Re: Stereo question
Magster, I think you would be fine matching a car stereo to some 8 ohm speakers. PC speakers aren't very power hungry anyway and there is no risk in providing too much resistance to an amplifier's output, it just puts out less. Too little resistance and the amp will put out too much juice and heat up.<br /><br />Speaker impedance is an average calculated from the resistance offered over the voice coil's travel in and out, and the resistance is highest at maximum excursions (peak volume levels) and this is most likely where there would be a performance difference between the 4 and 8 ohm drivers. <br /><br />With the 8 ohm speakers you might not get the same maximum volume as you would with 4 ohm speakers of identical design but they should sound fine and not present any hazard of damage. In fact adding a little resistance can even protect the system from being over-driven.<br /><br />Be sure to check that the amplifier has enough power (in RMS watts rating) to drive the speakers. A little too much amp power (ex. 50w amp and 35w speakers) is fine, desirable even. Too little power however, will ruin speakers quickly. The amplifier provides control over the excursion of the speaker drivers at all times, kind of like brakes, and under-driving a speaker (ex. 7w amp found in many cheap car stereos matched to big 50w or 100w speakers) will sound terrible and allow the speaker voice coils to bounce back and forth too voilently. They won't last long.<br /><br />You will still get the best results though if you use components that were intended to work together. There are surface mounting speakers in enclosures made just for boats, cars, etc. that might work out better for you.
heck I thought I remembered the way my physics teacher explained this exact problem but I think I may have been napping during half... Ill get back if I straighten things out in my head...<br />Craig
