amp wattage?

[Beermakesmehoppy 10+ year member]

I was thinking about amps and their max wattage. Do the gain and frequency come into some equation to equal the max wattage in an amp? And, is is true that the only way to achieve max wattage on your amp is to turn all the settings up? If this is true, not a lot of people use the full potential of their amp; right? So when people say," yeah, I have a thousand watt amp to each sub so I'm pushing a thousand watts to each" unless their settings are all the way up, this is false.

please reply will feedback

thanks

Jon

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[Wonderbread 5,000+ posts]

not quite.

you will get full power when te input sensitivity is properly matched to the voltage of the signal from the RCA's and the deck... with higher voltage decks, the gain will ahve to be lower than with a lower voltage set of preouts to get the same power...

http://www.eatel.net/~amptech/elecdisc/gaincon2.htm for more info

 

[Beermakesmehoppy 10+ year member]

thanks,

You said:

"...input sensitivity is properly matched to the voltage.."

Is there a specific thing(#, hz, etc.) that needs to be matched. What is used to determine they are equal and the amp is running at full power?

thanks

Jon

 

[Wonderbread 5,000+ posts]

milivolts to volts //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/wink.gif.608e3ea05f1a9f98611af0861652f8fb.gif that's waht you want to properly match... but you cant just line up the numbers and go with that... you basically need to set your input sensitivity to where the amp does not clip...

clipping gives you square waves instead of your typical sinusoidal ones. square waves have more area under the curve, giving more power... this extra power is usually presented as heat across the coils... if your sub cant thermally handle the extra power, they melt... and you ahve to buy a new one...

 

[burtonsnow83 10+ year member]

That was the best definition of clipping I have seen yet, thanks you two for those grat posts

 

[Wonderbread 5,000+ posts]

no problem... after a long time of surfing the web filtering crap from gold, I finally figured out what it was, lol.

 

[Wonderbread 5,000+ posts]

most of it's fools gold... //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/wink.gif.608e3ea05f1a9f98611af0861652f8fb.gif

 

[Beermakesmehoppy 10+ year member]

how do you know when your amp doesn't clip, are their specs I have to look up or are they certain souds?

thanks

 

[djjdnap 10+ year member]

check this out this is fairly accurate

multiply you voltage usually 12 or 14 times your fuses added up(ampheres i think)

so like it says my jbl puts out 1200 watts right 12*(40*3)=1440 so give or take a few watts,

tested it put out 13?? somethin i forget..

 

[Wonderbread 5,000+ posts]

unfortunately clipping is an abnormal function of the amplifier. there is no spec that tells when it is clipping. the easier way to tell is to lsiten for audible distortion. this is usually well poast teh clipping point however. basically, when you set your gain, find where it starts to distort, then back it off a little. the only way to make sure you aren't clipping is to run everything through an oscilloscope. //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/wink.gif.608e3ea05f1a9f98611af0861652f8fb.gif

 

[djjdnap 10+ year member]

hold up so efficiency is what exactly,

how well it plays or what, how effecient it is at those many watts???//content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/confused.gif.e820e0216602db4765798ac39d28caa9.gif

 

[Terminator 10+ year member]

ok this might not even be along the same line and it may have already been answered but if it was then im sorry. okay lets say i have a sub with 300 RMS and i have an amp with 350 RMS. is there a way i fine tune it to run the amp at 300 watts?

please help a n00b out.

 

[neonak 10+ year member]

separate inline filter likes to tell me when I clip... got like 5 lights going from very green to very red //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/biggrin.gif.d71a5d36fcbab170f2364c9f2e3946cb.gif

 

[Wonderbread 5,000+ posts]

efficiency is exactly that. how efficiently the amplifier uses available current to convert it into an audio signal. how many amps it takes to make watts basically.

Terminator, by backing down your gains, you can reduce the power output of your amplifier... or by turning the volume knob down...

 

[Terminator 10+ year member]

right so lets say im 90% volume with the gain turned to about 90% i should be close to 300w right?