DVC Explained

[KickinAudio]

What are the advantages of dual voice coils?


The primary advantage of the dual voice coil Speaker is wiring flexibility. A single dual voice coil driver offers the user three hookup choices...parallel, series and independent. In a parallel hook-up the drivers impedance will be half that of each individual coil (a dual 4 ohm speaker would be a 2 ohm speaker in parallel.) A series hook-up results in twice the impedance of each single coil (a dual 4 ohm speaker results in 8 ohms if its coils are wired in series.) Finally, you can wire each voice coil to a separate channel of your amplifier, which can be useful if your amplifier is not mono-bridgeable or if you are bridging a four channel amplifier down to two channels to run your sub.

The independent wiring application is the one that brought about the need for dual voice coil speakers in home audio. Unlike most good Car amplifiers, home amplifiers and receivers are typically not mono-bridgeable. For this reason, dual voice coil woofers were developed so that a subwoofer or center speaker could be driven from the left and right channels of the average stereo home amp/receiver. Since sub-bass frequencies are hard to localize, the dual voice coil subwoofer allowed sub-bass reinforcement within one cabinet and one speaker. This cabinet could be placed inconspicuously in a corner or along a wall of the listening room, with the obvious benefits being space-efficiency and lower cost than two independent bass cabinets or a larger cabinet with two subs in it. Many popular home subwoofer / satellite speaker systems still use this basic configuration


Does It Matter How The Voice Coils Are Wired To Each Other?

A dual voice coil speaker will behave exactly the same way whether it is wired with its coils in series or parallel. The only thing that changes is the impedance that the amplifier sees. This means that enclosure calculations are constant for dual voice coil woofers no matter how the coils are connected to each other, as long as both are connected.
A common misconception with regard to dual voice coil speakers is the assumption that nothing changes if you power only one of the voice coils. With only one coil hooked up, a dual voice coil speaker will suffer a loss in reference efficiency of about 3dB (only half the coil windings are being energized) as well as a significant shift in its Thiele/Small parameters. This renders any enclosure calculations inaccurate unless you remeasure the speakers parameters with only one coil hooked up. Failure to account for the different parameters of a dual voice coil speaker with only one coil powered can result in very poor performance.

NEVER POWER JUST ONE VOICECOIL !


How are dual voice coil speakers rated for power handling?


A dual voice coil speakers power handling is typically specified by manufacturers for the whole speaker. This means that a 250 Watt dual voice coil driver is designed to handle a total of 250 Watts whether the coils are wired independently, in series or in parallel.

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