Can i replace my 6 ohms sub with a 4 ohms sub??

Question

i have a jbl sub unit (E250P) and the woofer is broken! can i replace it with a 4 ohms sub or an 8 ohms sub???

Answer 1

You have to match the impedance of the sub to the AMP. You will need a 6 ohm. You may be able to use an impedance matching transformer, if you use a 4 ohm, you may overdrive the output stage of your amp, if you use 8 ohm, you may load it down. I am not really up to speed with audio applications, however with almost anything else, the impedance needs to be matched. Cheers mate.

Answer 2

Though one of the posts has the right idea he is incorrect in saying an 8 ohm sub would load down the amp. You can use an 8 ohm woofer with absolutely no problems. A 4 ohm woofer WOULD present a heavy load on the amp and I would not advise it. You can do it if you keep the volume down but I wouldn't do it in my system. Your best bet is to get the proper replacement woofer or a reasonable substitution.

Answer 3

I assume that you intend to replace a home theater powered subs woofer with a car audio model. If that is the case you may want to do some re thinking. The impedance spec is a characteristic impedance at output for a given input impedance. The car audio to home audio numbers do not directly cross over. You need to make sure that overall frequency response is the same, but given that the amplification factor is different for the two different amps you WILL have issue.

You are better of trying to source a full replacement woofer than using a car sub. Try a local band supply store for a replacement woofer.

EDIT: I see that some answerer's use resistance and impedance interchangeably, this is not the case with a speaker as a purely inductive load it will only have opposition to AC current, relative to its conductive reactance/pi.

Ohms law would only apply in a bias set up and that is not the case in audio.

Answer 4

Yes. Any powered sub will be fine. The receiver doesn't "see" a powered subs resistance at all. It simply outputs a fixed audio signal and the sub does the rest.