Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion The Water Cooler 4 ohm speaker requirements

I was just re-reading Rodger Russell's site and this stuck out:

"Reducing the speaker impedance to 4 ohms does not improve the accuracy of the speaker, reduce distortion or make any other improvements. However, it does create problems for the customer. It means that the customer must purchase heavier speaker wire to maintain the same low losses compared to the earlier 8-ohm speakers. The total DC resistance of the wire must now be less than 0.4 ohms instead of 0.8 ohms. It also requires better connectors at the speaker and amplifier terminals to make the contact resistance even lower. "

I would say for all of us running M80s we should be using 12gauge bare wire, unless the run is very short to avoid any issues.

I have both 12ga and 14ga running the M80s on a pretty short run. No problems I have heard.

I haven't heard any differences either but like I said that quote kind of stuck out in my mind for some reason.

Should we toss the banana(no jokes please) connectors in favour of bare wire then?

I use 12 for all my speakers, no matter what the ohm rating.

I use e-le-ven.

That's what I use, just bare wire at the receiver, but I did use banana connectors at the speaker because I am prone to unplugging them and A/Bing speakers, but in the new house I will be running an extra set of wires from a switcher so no need for banana plugs.

While I have M60's and - consequently - no need to worry about such trifles, I use 12g wire. It is bare at the speaker. I don't know how in hell I could ever get bare wire connected to the back of the receiver, so I have plugs there.

I want to use 7 of or 9.

Yeah, Jay; but as Mr. Russell's table points out, even 18ga is fine for 4 ohm loads at typically short distances to front speakers.