Seriesing speakers?

Speakers even of the same impedance and power handling vary greatly in the "quality of the sound" that they produce.

Speakers even of the same or very similar measured frequency response vary greatly in the "quality of the sound" that they produce.

Speakers vary greatly in the "quality of the sound" that they produce - simply by changing their position and/or the environment in which they are used.

Thus your question cannot be answered with only the details given.

If you specified which make and model of speakers that you wished to compare, the environment and the type of music, plus details of the rest of the system, you may find that a hifi group could give you some idea of the difference you might expect. However, "quality of sound" is an individual experience and just because it should sound better - it may not to you.

I would suggest that, if you really want to know, you try it and see.

BTW I assume that by "speakers" you mean speakers in enclosures. Correctly designed enclosures are vital. Also, expensive, well-designed speakers can often sound worse than cheap ones- because they don't mask the distortion produced by the rest of the system to the same extent that limited bandwidth cheap speakers do...

depends on the quality of the speaker.

All things being equal except impedience, 8 ohns Vs. two 4 ohm speakers.

The reason I want this is on camping trips, my family and I often enjoy playing music together. One brother is a loud banjo player, another mandolin, a sister plays battery operated keyboard. So my acoustic guitar doesn't have a chance against these loud instruments. There is no 115 VAC available.

Speaker impedance isn't constant -- it varies widely with the frequency and is dependant on the enclosure too. For two identical speakers in identical enclosures, it should be OK. For two different speakers with different impedance/frequency graphs, they would each sound like they were being driven through different graphics equalizers with the sliders set to random positions.

You would get more predictable results with two 16 ohm speakers in parallel. Then they wouldn't need to be identically matched.

In either case, the total sound output might be higher or lower. That would depend on the efficiency of the two speakers verses the original speaker. The output can become much more directional though (Youngs Slits effect*) giving loud and quiet areas, which in some cases (off-centre) will vary by frequency.

As I said, the only way to know if any particular speakers will produce the sort of sound that you want is to try them. It will be much more a factor of the speakers chosen, rather than whether you use one or two.

You should be able to find a local friendly hifi shop or mail or catalogue shop that will let you try out a few different ones and return them if they don't suit you. The difference between "similar" speakers may surprise you a lot! It may easily be that a cheaper set actually sounds better - not to mention possibly sounding a lot louder.

This isn't an electrical problem, two speakers, of half the impedance, in series will electrically be ok instead of a single speaker*. You just need to find some speakers that sound good to you.

It would still be too damn loud.

Ed

Maybe not. 300 watt speakers aren't usually very efficient, and with no 115 VAC, driving them with a 10 watt battery powered amp might produce... just about no noise at all!

From an electrical standpoint there should be no trouble in doing what you want. wire the + or red terminal of one speaker to the - or black on the other. How it will sound depends on too many variables, many of them very subjective, to discuss

FWIW the de-facto standard in guitar amplification is a series / parallel combo of 4 16 ohm 12" speakers.

John

Yeah, but its designed to work like that in the given cabinet.

The LF damping on each speaker would be different if they were all connected in parallel, or all in series, and then the LF response would vary.

better qualified as "without considering the effect on damping".

Glenn.

John Ray wrote: