depends how sever it is you can. Listen to most high school set ups the subs are playing higher than they should. If you want to know what clipping sounds like for a quick test, just turn your head unit to loudest listening volume u'd do just start the gain as low as you can, turn it up a little and hear how sub is suppose to sound, then just keep turning the gain eventually the sub will sound like its an octave (higher frequency) higher than it should sound, that is clipping in the easiest sense to hear.