does the voltage of the RCA outs really matter?

[SYLrules 10+ year member]

i went to one audio shop and this guy was selling pretty much only eclipse HUs and he was bragging about these decks having 5v outs. he was saying this would allow me to push my amps a little harder without dealing with distortion. i didnt like the way these eclipses felt and they didnt have a whole lot of em hooked up so i couldnt play around with them. i go to best buy and ask about this and the sales rep just kinda said no it doesnt matter but didnt go into detail about why it doesnt.

the pioneer HU i ended up buying from neither place has 3v outs. would i really have noticed a difference with the eclipse's apparent 5v??

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[jco1385 5,000+ posts]

higher rca voltage = less gain on the amp

 

[SYLrules 10+ year member]

but does 2 v make a difference? i had an old pioneer that i have no idea what the V were and i got it loud as i never could need it with no dist.

 

[jco1385 5,000+ posts]

it's not distortion that is affected (AFAIK). it's the amount of work your amp has to do. higher the voltage of the rca's, the lower your gain will be set on the amp.

 

[SYLrules 10+ year member]

oohhh ok thanks

be back later with more dumb quesitons

 

[TurdFergueson2 5,000+ posts]

What didn't you like about about the eclipse decks? I have an 8445 that I'm gonna sell because the face doesn't come off by design. That one has 8 volt preouts. THe one I will use is a CD7000 which has 5V.

 

[eharri3 10+ year member]

When I upgraded from a high impedance, 2 volt Alpine to a 4 volt high impedance I didn't notice much difference, just a tad less background hiss in IPID music and on my lower quality CDs.

The bigger difference was when I went to a 5 volt, low Impedance Pioneer Premier.

 

[bureau13 10+ year member]

Higher voltage pre-outs gives you more protection against noise being introduced in the signal. That's it. I'm not buying the bit about the amps "not working as hard." Its an advantage over lower voltage pre-outs for the noise reason, but in and of itself is not a predictor of superior sound quality. There are far too many other variables involved.

jds

 

[dragnix 5,000+ posts]

it keeps the gain low

 

[mokedaddy 5,000+ posts]

Higher voltage pre-outs gives you more protection against noise being introduced in the signal. That's it. I'm not buying the bit about the amps "not working as hard." Its an advantage over lower voltage pre-outs for the noise reason, but in and of itself is not a predictor of superior sound quality. There are far too many other variables involved.
jds

This.

 

[Loud3 10+ year member]

bureau13 hit the nail directly on the head.

 

[Brian Owens 10+ year member]

Higher voltage pre-outs gives you more protection against noise being introduced in the signal. That's it. I'm not buying the bit about the amps "not working as hard." Its an advantage over lower voltage pre-outs for the noise reason, but in and of itself is not a predictor of superior sound quality. There are far too many other variables involved.
jds

x2

If an amp makes 4000 watts, it makes 4000 watts. Output devices have to make X amount of voltage and X amount of current to get there.

People are thinking that going from 2 volts on the inputs to 5 volts on the inputs is making it easier for the amp to make X volts on the outputs. Heck if that was the case, everyone would still use speaker level inputs and really keep their amps from working as hard. . .

Brian

 

[DBfan187 5,000+ posts]

Low impedance is a better way to judge these things, it's the way to go.