher than designed impedance loads. 

Not sure if on class D amps using feedback, at the output after the filters, like the JL Audio if the feedback corrects filter response changes due to output load impedance though. 

Eric


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