Wiring your own speaker cabinet gives you the flexibility to use whatever speakers you want and customize the cabinet to your needs. You have to be careful when wiring your speaker cabinet, though, as improper wiring can at best cause poor sound quality and at worst can destroy your speakers and amplifiers. Proper wiring involves choosing the right speakers and correctly calculating your speaker impedances before you ever send audio through your amplifier to the cabinet.
Instructions
1. Verify your impedances. Speakers typically have impedances of four, eight or 16 ohms. When considering impedance for the speaker cabinet, it will be the combined impedances of all the speakers dependent on how they are wired. It is important that your match your speaker cabinet to your amplifier's impedance. The impedance rating on an amplifier is typically the target impedance, so an amplifier that is labeled eight ohms means that it needs to terminate into an eight-ohm load, not that the impedance of the amplifier is eight ohms.
2. Decide on a wiring method. The two most common wiring methods are series and parallel. Series wiring is accomplished by wiring the positive wire of your cabinet's input to the positive terminal of the first speaker. You then connect the negative terminal of the first speaker to the positive of the second speaker. You can add more speakers, with the final speaker's negative terminal connecting to the negative wire of the cabinet's input. Parallel wiring links all the positive terminals of the speakers to the positive wire of the cabinet's input and all of the negative terminals to the negative wire of the input.
3. Calculate your overall speaker cabinet's impedance. For a series connection, the total impedance is the sum of the individual impedances for each speaker. For example, two eight-ohm speakers wired in series have a total impedance of 16 ohms. Parallel connections are more complex. If all of the speakers have the same impedance, you can divide the impedance of one speaker by the number of speakers. So two eight-ohm speakers in parallel connection would have a total impedance of four ohms. If the impedances for multiple speakers in parallel connection are different, use the following formula: total impedance = 1/(1/n1 + 1/n2 + 1/n3 + ...), where "n" is the impedance of each speaker.
4. Choose your wire gauge. Higher power levels require thicker wire. As a general rule, you can use 16- or 18-gauge wire if your speakers will produce less than 500 watts. If you will be pushing more power, use a lower gauge. Thicker wire also produces less resistance.
5. Pick a connector for your speaker cabinet. The most common connectors are balanced quarter-inch, banana plugs and Speakon. Quarter-inch works well for lower power levels, but for higher power levels you should opt for Speakon or banana plugs.
6. Connect the speakers. Wire your speakers with the method you chose to the input connector. Connect your amplifier to the speaker cabinet to verify all of your speakers are functioning properly.
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