Questioni definitely understand, and luckily i did find that my subs are 2 ohm. I know that changes everything because the amp you previously suggested was for a 4 ohm. now you've educated me greatly on this subject, which i can't thank you enough for, but what only confuses me now, how many channels to go with now its a 2 ohm. does a mono work better for this or a 2 channel? the Power Acoustiks are pretty much sold i just need those last specs.
also, i don't know if you want to communicate outside this site, if so my email is yourgod13@hotmail.com. if you do decide to contact me directly, just reply here so i can rate you. (which would be a great rating btw)
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of course I wouldn't want to spend unnecessary dough, which I'll definitely be looking into the Power Acoustik A1800DB, but i wouldn't know how my wiring is setup..i haven't even taken the subs out the box..leaving that to the professionals..dont want to mess anything up you know? is there any other way to find out without actually looking at the setup?
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You are the first person to put that in terms I can actually understand. First
off I have to thank you just for that. But I wont have to worry about wiring,
because I'm letting professionals take care of that, if it breaks it their fault
type of deal. But its good to know what they might do so already you've provided
more information than I could ask for. However, I'd really respect and
appreciate your opinion on which amp to go with my subs.
http://www.circuitcity.com/ccd/Search.do?c=1&context=&keyword=dcvr12&searchSecti
those are exactly what i have from where i purchased them.
....and my car is green...and runs on gas :)"
(ps i've already responded, but i didnt realize i was supposed to add the text above the line, instead i put it at the bottom of the page. excuse my empty-headed-ness...)
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hey,
I can bet your sick of answering stupid questions all day, but I really have no f'n clue what I'm doing. Thus far I've purchased 2 12' Kicker subs with enclosure, specifics include
•1200 watts peak power
•25-500Hz frequency response
•Ported enclosure
a Panasonic dash
•50W x 4 peak power
•MOSFET amplifier
•Three-band equalizer
Polk DB 6 1/2s for front
•180 watts peak power
and
5x7 coaxial for the rear
•180 watts peak power
now, to finish my "masterpiece" I obviously need an amp or two. this is the only thing I'm not familiar with. I've tried researching which amp would be perfect with my newly crafted system, but I just cant seem to understand it. I'm not necessarily asking which exact amp should I go with? instead, I'm asking to briefly educate me. How many channels am I going to need? Whats an OHM? HELP!
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Glad to help! acutally I do sometimes get tires of answering STUPID qutestions. fortunatly you've asked a very good question. I think the worst questions I get are where people ask a questions and provide me with none of the information nessesary to answer it! they might as well ask me:
"my car is red and runs on gas, what subwoofer should I buy?"
Then when I ask them for the information I need to help them, they never write back. AHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!
you however have provided excelent detail, combined with actual questions, and its in perfectly tangable english which is in itself is much more than I can say about most of the questioneers. I get stuff like:
"I dont got need part probably sub but other time blew would help?"
So anyway, enough venting from me,
ok well matching an amp to a sub for the most part is like this. you add up the total ohms of the subs and the total watts of the subs and find an amplifier that is designed to put out that amount of watts at that amount of ohms. some things affect this up or down a little but that's the basic starting point. typically a mono (1 channel) amp is best for running subs but isnt always practical since most mono amps are higher wattage than what you may need so a 2 channel amp is sometimes used. 4 channel amps are ONLY for running 4 speakers and never should be used for runing subs.
Now what is an ohm? by definition, ohms are the ratio between volts and amps. its basically the load that the speaker is on the amplifier. you can wire mulitiple loads (meaning multiple speakers) together in different ways to create 1 final load. like christmas tree lights all in a string share the load, they are wired in series groups, that's why when 1 burns out or is removed about 20 other ones go out with it. this is done to share the load. your house voltage is 120 volts but those bulbs are like 6 volt bulbs, so putting 20 bulbs that are 6 volts each all in series shares the 120 volts evenly among them.
Some subs have 1 coil inside them (single voicecoil) and some have 2 (dual voice coil) and if you have 2 subs that are both dual voicecoil then you have a total of 4 coils. so you can wire them in a few different combinations of series and parallel to create the right load for the amp you are getting/have. take a look at this link, you can pick the subs you have by how many subs and their ohms and it will show you the different ways to wire them and what the total comes out to be.
http://www.crutchfieldadvisor.com/ISEO-rgbtcspd/learningcenter/car/subwoofers_wi
its just a matter of multplying for seiries and dividing for parallel.
so I dont know how many ohms the speakers you have are so I cant really pick an amp for you. do you have the exact model or know what ohms they are and if they are single or dual voice coil? Id love to help if you provide me with that.
as for an amp to run the door speakers the cd player is capable of doing this by itself but adding an amp will make the system better. (louder and clearer)
you dont need to worry about ohms much with door speakers since they're almost always 4 ohms and that's what most 4 channel amps are designed to run. I particularly like the power acoustik OV4-800 for this. its very cheap and sounds great.
Please write back with the specs on those subs and Ill be happy to help more.
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thats ok, everyone does that! thanks for the compliments. I was hoping I'd hear back from you to help you with the amp. Apparently this sub box comes in a 4 ohm or 2 ohm option. Check yours over carefully and see if it says anything about that on it. there's probably just 1 set of terminals on the back right? so it's already wired internally to whatever it's going to be. If you have a meter I can show you how to use that to find out the ohms.
So for the amp, now that we know the specs of the sub about all that's left is if you have brand prefrence or budget prefrence.
I'm going to assume for now it's the 4 ohm version until I hear back from you, so were looking for an amp that's made to run 600 watts RMS at 4 ohms.
if you have alot of money you dont know what to do with you can get one of these:
http://www.cardomain.com/item/ROC06P6502
or
http://www.cardomain.com/item/JBLPX6002
if you're more like me and want a bang for the buck check out these guys, I love these amps!
http://www.cardomain.com/item/POWOV21200
or
http://www.cardomain.com/item/POWA1800DB
again I'm assuming its 4 ohms, these wont work right if its the 2 ohm version you have.
hope to hear from you again.
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just look all over the box and see if it says 2 ohm or 4 ohm. make sure the installers are good and know that this was available in either 2 or 4 ohm if you are going to have them match an amp to it. Those places worry me a little. sometimes I think they're like every other biz and hire a bunch of highschool kids to do the cheap labor and if you're lucky there's one main guy who knows what he's doing so make sure you talk to someone that is and adult there. If you cant find it anywhere on the outside of the box and you dont want to chance it to the installers and want to get everything yourself and just have them install it, i highly sugest puting a meter on the terminals on that sub box you bought to see what ohms it is. I can help with this. (boy that was a runon sentense there!)
the A1800db is a great amp for the price. it's actually the same board that's in many other amps, just has power acoustik's heatsink and name on the outside.
Power acoustik sometimes gets a bad rap mostly cuz they're inexpensive. people either see the low price and think right away its junk, or the low price attracts people that have no idea what they're doing and they end up blowing it up and think the equipment sucked cuz it blew up. DUH! I've looked at TONS of reviews on their products and all the people that hate on them either never owned them or blew them up doing stupid things, like putting a sub that's made for a sealed box into a bandpass box. I've used lots of their stuff and am very happy with it for the price. you know if you compare an amp from poweracoustik to an amp from MTX with the same specs as an example. the MTX clearly is a better build quality and better overall. I'd say on a scale of 1 - 10 the power acoustik amp may score like a 7.5 and the MTX might be like a 9. but the MTX amp is going to be about 3-4 times the price. so if you compare a $200 mtx amp with $200 poweracoustik amp, the power acoustik is going to EASILY be the winner cuz you get alot more bang for the buck. see what I mean?
Answerglad to hear from you again! ok so if its 2 ohms it would be more of a load on the amp than a 4 ohm load so it would pull more power out of it. The 1800db then would make a alot of power, its rated for 1100 watts into 2 ohms. since you understood everything I said before, which congratulate yourself since all I seem to do is confuse people more, let me mention one other part of the equasion here. in my first responce I said that simply matching the watts and ohms of the subs to the amp was the basic rule. one thing that also should be considered is the box the subs are in. you said you have a ported box which means there is a tube shaped piece in the box. this tube is not just a hole, it's a tube, so at a certain frequcy it resonates like a pipe organ's pipe. The people that designed the box did alot of math to design the box for the subs and the diameter of that port and the lenght of the port to come up with the "optimal" responce of the whole system. the port helps to enhance the freqencies around where it resonates at so that it adds to the output of the subwoofers. It helps to know what freqency they've tuned the ports to. reason being is that you can use ALOT of power at the tuning freqency and you can use ALOT of power ABOVE the tuning freqency but you have to be very careful to use a little power below the tuning freqency. and your subs may be rated for kindof an avearage of all those. (sorry if im not wording this right) what I mean is this. your subs are rated for about 600 watts RMS power total but they will really take different amounts of power at different frequencies like this:
100hz - 900 watts
80hz - 800 watts
50hz - 700 watts
35hz - 1000 watts (assuming the ports are tuned to 35 hz)
20hz - 100 watts
So in this example if you average these numbers together you get 700 watts but you can see that right at the tuning freqency they can take alot more but then lowwer than that they can barely take any. this is where its VERY important to have a subsonic filter in your amplifier to keep the power down where your speakers would have problems.
the A1800db has a variable subsonic filter (GREAT feature) so you can tune in what you filter out. what I'm getting at here is that PROPERLY set the A1800db may still be a great match for these subs but you will have to set it right or you could blow the subs. Id be happy to help you with this as well, Although I may need to send you a cd or something. I guess I could email you the test tones and have you burn a cd? hopefully the shop doesnt give you a hard time and say you're going to blow the subs. like I said, you might if you arent careful but properly set and properly run you should be fine.
Anyway! The other thing is DONT SKIMP ON POWER! this thing pulls up to 90 amps so I HIGHLY sugest a 2 guage kit even though 4 guage is rated to 100 amps you will have a voltage drop with the 4 guage. If the shop wants to charge you an arm and a leg for the 2 gauge then get your own kit on ebay and tell the shop to put it in.
Thanks for the addie. I'd be happy to help you outside of this site.
