Explain gain to me.

[The Camry]

Amplifier Gain Controls

After reading that. My knowledge of gains are..totally different...Yet im still confused a bit.

You have a 100rms x 1 channel amp. your gains are at min. which would be all the way counter clockwise and for arguments sake. Lets say that is 10 volts and all the way clockwise is 1 volt.

and your head unit is 5 volt pre outs, and again for arguments sake. your headunit will give you a true 5 volts at 95% vol before clipping.(which i would assume clipping would just be any voltage above 5 volts ??)

Its this part that im a little lost on.

"

Amplifier Gain Controls

Contrary to popular belief, an amplifiers gain control does not determine the maximum power that an amplifier can produce. As long as the preamp/drive signal has sufficient level, the amplifier will produce its maximum power output level."

If your gains are set at min. how does that affect power output? Are you only getting 15ish rms out of your 100?

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[Jeffdachef 5,000+ posts]

Overgaining causes the amp to try and make some dirty distorted power, You will actually see higher watt numbers if you actually clamp test it ran to/past clipping. Thats why you have soo many noobs in youtube claiming their shark/audiopipe amps clamp way higher than/rated power without an oscope anywhere in their clamp test video.

Only way you will know actual wattage is via clamping.

With a very high pre-out signal, and a sensitive pentiometer, you could be already making full power at min gain or even be clipping at that point.

 

[fly_marlin]

The gain is set to match the signal that's being input. The reason it's there is so that the amp knows how much to strengthen the signal prior to amplifying it. So if the signal is very weak, the amp adds energy to it and then amplifies it. So if you have a 10V signal coming in, you set the gain accordingly on the amp - the amp then knows the signal is strong and doesn't add energy to it and amplifies what it gets, thus producing full power at minimum gain setting.

 

[The Camry]

Overgaining causes the amp to try and make some dirty distorted power, You will actually see higher watt numbers if you actually clamp test it ran to/past clipping. Thats why you have soo many noobs in youtube claiming their shark/audiopipe amps clamp way higher than/rated power without an oscope anywhere in their clamp test video.

Only way you will know is via clamping. With a very high pre-out signal, and a sensitive pentiometer, you could be already making full power at min gain or even be clipping at that point.

Thats pretty much what im worried about. I plan on running the HERTZ HSK XL 2 ways . With my current set up. My tweeters channels gain is on absolutely min and i had to level match everything according to it.

Its on 55/62(because anything more is just stupid loud and uncomfortable) on the PRS. Which isnt its full potential but then again, i do have options of tweeter level control down to like -20 db so i can always use that.

Guess what im wondering is, the RMS rating on the HSK XL's are 150 for the 6.5s and obviously tweeters take barely any power to get loud. So should i just sell my 150.4 because im practically wasteing 2 channels and just get a 150.2 and a small tweeter amp?

 

[Jeffdachef 5,000+ posts]

Thats pretty much what im worried about. I plan on running the HERTZ HSK XL 2 ways . With my current set up. My tweeters channels gain is on absolutely min and i had to level match everything according to it.
Its on 55/62(because anything more is just stupid loud and uncomfortable) on the PRS. Which isnt its full potential but then again, i do have options of tweeter level control down to like -20 db so i can always use that.

Guess what im wondering is, the RMS rating on the HSK XL's are 150 for the 6.5s and obviously tweeters take barely any power to get loud. So should i just sell my 150.4 because im practically wasteing 2 channels and just get a 150.2 and a small tweeter amp?

If you are running active then just use the db level adjuster in the cross over section. Its attenuation aka just another way to fine tune the gain.

 

[adulbrich 5,000+ posts]

Amplifier Gain Controls
After reading that. My knowledge of gains are..totally different...Yet im still confused a bit.

You have a 100rms x 1 channel amp. your gains are at min. which would be all the way counter clockwise and for arguments sake. Lets say that is 10 volts and all the way clockwise is 1 volt.

and your head unit is 5 volt pre outs, and again for arguments sake. your headunit will give you a true 5 volts at 95% vol before clipping.(which i would assume clipping would just be any voltage above 5 volts ??)

Its this part that im a little lost on.

"

Amplifier Gain Controls

Contrary to popular belief, an amplifiers gain control does not determine the maximum power that an amplifier can produce. As long as the preamp/drive signal has sufficient level, the amplifier will produce its maximum power output level."

If your gains are set at min. how does that affect power output? Are you only getting 15ish rms out of your 100?

I don't think the underlined portion would be true. Clipping will not make the voltage exceed its maximum. Clipping the waveform does not increase its power. There would be more total energy, but it would not be any higher, if that makes sense.

If your gains are set with a 0db tone and your music is at -10db, you are not getting the full power out of it.

If your gains are set at -10db and your music is recorded at -10db, you are getting pretty close to maximum output.

If your gains are set at -10db and your music is recorded at 0db, you will be overdriving/clipping your amp.

Gain doesn't really control the maximum power your amp can put out, to a point. Even if your gain is set all the way down, you can still theoretically get full output if your input voltage is high enough.