How does an amp "see" the load?

-- on cag

cag's posts seem to indicate he is a fairly old-school, hands-on engineer and entheusiest. that said, many of his posts seem ambiguous -- either exactly correct, completely wrong, or missing key information. still, experience does count for something, so its probably best to reread the posts and see if there is some other meaning that might make more sense.

I sometimes think of star trek when reading the posts (the subwoofer's harmonic syncronism is balenenced using aperiodic excitation, creating a musical sound -- sweet, lots of long words followed by a conclusion everyone understands!)

I especially dislike the "half of amplifier" part. i see two explanations, one exactly correct, one confusing. its really hard to tell which one was intended.

-- on EMF

in terms of back-emf though, I'm placing all my money on the magnetic gap + moving coil. you're using an electrical force to create a mechanical force -- well its a two way street. the cone's mass can store energy and then PULL the coil through the gap which FORCES energy to flow back into the amplifier. likewise any springiness that is strected/compressed will PUSH the coil and again return energy from the mechanical system to the electrical system.

-- Response to N2

n2, back-emf, in terms of damping factor of the amp is a different issue. the issue you are thinking of is in terms of the amp affecting the speaker's response. the issue in question here is the speaker affecting the amplifier's efficiency.

--on seeing a load. parallel speakers

imagine you are blindfolded. you are led to a weight machine. you are handed a bar and told to lift some weight. what is the weight you are lifting? well, its printed on the weights.

ok, lets say someone adds weight to each end (speakers in parallel). now you're doing more work, but each weight is still moving the same amount. this is very similar to speakers in parallel. each speaker receives as much power as it would if it were the only thing connected (each weight moves just as much as if it were the only one) but adding more speakers means you have more power, but just because each speaker draws power (adding weights means you do more work, but just because you have to move more weight).

-- on "seeing a load", bridged amplifiers

imagine you are blindfolded. you are led to a weight machine. you are handed a bar and told to lift some weight. what is the weight you are lifting? well, its printed on the weights.

ok, lets say you have a spotter -- the spotter can help you -- so the weight you see can be LESS then the actual weights. likewise, lets say the spotter does the opposite and pushes down on the weights -- now they SEEM heavier. this is similar to why an amplifier might SEE a different load then the actual load -- some other amplifier channel may be actively opposing it. for a bridged amplifier, each channel is trying to do the exact opposite thing. this ends up really putting power to the woofer, but at the same time each channel is now working harder then before.

 
So you're saying if I have an amp putting out 1000wRMS @ one ohm, and two speakers are wired to the amp at one ohm, both are getting 1000wRMS, but the amp is just doing twice as much work?? I'm so confused //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/frown.gif.a3531fa0534503350665a1e957861287.gif

 
So you're saying if I have an amp putting out 1000wRMS @ one ohm, and two speakers are wired to the amp at one ohm, both are getting 1000wRMS, but the amp is just doing twice as much work?? I'm so confused //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/frown.gif.a3531fa0534503350665a1e957861287.gif
No. If both speakers are wired to one ohm, the amp is giving 1000wrms to the pair, so 500 to each.

 
No. If both speakers are wired to one ohm, the amp is giving 1000wrms to the pair, so 500 to each.
This is correct

Your amp cant go above its rating without going into clipping

What thch was trying to say (i think) is that when you have a amp hooked up bridged obviously the amp isnt smart enough to know that (its still put power to the 2 connections you arent using) so one channel may be working harder then the other (this is where his analogy of the spotter comes into play)

You lifting the weights being 1 channel and the Spotter being the other channel

Also thch dont worry about Cag, if you go back to page one you will see that I quoted him and he shamelessly stole it off of a website

 
So now you have twice the cone area, but half the power to each woofer, and double the inductance /reactance (much more back "EMF") so now the amp will get twice as hot.

Draw the same amount of current , because the load is still 1 ohm as before.

BUT..TWICE AS HOT!!! Should play about the same SPL, within a dB or so.
Coils in parallel will halve the inductance.. not double it.. and I would expect a 3db gain, minimum.. it's likley to be higher then that because you're going to have significantly less power compression with the 2nd sub..

Back EMF is a non-issue and FYI it will add/subtract like impedance.. ie two subs with 1/2 the power will each contribute 2*.5 the back EMF of a single sub with all the power... (Perhaps I digress, it should be enough to say that back EMF is a component of the driver's impedance.. )

 
My bad I should have added a "bibliography", Sorry. Got lazy and it was easier to put what a professor told a student.

With small tidbits from me.

And yes paralleling inductors lowers inductance, but there is significant copper wire moving thru voice coil gaps. Double actually.

BUT...none the less having voice coils series'd and then paralleled does cause amplifiers to get much hotter. I've seen it thousands of times over the years in over 30 countries. It is not something I made up. And it always was an issue at PG, as well as any other amplifier company I ever worked for (read -many here).

I have always attributed it to back EMF as the electro mechanical forces with that much copper has to be significant.

Wouldn't you say Chris (our resident BSEE)?????

So to answer the original question, 2 woofers , single 1000 watt amplifier equals 500 watts per woofer.

IF you want 1000 watts per woofer, then get a 2000 watt amplifier.

And if you ran a single 1 ohm woofer versus 2- 4 ohm DVC woofers series'd/paralleled, you'll measure significantly cooler amplifier temperature after 20-30 min of hard running.

Theory and practical don't always meet at the same point. I've worked at many amplifier companies and I can tell you for a fact that NONE of the engineers agree pretty much on ANYTHING!! Especially from differenct companies. Kind of like these forums //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/smile.gif.1ebc41e1811405b213edfc4622c41e27.gif

So I like to fade back to reality, and shit that I have TESTED many many times in cars and labs.

 
I would attribute the amp running hotter with more drivers to the fact that the power being divided between the multiple coils is reducing the power compression and keeping real impedance lower and the current higher for a given nominal load. More current, more heat. Seems much more logical and would hold true for non reactive loads as well making it an easy theory to test in the lab under more controlled conditions.

 
I'll get my speaker "gurus" a shout and see what they think.

Cause I'd like to know for sure as I have my belief systems, and I want to make sure I am not nuts //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/smile.gif.1ebc41e1811405b213edfc4622c41e27.gif

Guys at JBL ( small speaker company that kind of knows how to build drivers, and amplifiers) and maybe Vance Dickerson, and Dominic Bounincounrtri (designer of all the PG speakers from 1992-1998 -including making the Cyclone an actual product) And then maybe an "amp" guy - Dan A'gostino from KRELL????

Maybe I'll start another thread, just for FUN.

But you may be right?? We shall see.

 
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