nOOb
Thread Starter
Joined: Jul 2006
Posts: 41
From:
nOOb
ok so i dont know anything about 4ohms and watts. in the next year im hoping to add 2 12's but i dont know anything about matching subs with an amp. i want to be able to do it my self. i went to a car stereo store to mabey understand but what the guy was saying was completely over my head. i think he did that on purpose so i would think it was to hard and just leave it to him. another thing i was thinking about doing is replacing the stock speakers. the front left sounds like its going out.. when bass hits hard i hear almost like a rattle. basicaly what i want to know is where the diagrams or easy explanations are? i tried google but i was still a lil bit lost. im usualy really good with electronics, but this is hard to understand for somereason. thanks for reading..
Jess
Jess
HCF Member
Joined: Aug 2005
Posts: 2,821
From: Rochester, NY
RE: nOOb
K, here's a break down as simple as I can make it.
Ohms is the impedence (resistance) of the speaker coils. There's two ways of wiring subs and speakers to yield different impedences, series and parallel. Parallel is the most common and wires all the negative and positive termanals of a subwoofer combination together to the negative and positives on the amps. To calculate the impedence of a parallel circuit use the following equation:
1/total impedence = 1/coil impedence + 1/coil impedence + etc + etc...
The other setup, series is when the coils create a "loop." The positive of one coil is wired to the positve of the amp and the negative goes to the positive of the other coil, the negative of that coil goes to the negative of the amp or the positive of the next coil. The impedence equation for this setup is:
total impedence = coil impedence + coil impedence + etc + etc...
Generally, but dependant on the amp, the lower the impedence the more power you'll get from the amp. Most amps are stable down to 1 ohm now.
Now, Watts, which is the power of the system. RMS (root mean squared) is the "average" amount of power the speaker sees or can handle. Most good speakers and amps measure power in RMS. Peak is the maximum amount of power a speaker can handle or the max an amp can supply for a very short amount of time. A lot of the lower quality speakers and amps list power ratings in peak to make themselves look better. Be carefull when matching speakers and amps that you don't get a 500W RMS amp and a 500W peak sub.
Ohms is the impedence (resistance) of the speaker coils. There's two ways of wiring subs and speakers to yield different impedences, series and parallel. Parallel is the most common and wires all the negative and positive termanals of a subwoofer combination together to the negative and positives on the amps. To calculate the impedence of a parallel circuit use the following equation:
1/total impedence = 1/coil impedence + 1/coil impedence + etc + etc...
The other setup, series is when the coils create a "loop." The positive of one coil is wired to the positve of the amp and the negative goes to the positive of the other coil, the negative of that coil goes to the negative of the amp or the positive of the next coil. The impedence equation for this setup is:
total impedence = coil impedence + coil impedence + etc + etc...
Generally, but dependant on the amp, the lower the impedence the more power you'll get from the amp. Most amps are stable down to 1 ohm now.
Now, Watts, which is the power of the system. RMS (root mean squared) is the "average" amount of power the speaker sees or can handle. Most good speakers and amps measure power in RMS. Peak is the maximum amount of power a speaker can handle or the max an amp can supply for a very short amount of time. A lot of the lower quality speakers and amps list power ratings in peak to make themselves look better. Be carefull when matching speakers and amps that you don't get a 500W RMS amp and a 500W peak sub.
Thread
Thread Starter
Forum
Replies
Last Post
Drdslove
New Member Introductions
10
Jun 3, 2009 08:12 PM