Is there such thing as not enough power?

[puppie_chow 10+ year member]

i just got 2 new 10" Diamond Audio subs that say their max power is 300 Watts. Right not i only have a 200 Watt Planet Audio Amp going to them. So they only get 100 watts each. Is this a bad thing if i like how they sound or do i need to buy a more powerful amp?

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[Corsica 5,000+ posts]

better amp man. more power cn help u hit harder and underpowering tha subs can cause them damage

 

[SuckMikeHawk23 10+ year member]

ur fine... 300 watts max usually yeilds an rms rating of 1/2, which in ur case would be 150. 50 watts isnt a big deal, u'll barely notice the difference, if at all. when reading anything in car audio, spec wise, mainly take into regard the rms rating. max ratings are somewhat meaningless.

 

[Nolesman 10+ year member]

Contrary to popular belief, underpowering your subs/speakers will not cause them problems. However you will not be getting the full use out of them. Overpowering subs/speakers will cause damage. If you have time look around these message boards I belive Zane wrote a large reply to someone else who asked this question.

 

[n2audio 5,000+ posts]

Underpowering, overpowering, who cares? If you like how it sounds then all is good.

 

[RangerMan Premium Member]

Originally posted by Corsica better amp man. more power cn help u hit harder and underpowering tha subs can cause them damage

Nope, this a common myth. Under powering a sub can't hurt them. As an example, I had a MTX 6000 hooked up to the factory system before I got an amp. That is about 17 watts running to the sub. The recomended specs are 50-300 RMS.

 

[budgetSQ 10+ year member]

Bigger amp!

Talk to a diamond dealer, those puppies will handle 500 RMS easy.

and 300 is rms

 

[geonn 10+ year member]

i do agree whit the people who say that under powerint hem wont do anything to it i myself ran a sub at a verly low power also and it did nothin to it you just cant really bump as hard but if you do want it to hit harder then maybe you will want to get a bigger amp but i think you should be fine runnin it at that amount of power it will not harm your sub in anyway hopw this helps

 

[zane 10+ year member]

Originally posted by Nolesman Contrary to popular belief, underpowering your subs/speakers will not cause them problems. However you will not be getting the full use out of them. Overpowering subs/speakers will cause damage. If you have time look around these message boards I belive Zane wrote a large reply to someone else who asked this question.

Yawn........

Did i ever...//content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/biggrin.gif.d71a5d36fcbab170f2364c9f2e3946cb.gif

This question was posed again recently, I have included the link below for a basic "in a nutshell" explanation of this.

http://forums.caraudio.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=3950

take it easy,

-zane

 

[Larrydehp920r]

Under powering subs or any speaker will not hurt them........What hurts any speaker is overdriving your amplifier and "CLIPPING" your signal that is being passed to the speaker. So, even though you aren't getting the full potential out of your subs by not having enough amp power.......if you don't try to crank it up......you won't hurt them. Just turn it up until you hear distortion and don't ever go any further up.

Larry