bigaudiofanati2
10+ year member
CarAudio.com Veteran
I have a sub that takes 350 watts and that is what i am giving it and it dosent clip at all of corse i am using a 1000 watt amp. lol
im over powering my type Rs
01 S 10
10+ year member
LOUD
sometimes you'll hear that underpowering the subs will "blow" them. what ends up happening is the n00b cranks the gain and bassboost all the way up on the lower powered amp and clips the fck out of the signal and that will build up heat in the sub. poof
Your gonna get a bunch of diff answers. I might be wrong but I think most people would aggree that its best to power match sub to amp etc. But that it depends on the sub. I always try to get as close as possible to match sub rms to amp rms. You're gonna find that a lot of people here like to give the type R way more power than its rated for, let one of them tell you how that's working for them.
dman4486
5,000+ posts
RememberedHowToChangethis
under powering will never directly cause failure. under powering only causes issues when the owner tries to turn the gain up further and pushes the amp into clipping.
overpowering can cause failure due to thermal limits of the driver. IE. too much power will cause the coils to get hot and die. Now how much power that is depends on the driver and what enclosure it is in.
my rsd10d are rated for 350wrms and I have the two of them running off of ~1250wrms in a 2cube @ 24hz vented enclosure. I ran them for 7+ hours on a trip to florida with no temp issues.
overpowering can cause failure due to thermal limits of the driver. IE. too much power will cause the coils to get hot and die. Now how much power that is depends on the driver and what enclosure it is in.
my rsd10d are rated for 350wrms and I have the two of them running off of ~1250wrms in a 2cube @ 24hz vented enclosure. I ran them for 7+ hours on a trip to florida with no temp issues.
IDSkoT
5,000+ posts
Resonating Reticular
Dman's right again.
"Underpowering" a driver is the same as turning the volume knob down. They aren't reaching their full potential, but they will NEVER blow from getting clean power and it being less than rated.
Over-powering is used wrong, however. Over-powering is only true when a driver dies due to excessive power. However, giving a drive more than rated is fine, in most cases. It depends on the design and manufacturer, weather, etc. By giving the driver more power, the coil will get hotter, and if given too much power, the coil will burn out.
Giving a driver less power than rated is better (assuming the power isn't from a clipped signal) than giving it more than rated. However, there are many variables to consider.
But there are a myriad of different threads discussing this. I'm sad that the OP didn't just SEARCH.
IDSkoT
5,000+ posts
Resonating Reticular
What do you mean by this?
If you set the amp to == Rated power, you should be able to crank it all day every day, with no problems. (Although, this depends on the driver / manufacturer. Some over-rate their drivers to make them seem better while other under-rate them for safety / longevity reasons.)
A lot of people give their drivers more than rated. Mine are rated at 250 a piece and they're getting 300. (Not much, I know.) I know that some people give 500-1000 more W-RMS than rated.
n2audio
5,000+ posts
OPTIDRIVEN
cshaw
10+ year member
free the robots
getting an amp that has more power than you need is vital for head room and better dynamics.
The act of connecting an amplifier that is capable of putting out more or less rms wattage than the speaker's rms rating does not and can not in and of itself cause speaker failure. Speakers fail because of what the user does with the controls at the head unit and the amp.
Think of it this way: I could put a 35 watt amplifier channel to a 180 watt speaker, play it with the volume at 5 all day long every day for years, and probably never cause a problem.
I could also connect a 500 watt rms amplifier to that same 180 watt speaker and play it with the volume at 5 all day long every day for years, and probably never cause a problem.
And the act of connecting, say a 50 watt speaker to either a 30 or a 55 watt amplifier does not cause that speaker to magically burst into flames instantanously. Ignore the numbers on the speaker and amplifier box. You may have 100 watts per channel but at any given moment you may actually be giving that speaker as few as 20 and it's quite possibly that it has never even seen the full 100.
In the first case if the 180 watt speaker isn't very sensitive things won't get loud enough so alot of people, even alot of professional installers, will crank the gain some to make up for it and try to get the system to reach maximum volume more quickly. In combination with this alot of people will crank their head unit until it's putting out a distorted signal, which is amplified before being sent to the speakers. Thermal failure is a very likely result.
In the second case if I set the gain to deliver that full 500 watts at my head unit's maximum undistorted volume setting then keep the volume in that region continuously, there is a good chance that that speaker will get overdriven and mechanical failure could result. Thermal too, but less likely in this situation because the building up of excess heat in the voicecoils is not as continuous as it is with a severely clipped signal.
Subs can take it more easily than door speakers, and how quickly you reach meltdown with a door speaker will depend on how much more you're delivering to it than what it's rated for and simultaneously how low you're trying to make it play.
Im no expert but Ive done some reading. The reality of how an amplifier delivers power and under what circumstances a speaker's ability to handle it is tested really is quite different from the common textbook advice to match RMS ratings that you will hear in most car audio shops.
So nope, neither in and of itself automatically causes melt down but in my opinion it's better to overpower than to underpower. You want to make sure you get sufficient loudness to appreciate the detail in your music without straining anything. There are people who connect speakers to amplifiers rated for 2,3, or even 4 times that speaker's rms rating. Now I assume we're talking about really good speakers and clean power. If you understand that an amplifier's power delivery is not flat and linner when you play dynamic music, and you back off on the gains and volume enough that the speaker is unlikely to spend any real amounts of time during normal listening exceeding its true limits, you can get loud, quality sound that is clean right up to the uppermost peaks and highest volumes without having to raise your gain and accept any distortion in your system.
It's all about how loud you need things so you can appreciate your music without making adjustments that will blow something up, and whether you know how to properly 'overpower' a speaker.
Think of it this way: I could put a 35 watt amplifier channel to a 180 watt speaker, play it with the volume at 5 all day long every day for years, and probably never cause a problem.
I could also connect a 500 watt rms amplifier to that same 180 watt speaker and play it with the volume at 5 all day long every day for years, and probably never cause a problem.
And the act of connecting, say a 50 watt speaker to either a 30 or a 55 watt amplifier does not cause that speaker to magically burst into flames instantanously. Ignore the numbers on the speaker and amplifier box. You may have 100 watts per channel but at any given moment you may actually be giving that speaker as few as 20 and it's quite possibly that it has never even seen the full 100.
In the first case if the 180 watt speaker isn't very sensitive things won't get loud enough so alot of people, even alot of professional installers, will crank the gain some to make up for it and try to get the system to reach maximum volume more quickly. In combination with this alot of people will crank their head unit until it's putting out a distorted signal, which is amplified before being sent to the speakers. Thermal failure is a very likely result.
In the second case if I set the gain to deliver that full 500 watts at my head unit's maximum undistorted volume setting then keep the volume in that region continuously, there is a good chance that that speaker will get overdriven and mechanical failure could result. Thermal too, but less likely in this situation because the building up of excess heat in the voicecoils is not as continuous as it is with a severely clipped signal.
Subs can take it more easily than door speakers, and how quickly you reach meltdown with a door speaker will depend on how much more you're delivering to it than what it's rated for and simultaneously how low you're trying to make it play.
Im no expert but Ive done some reading. The reality of how an amplifier delivers power and under what circumstances a speaker's ability to handle it is tested really is quite different from the common textbook advice to match RMS ratings that you will hear in most car audio shops.
So nope, neither in and of itself automatically causes melt down but in my opinion it's better to overpower than to underpower. You want to make sure you get sufficient loudness to appreciate the detail in your music without straining anything. There are people who connect speakers to amplifiers rated for 2,3, or even 4 times that speaker's rms rating. Now I assume we're talking about really good speakers and clean power. If you understand that an amplifier's power delivery is not flat and linner when you play dynamic music, and you back off on the gains and volume enough that the speaker is unlikely to spend any real amounts of time during normal listening exceeding its true limits, you can get loud, quality sound that is clean right up to the uppermost peaks and highest volumes without having to raise your gain and accept any distortion in your system.
It's all about how loud you need things so you can appreciate your music without making adjustments that will blow something up, and whether you know how to properly 'overpower' a speaker.
think about it like this... you turn the volume down.. did you you blow anything no.. you are turning down the power the h/u is sending out.. so even if at the full volume you are giving the 1000 watts to the sub(s) if you turn down the volume the amp will receive less and less power signal..
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