bridging an amp

[lebaron87 10+ year member]

i have a 760 watt pioneer amp. what is bridging exactly and can i bridge my amp without it hurting anything

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[nswartley 5,000+ posts]

for bridging an amp you will need a 2 channel amp. it is where you run your wires from the amp to each individual voice coil of the sub. i think that you have the same amp as i do and it is bridgeable if it is.

 

[nswartley 5,000+ posts]

oh yea and your sub needs to be DVC: dual voice coil. it wont hurt anything unless you overpower the sub too much

 

[nswartley 5,000+ posts]

my bad i guess i was misinformed

 

[CarAudioAddict 10+ year member]

Bridging an amp is when you use both channels to drive one speaker.

Many amps are bridgable either by changing a switch setting or by the way you wire the speaker to the amp. There are also devices you can get to bridge a non-bridgable amplifier or bridge 2-mono amps into one.

In general bridging an amplifier won't do any harm. Just make sure your speakers can handle the extra power

When you bridge an amplifier it's ohm load is also limited more. A 2-ohm stereo amplifier can only handle a 4-ohm bridged load. This is because each channel is 2-ohm stable so using both channels for one speaker is 4-ohm stable.

This next part gets a little, very little, technical. In order to understand you must know what the music signal is like traveling through a wire, and how amplifiers work

All amplifier bridging does is invert one of the channels (more explanation later). Now when one channel is pulled to the positive, the other is pulled to the negative. This in effect will double the voltage and amperage through the voice coil. In a 100% efficient amplifier this would result in a quadrupling of amplifier power(compared to one channel). In most cases though you only end up with doubling the power.

To invert a channel, you are basically reversing the polarity of the positive and negative rails for that channel (it's actually more than that, the actually signal is changed). Now when the signal is supposed to be positive, it is actually negative.

I'm not sure if that is very clear, but I have always had trouble converting to lay-men's terms. If someone else wants they can try.

The devices that yopu can get will invert the signal before it reaches the amplifier. so you have in effect bridged the amp(s). If you go withone ofthese devices use the (+) terminal on both channels, connect the inverted (+) channel to the (-) post on the speaker.

And NO you don't need a DVC sub. Simply because the two channels have basically become one.

 

[paikiah 5,000+ posts]

Originally posted by CarAudioAddict Bridging an amp is when you use both channels to drive one speaker.

 

Many amps are bridgable either by changing a switch setting or by the way you wire the speaker to the amp. There are also devices you can get to bridge a non-bridgable amplifier or bridge 2-mono amps into one.

 

In general bridging an amplifier won't do any harm. Just make sure your speakers can handle the extra power

 

This next part gets a little, very little, technical. In order to understand you must know what the music signal is like traveling through a wire, and how amplifiers work

 

All amplifier bridging does is invert one of the channels (more explanation later). Now when one channel is pulled to the positive, the other is pulled to the negative. This in effect will double the voltage and amperage through the voice coil. In a 100% efficient amplifier this would result in a quadrupling of amplifier power(compared to one channel). In most cases though you only end up with doubling the power.

 

To invert a channel, you are basically reversing the polarity of the positive and negative rails for that channel (it's actually more than that, the actually signal is changed). Now when the signal is supposed to be positive, it is actually negative.

 

 

I'm not sure if that is very clear, but I have always had trouble converting to lay-men's terms. If someone else wants they can try.

Layman's term?

Bridging= more power