I'm kind of new to this whole thing and I was wondering if anyone could explain the difference between running 8 ohms to the speakers vs 6 ohms.  I understand that 6 ohms would put more wattage to the speakers, but if the speakers are rated to handle 8 ohms, will it damage them at all to run current at 6 ohms?  Enlighten me...

The ohm rating is really meant for your receiver or amp rather than your speakers. Speakers are rated at a nominal impedance. Impedance is also known as resistance. This is the resistance that the amp or receiver sees when it is attached to the speakers. It's a little misleading because a speaker's impedance varies greatly over the frequency range. So an 8 ohm speaker might dip as low as 4 ohms at a certain frequency but may run at 12 or 16 ohms at other frequencies. Nominal impedance is really a sort of average impedance of the speaker.

The impedance setting is meant to help you match the amplifier impedance to the speaker impedance. In a perfect world, the two would match as closely as possible but running your amplifier at 6 ohms with 8 ohm speakers generally isn't any problem. If  it were the other way around, with the speakers rated at 6 ohms and the receiver at 8 ohms, that could cause performance problems because the amp would have to work harder to drive the speakers. The result would be more heat, potential clipping and shut down or going into protection mode. These things would generally only happen if the speakers are driven hard at high volumes.

Check out this Aperion U article on how speakers work for more information.

http://www.aperionaudio.com/AperionU/how_speakers_work.aspx

Hope this helps.

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Cheers,

John Wanderscheid

Nice post John...I would just like to add that almost all mid range AVR's from the main manufacturers such as Onkyo, Denon, HK, Pioneer, Sony, Yamaha etc have no problems pushing 6ohm speakers even when the AVR is set to for 8ohms.  As john was saying you would have to run a receiver real high for extended periodds to experience problems.

Just a side note...I've learned that in some AVR's, especially Yamaha, that when you set the impedance on it to 6 ohms it will actually lessen the amount of watts output per channel.  This is caused by special protection circuits being turned on when the AVR is set to 6ohms.   

Therefore, if you got a good AVR with a good power supply I just say set the AVR to 8ohms and have fun!

If you like to listen to stuff loud then I recommend that you choose a speaker that is large enough and efficient enough to suit your room size. 

I'm running 120watts of high current power to a set of 5B's in an open 12x20 room and it doesn't quite get loud enough for my tastes. I do recall that my old 532's did get a bit louder, but it was a tradeoff between loudness and sound ;)  So, I'm saving for 5T's.  I am sure this will give me what I am looking for.  Now if only I could go to Aperion HQ and hear them ;)

Best of luck to you!