Author Topic: Watts an Ohmn all about?  (Read 4018 times)

Offline Colin

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Watts an Ohmn all about?
« on: 01 July 2004, 13:41 »
A not so daft question but i have a 2ohmn stable amp but as most subs are 4ohmn, can i apply another 4ohmn load in the form of a seperate resistor to trick my amp into thinking it's running a pair of subs at 2ohmn. i only really want to run one sub but would like to squeeze the extra power out of the amp.
Can this be done anyone?
or am i heading for an expensive meltdown?
cheers

Offline seyles

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Re:Watts an Ohmn all about?
« Reply #1 on: 01 July 2004, 21:16 »
If your amp is stable at 2 ohms it will be stable at 4ohms.
Putting a 4 ohms resistor in parallel with your sub will show up as a 2 ohm load to the amplifier and will theroreticaly pull twice as many watts out of the amp. In practice it won't quite be double. The problem your solution has is that even if your amp was putting out twice the power, half of it would be going through the resistor and the other half through the speaker. So no gain there.
The only way to exploit the power from the amp is to use a 2 ohm speaker or two 4 ohms in parrallel. If you go for the 2 speaker option you could go for the isobaric set up which won't take up any more room because this setup halves the Vas which directly relates to the volume of the box, in other words halves the volume.
Hope this helps.

Offline Dizzie

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Re:Watts an Ohmn all about?
« Reply #2 on: 02 July 2004, 01:03 »
that's confused even me! lol

I've never come across anyone doing what you want to do. If you run at 2 ohm you create more power yes, but the more power goes through 2 speakers. my Genesis amp creates 2 x 95w @ 4ohm. when run in 2 ohm mode it creates 2 x 145w. Not double power is it. I wanted to run 2 SVC subs off it in 2 ohm mode so they'd both get 145w each, but there was no way I could do that so I now run them in 4ohm mode and it's sounding awesome. even with a mere 95w going into them.

if you buy a dual voice coil (DVC) sub you can wire it up to run in 2 ohm mode.

The best thing to do would be to buy the biggest baddest amp you can afford. that way you can run it in 4ohm with the gain turned right down and draw less current from the battery and create less heat!

Also, forget PMPO figures. these are useless. The RMS output figures are where it counts.

I was previously running 2 12" Alpine '1000w' subs off a Kenwood '1600w' Amp in 1ohm (I think). The bass was constantly cutting out under high load even with a power cap in there and a 90amp alternator! I'm now trial running 2 12" JL 125w subs with a little 2 channel Genesis amp kicking out 95w a channel and it's almost as loud as before. Once I get the front speakers running and have the ability to set the headunit right it'll be better still!
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Offline AdamB

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Re:Watts an Ohmn all about?
« Reply #3 on: 02 July 2004, 07:37 »

Also, forget PMPO figures. these are useless. The RMS output figures are where it counts.


FYI: RMS = peak power x 0.707
       
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Offline Dizzie

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Re:Watts an Ohmn all about?
« Reply #4 on: 02 July 2004, 09:26 »
shouldn't that be the other way round Ad?

RMS is always lower  ???
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Offline S11EPS

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Re:Watts an Ohmn all about?
« Reply #5 on: 02 July 2004, 09:29 »
Yeah, so thats right.

If you multiply one number by another number (thats less than 1) the end figure will be lower.

ie: 10 * 0.5 = 5

So if peak was 100 multiply it by 0.707 RMS equals 70.7


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Offline AdamB

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Re:Watts an Ohmn all about?
« Reply #6 on: 02 July 2004, 09:34 »
The other way (to convert RMS to Peak) is RMS x 1.414
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Offline tobz.

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Re:Watts an Ohmn all about?
« Reply #7 on: 02 July 2004, 09:35 »
Yeah Diz multiplying peak power by 0.707 will result in a lower value.
In answer to Colins question you can't simply put a resistor in parallel with your sub to trick it into thinking it's running a 2ohm load. Although the voice coil on a speaker is a resistor because it is moving in a magnetic field the load is an inductive one, a pure resistive load would behave very differently and the amp wouldn't like it. Besides have you any idea how big the necessary resistor would be (100+ watts) and how much heat it would generate (if it were possible to do such a thing). Basically 2ohm stability is a nice feature to have if you need to run two subs otherwise just forget about it, by the way I am on the right forum here aren't I electronic geek weekly yeah???  ;)

Cheers
Toby



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Offline Dizzie

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Re:Watts an Ohmn all about?
« Reply #8 on: 02 July 2004, 09:39 »
sorry ads. it's too early for the educational answers from me  :P
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Offline AdamB

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Re:Watts an Ohmn all about?
« Reply #9 on: 02 July 2004, 09:46 »
^ You should try figuring electronics out at 3 in the morning after a 12 hour shift, when the brain is on auto pilot!!
11 years as an electronics engineer, before taking to the air, gives me a bit of an advantage though  :)
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