Increasing Speaker impedance

You can't really change the impedance on the speaker.  What you would do is get more speakers (3 more) and wire them in series.  In theory you could use resistors, but then you'd be generating lots of heat and noise and end up with it sounding worse.  Best thing to do is get the right speaker for the output and make a speaker baffle.

The resistor would allow you to use the speaker, but as SINCLAIR says, 3/4 of the audio would be turned into heat and you'd get a very low volume sound output.

If you could find a small audio transformer with a 2:1 turns ratio it would present a 16 ohm impedance to the amplifier when connected to a 4 ohm speaker. 

Well, I kinda figured the news on this project wasn't going to be what I wanted to hear.

For the sake of trying it, What wattage of transistor should I use?

Also, I am sure this has been asked before, anyone know of a good source for 16 ohm speaker for these early PS2 5v engines?

What wattage transistor?  Where did the transistors enter the picture?

What wattage transistor?  Where did the transistors enter the picture?

Yep.. My bad, very long day that started at 5 this morning with 3 hours of sleep.

Wattage of Resistor.

EBay and Amazon have a wide selection of speakers you can use. Ohms, diameter, watts. I have a box full I bought just to mess around with.

Like I said, by the time you discard 3/4 of the audio, you won't have enough volume to hear it.  Buy the correct speaker.

gunrunnerjohn posted:

Like I said, by the time you discard 3/4 of the audio, you won't have enough volume to hear it.  Buy the correct speaker.

Simply  put, do what GRJ sez.  There are no shortcuts to this.

Lou N

Defying the advice provided, I at least wanted to hear what 3/4 sound would sound like and installed 11 ohms of resistance on the speaker. The total resistance is now 15.2 ohms.

I cranked up the volume and the sound was just at the perfect level, in fact just a bit high so I lowered the volume a little and was very impressed with the deep lows and better overall clarity of the sound. The resistors didn't get hot at all after running for 30 minutes.

I then wanted to see how this compared to the OEM speaker so I put the original tender on. I should have turned down the volume before I started, it was insanely loud and in no way would I ever have an engine that loud for any reason. The sound was severely distorted at that high volume and didn't improve until I lowered the volume considerably. The OEM speaker was missing the deep lows and didn't have quite the same clarity.

Overall I'm pretty happy with only 3/4 of the sound output, as I needed to lower the sound to about 1/4 anyway with the original tender speaker to achieve a reasonable quality output anyhow. I think the sound file may be way too loud for this engine in the first place which works in my favor, and the OEM speaker from MTH does have the ability to crank out much more sound than my modified tender.

Well John, you obviously have no clue what you're talking about!      that is too funny!  

The sound file is way too loud? Huh?

Laidoffsick posted:

Well John, you obviously have no clue what you're talking about!      that is too funny!  

The sound file is way too loud? Huh?

My intention wasn't to offend anyone, I just wanted to try it and found that the result didn't agree with the logic.

As I recall the first es44ac GEVO was too quiet and MTH released a new file to make them louder. Do you think it may be possible that a file can be too loud from the initial release? Nobody would complain about it because it is easy enough to turn down the volume.

H1000 posted:

Laidoffsick posted:

Well John, you obviously have no clue what you're talking about!      that is too funny!  

The sound file is way too loud? Huh?

My intention wasn't to offend anyone, I just wanted to try it and found that the result didn't agree with the logic.

As I recall the first es44ac GEVO was too quiet and MTH released a new file to make them louder. Do you think it may be possible that a file can be too loud from the initial release? Nobody would complain about it because it is easy enough to turn down the volume.

 

H, I applaud your willingness to experiment. FWIW I have used 4 ohm speakers with PS2 boards without a resistor and contrary to accepted theory the board did not blow up. This with 30 minutes of run time at full volume. It gave the best sound I had heard or have yet to hear from any MTH engine. Once again empiricism trumps theory.

I only experiment on my own stuff. Not recommending this to anyone else.

BTW there are way better sounding speakers out there than the 1/2 dollar size speakers MTH uses in their PS1 engines. You should check out MTH's newest offerings.

Pete