So much much power should I actually give a hdc318?

[Lowflyin 10+ year member]

Ive heard people saying after break in, over 1700 daily will tear the spiders, then you got others saying they have played it on 2500 for years no probs. So whats the deal? I got the electrical for 3500 watts and 3kw for sub amps, where to begin?

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[slim2fattycake 10+ year member]

its all on how people play and how well they know stress in an audio system. you can blow them on 400 watts and you can be fine with 3500 watts. if you already have the power then go with it, there's always something called "gain". //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/wink.gif.608e3ea05f1a9f98611af0861652f8fb.gif

 

[Lowflyin 10+ year member]

Iplanned on a 2 week 1000w break in then setting it at 2200 and keeping it there. Possibly a full 3000 for comps if i ever decide on going or if there is any near pittsburgh.

 

[Lowflyin 10+ year member]

I also understand they are ripping from overexcursion, would this only be from the very low notes? Plan on tuning box to 35 and setting SS around 32. Will I be safe at 2200 doing that ? between 5-5.5 cuft box too.

 

[Papermaker85 5,000+ posts]

6 cubes tuned to 36 2500 if you are careful..

They use the most nonlinear spiders I've even seen on a woofer..

They just aren't ideal for high excursion situations..

 

[Towncar 10+ year member]

I never had any issues with the spider when I ran my 18. I had the copper coils at first, and it did great. Then I reconed it to the alum coils.. Ran it off an aq 2200.1, even purposely clipped the amp, and the sub always held up. Get the alum coils for stronger softparts, and higher power applications If you really want to throw a ton of power to them.

 

[shizzzon 10+ year member]

different setups will change the capability of how much a sub can handle and for how long and how it's used.

My AQ HD3(American made) has been in an install where it was running 6,000w to it..

No problems.

I've personally ran 7,000w per sub on some DC Level4s that are only 1kwrms.

But then you can find people who have cooked subs when they matched subs and amp ratings which is bad practice anyway.

There are 2 ways to kill a sub, thermally and mechanically.

If you can mechanically control your sub throughout your playing range, then thermal control is a peice of cake.

 

[Papermaker85 5,000+ posts]

No 3" coil can take 7k rms..

 

[shizzzon 10+ year member]

your definition of can't wasn't explained either...

Time and definition of power used it key here.

7,000w worth of amp per sub is my definition of power.

For 10-15seconds at full tilt is time.

What about DC's Neo driver?

A-Team has ran that thing on a stetsom 11k in free-air for over 3min before...

And again, we are talking amp power, not clamped power.

 

[Lowflyin 10+ year member]

I already have a copper coil. Aluminum coils handle more power because there is more resistance and it takes more to get the sub going if I understand it correctly. Impractical for many situations.

When you say be careful on it, could you elaborate a little more as exactly how to be careful with it?

 

[Flastrongman 10+ year member]

what shizzon said. Your box rise will play a big factor on "power handling".

 

[Papermaker85 5,000+ posts]

What I mean is set the gains correctly set the xover and subsonic filter properly and u should be fine..

 

[hispls 5,000+ posts]

The spiders on AQ subs fail because they're **** for quality control. Some will be fine for years, some will fail regardless of how much magical "break in" they get. "break in" is a largely a myth propagated by the industry to cop out of honoring warranties IMHO.

You can safely run a 3" coil with 1200W forever (clean sine wave). Anything beyond that and it's all a matter of time. 3KW it may hold up for a couple songs, 7KW for half a minute, etc. As far as mechanical power handling, if you tune your box to play as low as you like and use HPF to cross over anything below where the port unloads you won't have to worry about it.

 

[audioholic 5,000+ posts]

Ive heard people saying after break in, over 1700 daily will tear the spiders, then you got others saying they have played it on 2500 for years no probs. So whats the deal? I got the electrical for 3500 watts and 3kw for sub amps, where to begin?

The next time someone tells you that you will experience mechanical failure, when all they know is wattage, explain to them that mechanical failure (over excursion) is as much or more a function of the enclosure size/type/alignment than it is simply of wattage.

 

[audioholic 5,000+ posts]

your definition of can't wasn't explained either...
Time and definition of power used it key here.

7,000w worth of amp per sub is my definition of power.

For 10-15seconds at full tilt is time.

What about DC's Neo driver?

A-Team has ran that thing on a stetsom 11k in free-air for over 3min before...

And again, we are talking amp power, not clamped power.

No offense, but what you are calling "amp power" means absolutely nothing. All that is is an arbitrary number. Its about as relevant as Pyramid painting "1000 watts max power" on their 200 watt amplifiers.

This is exactly why I hate these types of threads, full of guys claiming they ran X amount of power to a certain speaker, so they recommend its safe for others to do. No mention of actual power going to the speaker, just this "amp power" number you suggest means something.