Ohms

[bass monkey 10+ year member]

alright, i might sound like a rookie, but oh well. i am really tryin to learn about all this car audio stuff. and i was wandering... what are ohms? i see subs and amps rated at different ohms. like 2 ohms to 8 ohms. what is the difference? does it matter which one you get?

any help would be great!

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[kingpin_jeffie 10+ year member]

we all had to start somewhere

ohms is just resistance

the lower the ohms the less resistnace there is for the power

lets say for example that an amp puts out 200x2 @ 4 ohms that same amp @ 2 ohms would be capable of putting out more than 200x2 depending on the the amp it may be able to put out twice what it was @ 4 ohms

and the power would keep going up as the ohm loads dropped justy be careful when you get into 1 ohm territory because alot of amps are only stable down to 2 ohms

let me know if you have any more questions

 

[bass monkey 10+ year member]

well....if you get more power out of a less ohm sub, then why do people buy ones with more ohms? and is there different ways to hook up subs to get more or less ohms? and also what does dual voice coils do?

 

[taylor 10+ year member]

dvc is also for different wiring combinations, you can achive a higher or lower ohm load with 1 sub as where with a svc it would 2 subs...

 

[bass monkey 10+ year member]

ok, so dvc is just for more flexibility? cool. but what difference does it make in the sub with different amounts of ohms?

 

[taylor 10+ year member]

lower ohms does not affect the sub

 

[bass monkey 10+ year member]

ok, but what happens when the ohms are higher? are all better subs rated at lower ohms? i am a little confused. lower ohms means lower sub?

 

[taylor 10+ year member]

lets say you have 2 SVC 4 ohm subs and you bridge them off of your 2 channel amp (paralell wiring), this will make your amp see 2 ohms mono. Now assuming your amp is 2 ohm mono stable this will put out more power to your subwoofers , example say your amp is 400watts at 4 ohms mono bridged, now thats at 4 ohms quite a bit of power still... now wire it down to 2 ohm mono and it will give you 800 watts. the impedance of your woofer never changes, you just make your amplifier see smaller or larger loads...Now if you give your amp an 8 ohm load it would see 200 watts.

going higher than 4 ohms will never hurt your amp it will just cause weaker sound, but go below 4 ohms on an amp that is not stable down to 2 ohm mono and your amp will either shut off and go into protection mode, melt internally or it may run fine but go into thermal shut down because of too much heat...i don't recomend doing this but i have also seen fuses bypassed on amps or replaced with larger rated ones so that the amp does not blow fuses when put into 2 ohm....example , bypass fuse on coustic 1000 watt amps and put it in 2 ohm, the amp will run in 2 ohm and rail!!! same with phoenix gold 180.2's (i forget which model) replace 25 amp fuse with 40 and it will run in 2 ohm fine....

Subs can be bought with svc's or dvc's

svc's come with usually 4 ohm or 8 ohm...some less common are 12 ohm and 16 ohm

dvc's commonly come with dual , 2ohm and dual 4ohm other's may come with dual 8ohm, 6ohm, dual 3 ohm

there is prolly more, but i don't remember..

hope this helped a little