Hello randonblame,
I thought you preferred wiring the strips in parallel due to safety concerns. Do u think its better to run the following in series or parallel: 4 single four ft samsung strips on meanwell hlg 185 1050,or hlg185 48a?
Nope, I recommend parallel wiring for electro noobs to reduce the risk to get deathly electro shocked! The good thing about Meanwell's HLG drivers is that even the -48A can run in constant current mode as long as the voltage is below 48v (24-48v CC range). Therefor they are called CV/CC.
But with parallel wiring there is always an uneven distribution because of minor difference in voltage and resistance. The strip/COB/LED's with the lowest voltage/resistance sucks always the most current. The differences are most probably not visible to the naked eye, because the differences are small these days, but they are there.
In a worst case scenario you could get thermal runaways with parallel wiring. The risk is higher the more LED's are added in parallel.
BUT, all the CV/CC A-drivers have an additional voltage regulator that allows regulation between 43-53v. If you set the voltage limit to 47 or 48v, the probability of failure by thermal runaways equals near to zero!
But which voltage limit to use depends on the current one strip/COB/LED get.
The voltage limit should be selected based on the data sheet of the LED's. Calculate how much current the LED gets at which voltage from the selected driver (driver current divided by number of parallel LED's) and select a limit just above this voltage, because when switching on, the voltage is always slightly higher! +1v is enough!
If you have no datasheet at hand reduce the voltage untill the lights starts getting visible darker and set the voltage just above that point. Dimming is realized only about the second regulator, which regulates the current!
For my own builds I still prefer series wiring(less wiring effort, more possibillities, no need for failure protection like setting voltage limits) but based on this background above it really doesn't matter which way one goes! Both will work!