How to Find Impedance When Wiring: Breakdown Part 2

Last week, I gave you a little basic insight on how to wire SVC. This week, we get in DVC, which can be a little tricky, so I’ll try to keep it basic.

Dual voice coils give you more wiring options, due to the subwoofer having 2 [+] terminals, and 2 [-] terminals.

If you have [1] Dual 1ohm sub, you can either cut it in half and run at .5ohm [which is not recommended, due to a void in warranty] OR you can double it to 2ohm.

For a parallel connection, you would connect both positive subwoofer terminals together, then connect that to the positive terminal on the amp.

The negative connection would be the same, wire both negative subwoofer terminals together, then connect to the negative terminal on the amp.

For a series connection, you would wire [1] positive subwoofer terminal to [1] negative subwoofer terminal. You would then take the left-over positive subwoofer terminal and connect it to the amp’s positive terminal. Then for the leftover negative subwoofer terminal, you do the same.

If you have [4] Dual 2ohm subwoofers, you can cut it in half to 1ohm or double it to 4ohm.

Remember the equation from last week – impedance / # of speakers = final impedance.

Option 1, would be series parallel, cutting it down to 1ohm.

For a series/parallel connection, you would first connect [1] positive sub terminal to [1] negative sub terminal, you would do that on all 4 subs – you would then, connect all 4 left over positive subwoofer terminals to each other, then to the positive terminal on the amp.

For the negative, you would do the same.

Option 2, is a parallel series connection, doubling to 4ohm.

For this, you would connect 2 subs together then wiring them to the other 2 subs.

The equation: Impedance x # of subs = final impedance DIVIDED BY Impedance x # of subs = final impedance.

For a parallel/series connection, you would wire the positive sub terminals together, then wire the negative terminals together on each of the 4 subwoofers.

You would then connect them as follows – Sub #1 positive terminal connected to Sub #2 negative terminal – Sub #2 positive terminal connected to Sub #3 negative terminal – Sub #3 positive terminal connected to Sub #4 negative terminal – Then lastly, connect Sub #1’s negative terminal to the amplifier’s negative terminal and Sub #4’s positive terminal to the amplifier’s positive terminal.

I hope this clears a bunch up! As I don’t recommend doing it yourself, I do hope if you decide to, this could be used as a guide.