A freak accident made my buddy's system louder. Can someone explain?

[Tehgregzor 10+ year member]

So my friend Jason got an Audiobahn 900 watt one channel amp. He had some pawn shop style speakers in one of those prefab bandpass boxes. So i hooked it all up for him, then tuned it to the level i figured this kind of equipment would put out. Fast forward one week, we're all drinkin beers and he pulls up and his **** is wanging hard! I asked him if he got some better subs, and he showed me where on the amp, one of the RCA's got unplugged while putting groceries in there. He was gonna plug it back in but on the way home his subs got way louder, in a good way. What would cause this?

TL;DR: two rcas plugged into amp sounded good, one rca plugged in it sounded great. Why?

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[blobb454 10+ year member]

Connections somewhere are backwards. Positive is negative and vise verse.

 

[Tehgregzor 10+ year member]

I'll check polarity on the speakers. Thanks //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/smile.gif.1ebc41e1811405b213edfc4622c41e27.gif

 

[argenis69 10+ year member]

That's weird. I also will like to know why that happened.

 

[bbeljefe]

Sounds like speakers out of phase, as was said.

Although... it might actually take a head injury to make that amp sound great.

j/k

 

[maddog 10+ year member]

It's funny that this came up because this actually has happened to me before. I have had a mono amp with 2 rca inputs which was louder with only one rca plugged in. I have a theory as to why this is; I think the input voltage was too high with both rca's plugged in. There are some amps out there that do not perform better a higher rca input voltage.

 

[CrossoverOre 10+ year member]

If I were to venture a guess I would say the signal phase on the rca's are 180 out. cancellation causing the amp to play better with 1ch input instead of 2. How are the rca's connected to the system. Were they fabricated in a factory or did someone connect the ends on themselves?