I've searched..what does a line driver do??

[5.0coug 10+ year member]

I know a line driver gives you more bass but i was wondering what exactly it does to accomplish it. does is amp the input or what? was always curious

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[inapontiac 10+ year member]

Increases voltage coming out of the HU and makes the amps do less work, having higher input voltage.

 

[5.0coug 10+ year member]

i have a alpine that already has a 4v sub pre out and im about to get a eclipse with 5v preouts...would the loc really do anything for a high volt output?? thanks

 

[dragnix 5,000+ posts]

LOC=Line Output Converter which i believe is used to work with the stock HU.

 

[spoonraker 10+ year member]

Are you talking about a LOC (Line-out converter) or a Line-Driver. They are two different things, although usually a LOC incorporates the functionality of a Line-Driver.

A LOC takes High-level speaker outputs and converts them to low level amp preout signals.

A line-driver simply takes the amp pre-out signal and boosts the voltage.

A line-driver is almost never needed since 99.9999% of head units will have output voltages of 2 or 4v which is perfectly acceptable.

 

[5.0coug 10+ year member]

oh i meant line driver, for some reason LOC came out...thanks for the advice you guys answered my question, i think ill hold off on one of those lol

 

[RipDaJacka]

Man. i bought a EQ?linedriver and it boosted my crappy 2v signal to 7volts and make a 100% increase in output.. of course i have a Jensen POS in dash, but regardless it worked wonders in my case

 

[spoonraker 10+ year member]

A line driver doesn't magically make your system play louder. Unless you have an input voltage so low that your amp can't amplify the signal enough to get full power, a line driver will do nothing. If you are right on the borderline it might be worthwhile because it will help you prevent clipping.

Keep in mind that when you increase the input voltage, you have to decrease the gain, otherwise you will get clipping. If you have a system tuned so that you are already pushing your amp anywhere close to it's limits and you increase the input voltage 4V or more like most line drivers will do, you will get severe clipping.

 

[Jep772 10+ year member]

i have a 4v pioneer and added a memphis ~9v line driver and yea, it magiclly got louder

 

[spoonraker 10+ year member]

obviously you don't have the line driver boosting the signal an entire 9 volts. Most of them are adjustable, and if you really are sending your amp an input voltage of 13 volts....well have fun

 

[Jep772 10+ year member]

it turned the 4v into 9v making a very noticable difference

 

[spoonraker 10+ year member]

Did you adjust your gains when you did that? If not you're either getting severe clipping or you didn't have your gains turned up enough before and boosting the input voltage made up for that.

 

[thch 10+ year member]

its not hard to change things and, well, change things. I remember switching from my 400W class D amp to a 400W class AB amp. sound was so much better controlled. Later, I switched from my 400W class AB amp to my 400W class D amp. again, the sound was more controlled with better impact. Moral of the story -- subjective observations are near worthless if you change any settings.

one of my favorite line driver reports went something like this: "so i was tuning my amp, but i couldn't turn it up all the way because of the neighbors. this week I installed my line driver and it made a huge difference!"

from an electronics perspective, the additional voltage gain on the input doens't affect the power supply. the power supply sets both the maximum output voltage and current, and thus sets the limit on power. so long as the amplifier has enough voltage gain, it will acheive this goal. Because most amplifiers can be driven into clipping with just the HU as an input, this would not be a concern. Also, because the amplifier itself has an efficiency that is dominated by the the output stage (class A,B,D), the small increase in voltage gain does not change efficiency.

 

[Jep772 10+ year member]

my amp is set right and so is my gains

 

[spoonraker 10+ year member]

lmao