Drive pioneer speaker 100 watts over or under RMS?

[jon_k 10+ year member]

I've got a choice.

I'm going to buy the Kenwood KAC-8104D mono amp.

300 watts RMS x 1 at 4 ohms (500 watts x 1 at 2 ohms)

I'm also going to buy two 12" Champion Series Subwoofers. 400 RMS, 1200 watts peak.

This speaker comes in two models. I can buy either:

* TS-W308D2: Dual-Voice Coil Design 2 ohm x 2

* TS-W308D4: Dual-Voice Coil Design 4 ohm x 2

I'll wire them in parallel to get matching impedance between the two subs.

If I hit the amp with 2 ohms, the amp could push 100 watts over RMS and be bad.

If I hit the amp with 4 ohms, the amp will provide 100 watts under the nominal RMS rated for the sub.

Will being clocked under 100 watts nominal RMS kill my experience?

And a related question, why can't I find an amp that delivers 400 RMS to match?

I'm just worried about ruining speakers by 100 watts over. I'm also worried I could suffer by losing out 100 watts on the peak RMS.

What would you do?

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[dman4486 5,000+ posts]

you could just turn the gain down

 

[n2audio 5,000+ posts]

the power will be split between the 2 subs. Get the dvc 2's and wire for 2 - that will get you 250w per sub.

If you want to drive the subs near or at their limit you should be looking for something around 1000w rms at 1 or 2 ohms.

If you do consider going to a larger amp - 100w above the rms rating on a decent quality 400w sub shouldn't be a problem. Just set your gain at a reasonable level and you aren't going to hurt anything.

 

[jon_k 10+ year member]

the power will be split between the 2 subs. Get the dvc 2's and wire for 2 - that will get you 250w per sub.

Oops, didn't think about the power divided by two.

Do you think that 250 per sub would be plenty of bass?

Or do you think 1 sub at 500w give me better performance all around? (Since you mentioned a fairly good sub can handle the power without problems with reasonable gain.)

I can always pick up another amp and sub and power them independently later on.

 

[n2audio 5,000+ posts]

2 subs with 250w each would give you more output, but sound quality is hard to say. Either way should be adequate if the enclosure is well designed and implemented. It will definitely will have a bigger effect than a hundred watts one way or the other.