Quote: Originally Posted by
Shoryuken 
Thanks for the quick reply. I should have been slightly more clear, in that I know (in a vague apprentice-level electrician way) what an ohm is, I'm just wondering how a 4ohm sub sounds as compared to a 2ohm, and more specifically, am I going to need to make sure I get a 4ohm amp or something?
It seems that there would be significantly more heat involved in a 4ohm system, I guess I'm trying to figure out why that would be preferable.
Nah...heat varies only linearly with resistance, but with the square of the current. At a given voltage level, a lesser resistance will carry more current, thus giving you a hotter amp and hotter voice coil in the speaker. Also, your speaker is driven by the field set up by current in the voice coil...I'll leave you to guess what lower resistance can do for output and how it all relates. How much power you end up getting out of the amp, tho, is dependent on a little deeper analysis of what the amp is built to match to in terms of impedance.