Controlling Ohms on a Car Amplifier

Video Transcript

"Now we're going to go into ohm load and impedance. What is ohm load? The law of ohm is the impedance level that a speaker or an amplifier is set on, so when you see one ohm, it's a mono block and that means it's stable to one ohm. Say if you took two four ohm drivers, two speakers, you put four and four together, that divides into two, you put two into a four ohm amp output on a Briggs Load and it's going to go to two. Some amplifiers are only two ohms stable stereo and they might be four ohm stable mono. Then there's eight ohm amplifiers that are four ohm mono stable stereo stable. That means that with a mono block you might have a little bit more flexibility but in actuality, sound usually sounds better, at a higher ohm load because adapting factor is higher. It's more controllability in the sound, there's more response. Ohm load determines also usually how much heat. The higher you build heat, the sound quality goes down but for bas, it doesn't really matter because it doesn't have to be as defined. That doesn't go for everybody though. There's people that are more of a freak than I am that want to have four ohm clean, crystal clean, bass where you can hear the shadows and echo's, of someone stepping. I am that way too but I'm just trying to give you a basic over view. This amplifier here is not one ohm stable so if you tried to hook up woofers to this, say you tried to put two woofers per channel, on this, at a four ohm load each, that would be four and four, two and two, two on two, that would be one and what would happen was this amp would heat up and it would go into protect. That's where the amplifier would say "uh uh, you're not doing this to me. I"m turning off right now because if you continue to run me like this, I will burn up and die from heat." While on the other hand this Zapco, six channel. Every single output on this amplifier is one ohm stable, two ohm recommended but it is one ohm stable, in every channel, and it dissipates heat differently. There's an intake and exhaust fan, it doesn't have a solid state power supply, it has bi-polars and a stacked board. This amp is equipped to handle abuse but it doesn't like it and it might hinder the sound quality somewhat but if you want to be the psycho that's going to run four, six and a half's per channel or three twelve's, per channel or two, whatever you can make as long as you keep the formula intact, below above one ohm, then I guess if you want to be a Frankenstein, you can. That's a little overview over ohm loads and impedance."