In this video, you'll learn the difference between the three types of SpeakON connectors
and how to decide which one you should use. But if this is our first time meeting,
my name is Kyle. Welcome to Audio University.
The main difference between NL2, NL4, and NL8 connectors is the number of speaker circuits
that each connector can facilitate. A speaker circuit consists of two connections - a positive
and a negative. When talking about SpeakON connectors, this pair of connections is
referred to as a pin set. NL2 connectors have one pin set which allows for one speaker circuit,
NL4 connectors have two pin sets which allow for two speaker circuits,
and NL8 connectors have four pin sets which allow for four speaker circuits. In order to utilize the
full potential of each connector, you need to make sure that the cable between the connectors has a
conductor for each pin in the connector. If I open up these three types of cables, we'll see that
the NL2 cables have two conductors, NL4 cables have four conductors, and NL8 cables have eight
conductors. Often times, instead of using actual NL2 cables, companies will use NL4 connectors
on each side of a two conductor cable, which is the equivalent of an NL2 cable. SpeakON connectors
will either have a solder cup or a small captive screw type connection. When building the cables,
you just need to make sure that the appropriate conductor reaches the same pin set on each side
of the cable. You'll notice that the NL8 is larger but the NL2 and NL4 connectors are the same size.
You can plug an NL2 connector into an NL4 jack but you cannot plug an NL4 connector into an NL2 jack.
SpeakON connectors are most commonly found in live production equipment because they're both secure
and easy to connect and disconnect. Quarter inch speaker cables are prone to being accidentally
disconnected, whereas the speaker terminals that you might find on an installed amplifier or an
amplifier in a home theater system - they're impractical to be connecting and disconnecting
every show. Choosing which SpeakON connector you should use will depend on the situation.
First, imagine a simple setup with one speaker and one amplifier.
Using a single cable, you can connect the output of the amplifier to the input of the speaker.
It's important to check which pin set your speaker is designed to pull power from.
If your speaker pulls power from pin set 1, you could use an NL2 cable in this situation. However,
some speakers are designed to pull power from pin set 2 of an NL4 cable. Many speaker cabinets
contain multiple drivers. In some cases, you might use a separate amplifier channel for each driver
within the cabinet. For example, connecting a two-channel amplifier to a two-way speaker
with an NL4 cable could allow you to power each driver with a separate amplifier channel. The same
thing could be done with an NL8 cable if you're using a 4-channel amplifier and a 4-way speaker
cabinet. If you're driving each loudspeaker in the cabinet separately, it's important to set
up an active crossover in the amplifier DSP or before the signal reaches the amplifier.
Said simply, a crossover protects and optimizes the performance of each driver by distributing
the high, mid, and low frequencies appropriately. I made a whole video on this concept that you can
watch right here. Let's say you've got a separate subwoofer cabinet and a main speaker cabinet
on each side of the stage. Instead of running a separate cable from the amplifier to each cabinet,
you could use an NL4 cable, which could carry the subwoofer signal on pin set 1 and the main speaker
signal on pin set 2. The NL4 cable could connect to the subwoofer, which would be driven by pin set
1 and the pass through on the subwoofer could be connected to the main speaker, which would
be driven by pin set 2. You can also use breakout cables to adapt between different types of SpeakON
connectors. Let's say you've got one amplifier which will be powering two stage monitors.
In this example, we'll say that each stage monitor has an NL2 connector and the amplifier has a
single NL4 connector. Using an NL4 to dual NL2 breakout cable, you can split the two amplifier
channels that were running through a single NL4 connector out to two separate NL2 connectors.
Deciding which speaker cable you need really starts with choosing the right speaker for
the situation. I want to help you do that by offering you a free speaker specifications guide
that'll walk you through the most important specifications to consider when choosing
the right speaker. You can download that at audiouniversityonline.com/speaker-specs-guide/.
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