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He doesnt know thats why hes asking!!!

 
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Sorry your wrong, But distortion is what burns a voicecoil up. When distortion enters the soundstream headed from the amp to your speaker it cuases the speaker play out of alinment. Meaning the voicecoil is moving perfectly up and down it starts to move side to side becuase of the extra frequencys being delivered. Companys always give there subs an rms rating based on the industry average of amplifier distortion rates. You stated in number 1 that a cheap amp will have higher distortion rates and your right, so you answered the question right there. Buy an amp with low distortion. I believe that the older solo barics 12" round sub is rms 300 that rating did not change untill they went sqaure. And finally people calm the heck down its only car audio.

 
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Good call here, Although these guys have been owned by about thirteen different companies they still make good amps. I had 2 of the son of collossus amps they are awsome.They were owned by zed audio then, man those were the days.

 
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where did u learn this? resistance WILL NOT CHANGE if you adjust the gain. if u have a 4 ohm sub, then your amp puts out the power it's rated to do at 4 ohms. if you have a dvc4ohm then u can wire it in parallel and get it to 2 ohms making the amp put out more power.

 
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btw, the older solobarics are 500wrms so u dont need that big of an amplifier for it. u can get the mtx 421d, puts out 420 at 2 ohms and mtx amps are underrated so it should put about 500 or more watts.

 
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how would it not change? when the ohms decreases, power output increases (in theory). because ohms is resistance, and if theres less resistance, you obviously can put more power through it more easily. SO, once again, in theory, this inverse relationship should hold true that if power output decreases, the ohms being put out by the amp will increase. if you dont believe this holds true, look up practically any amp and you will see that wattage goes up while the ohms load goes down. (with the exception of when an amp is bridged)

no. the sub doesnt "tell" the amp how many ohms to run at, nor does the amp "tell" the sub how many ohms to run at. thats why you have to make sure both of them "agree" ohms-wise.

 
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The impedence capability isn't affected by adjusting gain on an amplifier.

What you are saying is completely true... P = VI, great, but we're not talking about that.

The impedence rating is only the rating at which the amplifier can put out so much power given that impedence.

Turning down the gain down does nothing to affect that, it's just a volume **** on the amplifier.




You will never blow a speaker by using an amplifier that can output more power than it can handle, unless your turn it louder than the power rating of the speakers. If you have a 100 watt speaker, with an amplifier capably of putting 1,000 watts, but is only putting out 100 watts, it'll be fine.

That scenerio is ideal. Speakers blow more often when they are fed distortion, which is not just the distortion rating on the amplifier, it is when a signal clips. An idea sound wave is a sinusoidal wave, nice and smooth. When you play louder, the amplitude of these peaks are taller. At some point, the amplifier can not put out that much power, and just stops at it's highest power, and the smooth peak of the sinusoid is cut off, making the signal look a lot like a square wave, which is what destroys speakers.


I really think, to answer this questions correctly, we need to know more information. What impedence is this speaker? Also, it couldn't hurt to know what else is in his system, how he plans to get the signal to the amp [Line level comvertor/speaker level inputs?].

 
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You're retarded. Just because some audio shop tells you something, you're going to believe it? Right, and what's their prime objective? To move product possibly? They are going to tell you to buy their more expensive product because, more than likely, they are making more profit off of it. You paid $500 for a JL 500/1 (going by your figure, I have noclue which amp you have)? If yes, then yes, you're a moron.You obviously don't shop around to get the best price.


That said, to answer the question, I can't really recommend an amp without more knowledge of the speaker (which model you have, etc). Anyway, since you are obviously on a budget, I'd look into something along the lines of a JBL power series amp, or possibla a hifonics amp. Both can be had relatively cheap, yet offer decent power at a reasonable price. BTW, the old school Solo's were good speakers, especially for their time.

 
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Actually the sub DOES decide what resistence you will have. After all, the amp is not resistence to it's own power. A sub has an impedence, say 4 ohms. It has that same impedence no matter what you do with it. It has the same exact impendence sitting in the store room at Tweeter as it does hooked up to a JL 500/1. Amps do not have to "agree" at all with the speaker's impedence if you are just reading the amps possible rating. For instance, you read that your amp is 2ohm stable when bridged. It doesn't mean that a 4ohm configuration would be bad. An amps impedence rating only tells what loads you can feed it that will still allow it to run stable.


Oh, and if turning down the gains on your amp made more power, your music would get louder and louder as you DECREASED the volume. . . .

 
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Let's quit measuring d*cks here guys. Answer the guy's question on the amp............

 
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And how bout' you tell us who here is "measuring D*cks". I see 3 people, myself, Popcornplaya and Ed who are making an effort to ensure that people understand what they are doing so they make the proper choices and get the most out of thier audio needs. This guy is trying to get an amp to go to a specific speaker and we are trying to make sure he understands everything, so he knows what to look for.


BTW, I'd look used for old Kicker ZR600 just to keep it in the family and in the time frame

 
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yes i understand that, but all i was trying to say was if you have say, a 2 ohm sub and say, an amp pushing out 8 ohms, the system may have problems and won't work to its fullest potential.

hmm now i have a serious question. if the gain isnt a controller of power output, then how do companies come up with figures such as 2 x 200w and 2 x 400w for the same amp. thats well and great, but say you needed only 200w out of those 400w to power a sub rated at 200w, how would you achieve that?

 
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Ok dude, You say that an "amp pushing out 8 ohms" Right away I know that you aren't quite up on how impedence works. Amps don't push ohms. Speakers provide ohms, ohms are resistance. No amp actually provides 8 ohms. The only impedence rating an amp has is it's power and stability, given an impendence of X amount of ohms. For instance, the example you gave, 2ohm sub, amp stable to 8ohms(every amp on god's green earth is stable at 8ohms). You say there are going to problems. But nothing about that 8 ohms tells you anything about potential problems. There are going to be problems only if the amp is stable at 8ohms but NOT at 2ohms. If the amp is stable at 2ohms as well, it will not only accept the 2ohm sub, but provide much much more power to it than it would if you hooked up an 8ohm sub.

The way that companies rate amps like 2x200w and 2x400w for the same amp is exactly what we are talking about. Because amps do not provide ohms, rather accept it, then the less resistance(lower ohms) you are sending to the same amp will generate more power. SO, if we have AMP X that is stable at 2ohms or 4. And provides 200watts when given a 4ohm load (4ohm sub). Reduce the resistance (2ohm sub) and AMP X can now put out 400w.

There are plenty of people here that would be more than happy to just tell you what to buy, but I'd bet you'd rather understand why you are buying it. Spend some time in Ludlam's links to learn car audio and you'll understand things a lot better.

http://www.7thgencivic.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=108616

I think the car audio usenet faq one has the easiest info.

I hope you understand that if any one of us corrects somehting you said, it's only so that you don't misunderstand this stuff and so you get it right when you go to spend your money. We aren't trying to show you up, we are sincerely trying to help you.

 
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mmm k, not to argue but id like to know why when my solo baric was wired in parallel to 2 ohms i had problems with my amp getting very hot very quickly, but when it was wired in series to 8 ohms the problem went away. my amp runs 4 ohms at 800w rms and is 2 ohm stable.

 
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what amp was it?
was it placed in a area where air is surrounded and free?
was it mounted upside down or sideways?
was your settings correct? (gain/level/bass boost)
did you push it hard?


you have a DVC kicker solobaric 4ohm model. you hooked up your amp so it runs at 8ohms which is up to the amp if it can play at 8ohm as well as if it were ran as 2ohm or 4ohm.

 
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I agree, you do need a lesson or two in car audio basics. My post earlier was intended for you, because your misinformation can cause someone to make the wrong decisions. Why does your amp get hot at 2 ohms and not 8? That's the case for all amps. The lower the number, the heavier the load on your amp (increased resistance). It all makes sense because your amp is working harder.

 
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^^^Right on^^^

So who told you the amp was stable at 2ohms? What amp is it? Even amps that are 2ohm stable are put under more stress when run at the 2ohm. SO, at 8ohm you might not notice if the amp was improperly mounted or ventilated but it would become rapidly apparent at 2ohms. Like Saris said, almost all amps struggle at 2ohms at least a little bit. So, now that you understand that an getting hot under a 2ohm load only reinforces the point I was making, I'll give you some possible reasons as to why your amp got hot.

1. Your amp is a pos. The company made "lightning strike" power claims on the side of the box and you bought it thinking you were gonna pound your sub. What they didn't tell you was that for only $100 you can't get a 1000watt amp that doesn't melt under a 2ohm load.
2. You carpeted your amp with blankets for aesthetics and it couldn't ventilate.
3. You mounted it upside down in your spare tire well and filled the well with insulation.

Dude, no one is trying to argue but you keep making inferrances and do not understand basic audio. Spend tomorrow reading through those help sites I linked you then look back at this conversation. You'll be like

 
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its an audiobahn a8002t. according to others in this thread, audiobahn's stuff isnt exactly a pos. there was ample airflow and it was mounted properly. k ill take your adivce and read up on that stuff....as soon as i have time that is. damn SAT prep and english term papers taking up what little spare time i have.

 
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Ok, not saying its a POS but it certainly IS one of those lesser quality amps that I was talking about would tend to heat up quickly and wear out faster. Look, there has to be a trade-off somewhere. Its either cost or quality/reliability. You got a relatively powerful amp, 200w x 2 for what, like $189? The JL 300/2 is like $500 and its 150x2. See my point? The JL could cool your beer after running my mb quarts all day long. No one in this forum would be surprised to learn that you audiobahn amp got a little toasty after running at 2ohms. I'm suggesting to read through those site especially because I think you'll be so much happier understand whats going on. I liked car audio until the day I truly learned about what was going on behind the scenes, then I lOVED it.