Simple wiring question

[irishbreed]

Well not exactly simple, but never the less needed. If one was to wire 6ea. 8ohms drivers, how would i wire them to keep it as close to 8ohms? What i came up with, is wire 2 sets of 3 in parallel then wire them in series with each other, i think it comes to around 6ohms, right? If i was to run a few tweeters in there maybe 2 or 3 at the same ohm level, then what? TIA

[trevorg]

> Well not exactly simple, but never the less
> needed. If one was to wire 6ea. 8ohms
> drivers, how would i wire them to keep it as
> close to 8ohms? What i came up with, is wire
> 2 sets of 3 in parallel then wire them in
> series with each other, i think it comes to
> around 6ohms, right? If i was to run a few
> tweeters in there maybe 2 or 3 at the same
> ohm level, then what? TIA

Well what i came up with is two in series and 4 in series and then parrale the pairs wich will equal around 8 ohms. What your trying to do will come up with only 4ohms.

[irishbreed]

So, if im looking at the backs of all 6 drivers, then the picture should be.....take two drivers, come out of the neg. and go into the pos. Leaving one pos and the other neg opened. Then take the other four and do the same thing, just twice as many. Then take the pos. off my amp and split it to go to the pos. off both sets in series and split the neg off the amp and go to both negs? Is this right, or close to what you are saying?

[bill]

The first question you have to answer is whether you want the same amount of power out of all of the drivers. In a line array you often don't.

If you want equal power to all drivers, and you don't want to go under 8 ohms, then make two series strings of three drivers each (wire the + terminal of one driver to the - terminal of the next). Then parallel the two strings, connecting the terminals of like polarity at each string end together (- to -, + to +). Connect the amp to these. The result is a 12 ohm load.

If you're making a two-way system, the crossover has to be designed to handle the multiple drivers. Moreover, the crossover will steer the low frequencies to the woofers and the high frequencies to the tweeters, so you calculate the loading separately. In other words, the result doesn't look to the amp like the tweeters are paralleled across the woofers.

If you're asking these questions, odds are you have a bit more learning to do about how circuits work. Look around on the Web; there are resources available. High-school algebra is sufficient for this purpose, although if you really want to get into the basic theory you need integral and differential calculus. Thank goodness for CAD software!

HTH,
Bill

> So, if im looking at the backs of all 6
> drivers, then the picture should be.....take
> two drivers, come out of the neg. and go
> into the pos. Leaving one pos and the other
> neg opened. Then take the other four and do
> the same thing, just twice as many. Then
> take the pos. off my amp and split it to go
> to the pos. off both sets in series and
> split the neg off the amp and go to both
> negs? Is this right, or close to what you
> are saying?

[madrok]

If one was to wire 6ea. 8ohms
> drivers, how would i wire them to keep it as
> close to 8ohms? What i came up with, is wire
> 2 sets of 3 in parallel then wire them in
> series with each other, i think it comes to
> around 6ohms, right?

Theoretically 5 1/3 ohms. That's okay for an amp that can handle 4 ohms. That will give equal power.

Also, you can make 3 pairs, each pair series connected, and then parallel the 3 pairs, also for 5.333 ohms. I would do it that way.

Or, you can series them in threes, then parallel the triplets for 12 ohms. But why do that?

The tweeters are different...irrelevant to this discussion becauss they are a different xover section which makes their impedance separate from the lowpass section.