Speakers and Ohms

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If I recall correctly, the Bose speakers used in a 2002 model year are 2 ohm. For those of you in the know, what is the effect on a system if 4 ohm speakers are used.
 
All other things being equal (and they seldom are) the amplifier would run cooler. Some speaker manufacturers use the same design but change electrical parameters. Consider when a speaker designer is deciding on making a 2-Ohm vice 4-Ohm speaker. The voice coil will only hold so much wire, so the 4-ohm speaker will have twice the wire length, but use a thinner wire. As a result the electromagnetic coupling coefficient (Bl value) would also go up by about the same amount resulting in speakers with about the same efficiency. I personally tested this theory using some Seas speakers of different impedance but in the same family - all in a Tacoma I used to own.

All that implies same voice coil/magnet size - which would not be true for speakers from different manufacturers. The end result is it's sort of a craps shoot - changing impedance might be a good thing or it might be a bad thing. Only thing for certain is one should not go to a lower impedance speaker than the amplifier is designed to handle.
 
The only thing I understood>>>>Only thing for certain is one should not go to a lower impedance speaker than the amplifier is designed to handle.

Sounds like it is worth a try on running a replacement 4 ohm speaker.
 
Using the 4ohm speakers might require you to turn the volume knob a little further to the right, but other than that it won't hurt.

Generally if an amp is rated to produce a certain amount of power at 2ohms the power would be halved at 4ohms and halved against at 8ohms. Just as it would double at 1ohm and then double again at 1/2ohm if the amp could handle it before either burning up or going into a protection mode.

So if an amp is rated at 100 watts at 8ohms it would be 200@4, 400@2, 800@1, 1600@1/2, and 3200@1/4. I use to run autotek MM3000s in competition back in the day and they were rated 3000@2ohms and we would run them down to 1/2ohm to try and get 12000 watts for just a few seconds. At one point we were using one RE MT 18 with dual 1ohm voice coils paralleled to 1/2ohm in a huge vented box tuned to 40HZ. A 3 second burp inside the vehicle would make your skin crawl and your hair stand up. It was tough to keep 12+ Volts going to the amps though.
 
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