Could you run two amps to a DVC sub? one for each VC

[The Camry]

and how does that work for power handling.

If you have a 1000rms DVC sub. Does each voice coil take 500rms or how all does that work?

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[Jeffdachef 5,000+ posts]

and how does that work for power handling.
If you have a 1000rms DVC sub. Does each voice coil take 500rms or how all does that work?

you plug everything in and voila! "Look! disneyland fireworks came early mommy! oooooh and smoke effects too! oh geeze whats that smell!!"

you really cant match the gain properly and you'll likely wear down your coils. You'll have to strap the amps or get a bigger amp.

 

[The Camry]

Just a question that popped in my head. Not something im practically trying to do.

 

[Jepalan]

you plug everything in and voila! "Look! disneyland fireworks came early mommy! oooooh and smoke effects too! oh geeze whats that smell!!"you really cant match the gain properly and you'll likely wear down your coils. You'll have to strap the amps or get a bigger amp.

With all due respect, I tend to disagree with this answer ^^^. This can easily be done without strapping the amps and without damaging the sub or the amps. I've been running a JL DVC sub like this for years in my daily driver. I power each VC with two separate bridged outputs of a spare 4-ch amp I had on-hand.

Just make sure you feed each amp channel the exact same signal, make sure you wire the VCs to the same correct polarity, and try to match the gains as closely as possible.

And, yes, each VC should handle half of the total rated RMS power of the sub, but to be safe I try not to push it to full power when running this configuration.

 

[Jepalan]

Even JL Audio has changed their position on running VCs on separate channels. Here is a snippet from the JL Audio online FAQ as a reference. Note the underlined text...

What is the advantage of dual voice coils?

The primary advantage of the dual voice coil speaker is wiring flexibility. A single dual voice coil driver offers the user three hookup choices...parallel, series and independent. In a parallel hook-up, the driver's impedance will be half that of each individual coil (a dual 4 ohm speaker would be a 2 ohm speaker in parallel). A series hook-up results in twice the impedance of each single coil (a dual 4 ohm speaker results in 8 ohms if its coils are wired in series). Finally, you can wire each voice coil to a separate channel of your amplifier, which can be useful if your amplifier is not mono-bridgeable, or if you are bridging a four channel amplifier down to two channels to run your sub.

http://www.jlaudio.com/header/Support/Tutorials/FAQ%3A+Dual+Voice+Coils+(DVC)/FAQ%3A+Dual+Voice+Coils+(DVC)+/287542

 

[adulbrich 5,000+ posts]

With all due respect, I tend to disagree with this answer ^^^. This can easily be done without strapping the amps and without damaging the sub or the amps. I've been running a JL DVC sub like this for years in my daily driver. I power each VC with two separate bridged outputs of a spare 4-ch amp I had on-hand.
Just make sure you feed each amp channel the exact same signal, make sure you wire the VCs to the same correct polarity, and try to match the gains as closely as possible.

And, yes, each VC should handle half of the total rated RMS power of the sub, but to be safe I try not to push it to full power when running this configuration.

I think its fine for low power, but I wouldn't want to do that with 5k amps. I think the gain would be harder to set the same as power increased.

OP, I don't think there's a real concrete answer here. Yes, you could do it, but be careful.

Yes, one coil of a DVC sub can handle half power. Also, some sound quality subs use one coil of a dvc sub and internally short the other one. The coil resists the magnetic field and acts as sort of a magnetic brake.

 

[Jeffdachef 5,000+ posts]

With all due respect, I tend to disagree with this answer ^^^. This can easily be done without strapping the amps and without damaging the sub or the amps. I've been running a JL DVC sub like this for years in my daily driver. I power each VC with two separate bridged outputs of a spare 4-ch amp I had on-hand.
Just make sure you feed each amp channel the exact same signal, make sure you wire the VCs to the same correct polarity, and try to match the gains as closely as possible.

And, yes, each VC should handle half of the total rated RMS power of the sub, but to be safe I try not to push it to full power when running this configuration.

Now try doing that with two 1500 monoblocks and a 3k sub. There was a member on SMD that got major coil rub on an AA mayhem from trying that. Input level was properly matched through dmm and everything was clean on his DD-1.

 

[adulbrich 5,000+ posts]

Now try doing that with two 1500 monoblocks and a 3k sub. There was a member on SMD that got major coil rub on an AA mayhem from trying that. Input level was properly matched through dmm and everything was clean on his DD-1.

It is just better to get a bigger monoblock than wreck your sub