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Monday, May 23, 2016

The Dummy's Guide to Speakers

Ohms and speaker output
Ohms and speaker output
In our research of internet-based freelance bullslingers, we often run across a type who will happily write (and in a few cases, film a video) of just about anything. That'd be fine IF the writers knew what they were talking about; but too often they simply don't. We don't know about you, but when we have a question we'd rather get an answer from someone who didn't have to look it up; especially if the person answering the question gets it wrong! Let's try an example: some poor guy out there wondered "How to Understand Subwoofers and Ohms."¹ Do you think he got a good answer from a philosophy student like Gwendolen Akard when she tried to reword an answer from a more authoritative source? In a word, no.

You know you won't get a very good answer from someone of Akard's skills when she opens with an introduction like
"Subwoofers and ohms are closely related, in that ohms are a measurement related to audio output, and subwoofers are an integral part of your audio system."
     Oh, wow, ohms are a measurement related to audio output! that's like saying miles are a measurement related to fuel economy... Right away, you know that she's just rewording something she found on-line, as opposed to giving you the benefit of actual, you know, knowledge-type stuff. Gwen then goes on to prattle about basic electrical theory for a bit -- quite a while, in fact -- telling her readers that they must
  • "Realize that an ohm is a unit of electrical resistance between two points of a conductor. A volt between these two points will produce a current of one ampere. 
  • Define ampere, or amp, as a measure of an amount of electrical charge or current between the two points. 
  • Define voltage as the electrical potential between the two points. It can be understood as the pressure behind the current... "
...and she continues in this vein for a while. We especially liked the blanket statement, 
"The fewer ohms your system has, the louder it will be..."
That statement, we suppose, has a grain of truth. What Gwendolen does with that "truth," however, is pretty much a crime. Since Akard clearly doesn't understand impedance ratings -- 4 ohm vs. 8 ohm -- she proves woefully unqualified to provide any actual advice for the key question: how do you wire a subwoofer into your system? Instead of talking about series and parallel wiring -- those concepts must be too nerdy for her -- Gwen instead waxes eloquent on experimenting with subwoofer placement and null spots.

Never mind that the original questioner didn't ask about subwoofer placement and probably didn't want a long soliloquy on Ohm's law (badly reworded from someone who understands it). No, the guy just wanted to know how to wire a 4-ohm subwoofer into an 8-ohm system.
And Gwendolen was right there to muddy the waters, confuse the issues, and blather on about useless information. Think that's sufficient for a Dumbass of the Day award? We do!     

¹ The original has been deleted by Leaf Group, but can still be accessed using the Wayback machine at archive.org. Its URL was    ehow.com/how_7647213_understand-subwoofers-ohms.html
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SI - ELECTRONICS

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