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Forte impedance and receiver rated for 6-8 ohms


JWATS

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I just bought a pair of Forte 1's. And am driving them with a Yamaha receiver that has the option of a 6 ohm setting ( In addition to 8 ohms). But not rated for 4 ohms.

 

The impotence confuses me. It is described as an 8 ohm speaker on the website

 

https://f072605def1c9a5ef179-a0bc3fbf1884fc0965506ae2b946e1cd.ssl.cf2.rackcdn.com/product-specsheets/forte-brochure.pdf

 

but I believe it drops to 4 ohms and below at some frequencies

 

Two questions

 

1. should I worry about damaging my receiver if I use the 6 ohm setting?

2. even if there is no damage, am I losing performance? my receiver has a rating of 90 WPC

 

Thanks in advance

 

John

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Its an average rating for resistance whether the speaker is marked 2,4,6 or 8 ohms.  At a very high current, weak, bottom tier AVR's would likely clip or tap out if you started with a low sensitivity, power hungry 4 ohm speaker, especially a large one with multiple large drivers.  Since you have an 8 ohm, highly efficient speaker that will have momentary dips in the 2 range, you'll be just fine and run it at 8 ohms.

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Which Yamaha? 

 

The logical thing is that the impedance switch affect the amplifier's protection circuits.  I wonder if that is true.  It is odd to me that any Yamaha would not be rated for a 4 ohm speaker load.  Perhaps the mighty have fallen.  While it is not unusual for any speaker to fall to 4 ohms somewhere in its usable range and also run much higher, too, it is never a problem for typical amplifiers. 

 

The problem with low impedance speaker loads is the current pulled through the output transistors and the heat it generates.  For instance, If you were to run a 2 ohm load, but never ask for more then 10 watts (very likely with a pair of Fortes) you would use less than half of the amp's current capacity and it would never be in danger. 

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