Question
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Followup To
Question -
I have 2 12" Eclipse 7200 series dual voice coil subs going to a Rockford Fosgate Punch 801S amp.i want to push max power to these subs from this amp...I also have a Memphis 500D amp, which would be better for this pair of subs? How should I hook these up? Bridged, parallel, etc? What do ohms mean?
Answer -
Well "ohms" is the most important part here so knowing what it means will pretty much answer your question.
To put it simply the ohms is the load that the speakers present to the amplifier.
Textbook answer coming up:
Power (or wattage) is made up of volts and amps
ohms is the relationship or percentage of volts to amps.
lets abreviate volts to V and amps to A and watts to W
There are some other things that make this not come out EXACTLY like I'm showing but this is the general Idea and it will provide the answer you're looking for
If you multiply V times A you get W.
so 40V times 5A is 200W
or 20V times 10A is 200W
or 10V times 20A is 200W
Or 5V times 40A is 200W
They're all 200 watts. but you can see the relationship changing between V and A this is ohms.
Now your subs have a certain ohms which means that the relationship between V and A needs to be correct comming from your amplifier to get the correct wattage.
Ok so you have 2 subs that have 2 coils that are 4 ohms each. if you wire them all in parallel you will get a 1 ohm load, if you wire them all in series you will get a 16 ohm load. or if you wire the 2 coils of 1 sub in series, it will be an 8 ohm load and do the same to the other sub, it will be an 8 ohm load, then wire the 2 loads together to form 1 4 ohm load.
So your options are 1 ohm, 4 ohms, 16 ohms.
If the ohms of the speakers are lowwer than your amplifier is rated for then the Amps will be a higher draw than the Volts and your amplifier will overheat. If the ohms are too high then your amplifier will not have the correct load on it and it will not produce the amount of watts it could.
So lets look at the Punch 801s
This amp is rated to produce 800W at 4 ohms so if you wire your subs to a 4 ohm load, the amp will make 800W and each speaker will get 400.
The memphis amp apears to run its best at 2 ohms and your subs dont operate all together at 2 ohms so you will only get a measily 250watts from the memphis amp.
So that was the explaination and I hope it helped, If you need help on the wiring let me know.
Please let me know how this system comes out.
so what you are saying is that hooking these two subs up unbriged, and into the amp in the normal fashion is the best option for me? on the eclipses they have a jumper wire for the two coils so just running each sub to the single chanel of the two chanel amp is my best option, correct?
this is the way i have had it. Have the hardest hitting convertable in wichita as far as i have seen but always looking for a little deeper harder more accurate bass!
Answerno not really. the amp is going to produce about the same amount of power weather it's bridged or not in your situation, lets look at the numbers:
If you run in stereo so that each sub is directly connected to each channel of the amp you have:
2 x4 ohms (4ohms each coil since they are dual voice coil) giving a 2 ohm load on each channel. at 2 ohms per channel the amp makes 400w per channel totalling 800W
If you wire the 2 speakers together to make 1x 4ohm load then the amp makes 800w into 1 mono 4ohm load.
So the overall watts are the same. There are 3 distict advantages by running mono even though the power is basically the same:
1. The subs are more gaurnteed to play exactly the same thing at the same time instead of being able to operate independently. this makes for better bass
2. In stereo mode if the speakers are out of phase, they play out of phase and draw power to play but dont make much or any sound since they cancle each other out. In mono mode the 2 out of phase signals cancle each other out so power and excursion isnt wasted. So out of phase signals in mono are much more efficient.
3. slew rate. Since both channels of the amplifier are working in oposite directions (one channel making the negative wave while the other is making a posative) the slew rate (voltage change over time) is doubbled allowing for more accurate and powerful transients.
I would say if you rewire the system to mono you wont notice any big differences, it will be slightly more efficient and maybe slightly cleaner but probably not noticably louder.
