Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Technical Questions What does the 8ohms or 6ohms mean for ........

your receiver or speakers? Is it better to have an 8ohm or 6ohm reciever?? Is it better to drive 4ohm speakers with either of these recivers? I'm really new to all this technical stuff. Years ago I just bought a reciever and speakers and that was that. Now getting alot older and a little wiser I would like
to know these things. My Kenwood 8ohms never gets hot. My Onkyo 6ohms driving my m60's is always getting warm. Which receiver is better to drive those speakers.

It's not really that one is better than another. Ohms are a measure of impedance/resistance, which is essentially resistance to the flow of current. If your Onkyo specifies a wattage at 6 Ohms, it means that it can push that many watts through a circuit (in this case the speaker) of 6 Ohms. So if it is used to power an 8 Ohm speaker, it will be facing more Ohms than it is rated at, and will be able to push less power through it. In general this is not problematic. If it is used with a 4 Ohm speaker though, it can push more power through the speaker which will cause it to draw more power and possibly overheat. If I'm not on target here I'm sure someone will correct me, but that is my understanding.

My guess about why your Kenwood stays cool though has nothing to do with this. I would conjecture that your Kenwood is simply not drawing as much power as your Onkyo to begin with. What are the two models? By the logic above, the Onkyo should have an easier time with the m60s than the Kenwood does.

Onkyo 502 6ohms and 75 watts per channel
Kenwood KRV107R 8ohms and 110 watts
The Kenwood is a number of years old though.
The Onkyo just came out on the market recently.....

It could be the Kenwood has an internal fan too.I had a Kenwood Basic M2A Amp that used a fan to keep it cool.