dumb question....but serious

[audioman 10+ year member]

what exactly is RMS? also SPL? i am a serious car audio fanatic but am fairly new to the game. i want to know as much info about systems as possible. if you any good web sites that give great info pls tell me also. THANX

Click to read more...

 

[fu-man-chu 10+ year member]

ok, R.M.S stands for Root Mean Squard, which means continuous power the sub puts out. This is important to look at while buying an amp(match RMS of the sub and RMS of the amp). Now SPL is Sound Pressure Level, which means the amount of air the sub moves.(Theres no such thing as a dumb question) Hope i helped

If you have any other questions just post it and ill be on it.

 

[<natem33>]

RMS is the measurement of power (in watts)that a speaker can handle. It is also used to rate the amount of power (in watts) that an amp can produce. Often times you will see a subwoofer advertised as being able to handle 1000 watts peak and 400 watts RMS (this is just an example). The 1000 watts represents the amount of power that the sub can handle during a loud momentary burst of music power. THe 400 watts RMS measurement is the amount of power that the sub can handle at all times. This is the clean running power and is the key number to look at when rating a sub's power handling. Same thing with amps. If an amp's rated output is 800 watts peak and 350 watts RMS, then the key number is 350 watts. SPL stands for sound pressure level. This is the amount of air movement that a speaker can produce which can be measured in db's (decibles). During a car show with an spl contest (often called db dragracing) they are measuring the amount sound pressure that the car's speakers (usually subs) are producing. If you log onto www.sounddomain.com and go to the shopping section they define many of the terms. I hope I gave you more help than confusion.