how can an amp try to put out more power than it can handle?
January 162010
someone told me my subwoofer was going to blow ( just bought a alpine mrp m500 300W rms amp paired with a kenwood 400WRMS 12" sub) and someone told me that because my amp is only 300W rms that it will clip and ruin my sub because it’ll try to put out more power than it can handle. How is that even possible? Is that true? When I tuned my amp, i put the gain less than 3/4 of the way up, the bass eq is a little higher, and all the settings on the headunit are neutralized (High-0 Mid-0 Low-0 and the loud is off), and my volume on the headunit is 20/30, which is loud enough to make my ears ring! (i’m just not used to it this loud) is my amp really gonna clip and blow my sub? Thats really dumb if it is.
Also, will i get used to the loudness of my music? It’s like a concert in my car!! I’ve only had the sub for less than two weeks, and the whole time its been tuned wrong, only today I found out that i was expecting a full sound at too low a volume and i was complaining about the bass being to powerful on some notes and less powerful on others, and i found if i turned the volume up louder (without distortion), and tune the amp accordingly, it sounds MUCH better. IF my panels ARE rattling, i can’t even hear them. So will my ears stop ringing? thanks!!!
my amp is 300Wrms @ 4ohms and my sub is single voice coil 4 ohm
Well lets start out with your first question of will a 300W RMS amplifiers hurt or destroy a 400W RMS 12" subwoofer and the answer is yes its possible but in your situation I highly doubt it will happen and here is why.
First off Alpine makes some great amplifiers, if you were using a Dual amplifier and it is 100W shy of the power your subwoofer is expecting then I am almost certain that the amplifier would overheat and be destroyed (Not the subwoofer).
Amplifiers have rates of lets say 300W at 2 ohms, which means if you bridge your subwoofer down to 1 ohm, the amplifier can actually push out more then 300W but it may not be stable pushing out more then 300W and the amp may overheat and stop working.
If your using a top quality Alpine amplifier and its only 100W RMS shy of powering your 400W Kenwood Subwoofer, nothing is going to happen, actually thats incorrect this is exactly what will happen, over time your Subwoofer will adapt and get used to being under-powered, which means if you (in the future) begin to over power it by using a different amplifier, the voice coils won’t be able to handle it and will give out ( thats where the clipping and poping will come into play).
However it shouldn’t be a huge concern with your setup, even though lots of people will argue both ways, yes it will hurt it (But ask them why it will, if they just say because its under-powered without giving an in-depth explanation then they most likely don’t know what there talking about, or they think they do but they only really know the basics of how an audio system works).
Another thing to keep in mind is that if your Amp is 300W at 2 ohms stable, make sure your subwoofer is wired up to support 2 ohms and not 1 ohm, 4 ohm, or 8 ohms.
What you even could do if you are concerned about it is to bridge the amplifier up to a 4 ohm load, if its a duel voice coil subwoofer, what this will do is lower the power requirements needed from the amplifier.
The first link below will show you how to put your subwoofer to a 4 ohm load.
As for your ear’s ringing, well when I had my first system I could barely sit in it but you get used to it so just hang in there and very soon you’ll want more bass.
Anyway the second link I posted is a YouTube video which will show you how to properly tune your amplifier and the third link I posted is a website which you can use if your ever looking to buy another amplifier.