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I hear a lot of people saying that in bridged configuration, the amp channels are "sharing the load". Wouldn't sharing the load make the load lighter for each channel, in effect making the amp "see" a higher impedance? Answer: Yes. That's what "sharing the load" is. If you have one truck, producing 100 horsepower, towing a load that takes EXACTLY 100 horsepower to keep it moving, and you add an additional IDENTICAL truck to SHARE that load, the trucks each only have to produce 50HP, right? Do half the work, each, right? Answer: Again, yes. THAT is "sharing the load". An amplifier doing half the work would be equivalent to loading it with half the load, or twice the impedance, i.e. 8 ohms, vs. 4 ohms.
What actually happens when bridging an amplifier, is you are now putting TWICE THE VOLTAGE across the load, which will cause the load to pull more current, twice the current, to be exact. This makes the amp produce 4 times the power of a stereo load. The additional CURRENT demand (2X the stereo current demand) is why the amplifier "sees" twice the load, i.e. half the stereo impedance.
The load does not change, people are exactly correct in saying this. If you have (2) 4 ohm voice coils in parallel, that is a 2 ohm load - period. The amp is still loaded with 2 ohms whatever the configuration. ELECTRICALLY, due to the reasons described above, it "sees" a lower impedance across the terminals.It all reminds me of something that Molière once said to Guy de Maupassant at a café in Vienna: "That's nice. You should write it down."
"Splitting" or "sharing" the impedance load across two channels is a paradox due to our natural inclination to place a higher weight, or value, to a higher number. Just like the paradox involved with wire gauges, where 0 is substantially heftier than 2 (you just wouldn't think it if you didn't know), the number of ohms of impedance causes the same reverse-logic way of thinking. The result comes out right when you think in terms of splitting 8 ohms across two channels to give each one 4 ohms, but that result actually comes out that way because of a much more complicated process (explained by haemphyst).
Split 8 into two...if you speak of that using just numbers and leaving out the "load" part, it is correct. It becomes just a simple math division, and the answer is 4. And it is the easiest way to explain it to someone trying to grasp all these elemental concepts in order to get their subs pounding.
Is it important for ME to understand that the speaker load is not actually split between two channels? Yes, it is. Is it important for professionals in the industry to know that? Yes, it is. But how that information is relayed to a relative novice is another thing. The term KISS comes to mind.
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