Focus MK3 Speakers - Wattage/Resistance

[dontpannic]

Afternoon all,

After a rather enthusiastic George Micheal listening session at full blast I took a phone call, forgot it was at full blast, and after the call ended and music resumed (and I finished cacking myself), I think I might have blown / damaged the front right door speaker (not tweeter), I now get a vibration at certain frequencies.

Now here is where the fun starts. My car is a 2012 Titanium X which came from the factory with the Sony 9 speaker setup. I'm led to believe this had a centre speaker, 4x identical full range Speakers in the doors (25w at 4 ohm), and 4 tweeters.

I have upgraded to Sync 3 and as a part of that I have sourced a newer ACM with 10 speaker outputs (F1BT-18C815-ZAH - things sounded strange with the 6 speaker ACM included in my kit). I obviously don't have a sub so I get error codes for the subwoofers being disconnected but overall the sound quality is great.

Now - I was just about to go ahead and order up a replacement 25w 4 ohm speaker, but the thought crossed my mind in that would I get any benefit from, or is it a better idea to change both fronts to the 50W 2Ohm versions, or would it make next to no difference?

Cheers!

Nick

[unofix]

2 hours ago, dontpannic said:

Now - I was just about to go ahead and order up a replacement 25w 4 ohm speaker, but the thought crossed my mind in that would I get any benefit from, or is it a better idea to change both fronts to the 50W 2Ohm versions, or would it make next to no difference?

By all means increase the wattage of the Speakers, it won't make any difference to the sound level but will make them more able to withstand loud noise.

You can't change the impedance of the speaker. If the output from your amp/radio is matched to a 4 ohm speaker then that is what it has to be.

[dontpannic]

On 6/10/2023 at 8:54 PM, unofix said:

By all means increase the wattage of the speakers, it won't make any difference to the sound level but will make them more able to withstand loud noise.

You can't change the impedance of the speaker. If the output from your amp/radio is matched to a 4 ohm speaker then that is what it has to be.

Yeah - so this is what I'm trying to find out. I'm fully stock Ford components but Ford themselves changed the specification of the front Speakers between the pre and post facelift MK3s.

From what I understand, the stock ACM from a "10 speaker" car, which is what I'm currently running, is able to power Speakers with 2 ohm impedance or 4 ohm impedance (I've not been able to find any technical specs as to what the ACM's can support though).

This is reinforced in that facelifted cars came with 50W Speakers with a 2ohm impedance value up front, and 25W at 4 ohm impedance in the rear doors. Pre-facelift cars came with 25W at 4 ohm speakers installed all round.

It's almost irrelevant at this point as I have ordered a straight forward replacement 25W/4ohm speaker for the door. There seems to be a lot of anecdotal evidence online that people preferred the 9 speaker setup in pre-facelift cars compared to facelift cars when it comes to front to back fader and sound quality and apart from the ACM differences the only other difference I can find is the wattage and impedance differences on the front door speakers.