First, as a subscriber to your magazine, I enjoy all the information it's packed with. I recently purchased two DVC 15-inch Solo-Baric woofers. I also have a Kicker KX 1500. I'd like to know how to wire these together to give me a 1-ohm load. I've searched in your magazine and over the internet and am having trouble doing this. I'd appreciate any help or the name of a book or magazine that I can buy with this information. Can all the DVC woofers be wired the same? Thank you for your time and I look forward to your answer.Rudy Chavez
Here's my problem. I've two Rockford Fosgate DVC subs, and I need to find out a way to hook them into a 2-ohm load. I've talked to many people and they say it isn't possible, but you sound like you know what you're doing a little better than all those other guys. I have a 1,000-watt amp when hooked into 4 ohms, but I think my subs could use the extra boost that it would have if it were in 2 ohms. How would you recommend me doing so?Thanks!Sir Dude
A Dude, there are ways to connect speakers into different load configurations, and there are reasons why you wouldn't want to bother. If you have two separate subs, and each one is a dual voice coil, then you have a total of four coils to deal with, and we'll need to add in the assumption that each coil is 4 ohms. If not, then the math goes out the window, but I think you'll all still understand the process.
There are three ways to connect loads. Series is one method, where you connect the end of one coil to the start of another, while making sure that the polarity is correct by connecting the positive terminal of one coil to the negative of the other, leaving only two unterminated connections-a positive and a negative. If you don't wind up with this, you've made a mistake. In this case, the mistake would be an out of polarity condition. For example, if you wind up with two negative terminals remaining unconnected, as soon as you hook up to the amplifier, one coil would nearly perfectly cancel the work of the other, resulting in lots of heat, but nothing more than a faint sound. Your amplifier wouldn't mind this, but your speakers would soon burn out if the levels were high enough.
Parallel is the other method, where the connections on the speaker are joined based on terminal polarity. For example, you'd simply join all of the positive terminals together and all of the negative terminals together, leaving you with one main set of negative terminals and another main set of positive terminals. The same problem with incorrect wiring occurs, in which swapping a positive and a negative would put the coils out of polarity with the same results as the series connection.
Series-parallel is the third option, which is a combination of both series and parallel methods. This is a bit more complex, but offers a lot of possibilities, especially when working with many speakers. In your case, four voice coils will only give one other possible option, so I won't get deep into it this time.
Let's start with only one of the subs, allowing us to focus on just two of the coils. If you connect the coils in series with each other, the two resistances sum. By adding the two 4-ohm voice coils together, you have a resulting circuit that's 8 ohms according to a standard rule of electronics that deal with equivalent circuits. By connecting these same two coils in parallel, the result is half the resistance of a single coil. (Note: This only applies for two identical loads. If you had a 4-ohm and a 2-ohm connected together, the result would be different, as would the result if you had three or more identical loads.) So, a single dual voice coil subwoofer can live its life either as a 2-ohm or an 8-ohm load when connected to a single amplifier channel, but not 4 ohms. This makes us wonder why people look at matching a 4-ohm capable amplifier with 4-ohm dual voice coil speakers, since that logic only applies for single voice coil units.