Amp watts?
 

Ok, Im just getting into the audio department and I have a few questions. Im not jumping into it seriously but I'd like to get upgraded a bit. One thing I have noticed though and maybe you can explain and help me. Ok, speakers in general have a wattage rating. Nominal and max, and its important to keep these in the right range. I had a Pioneer 760 amp and I realized it had no controls on watts. Actually it had bass boost, gain control, and lp/fr, thats all. SO how are you to adjust these. Do you just go off the gain control. Well now I have a phoenix gold 800(4 ch) and it is more overly the same. More knobs but it is still mainly lp,hp,by,etc. , frequency(the gain control i imagine), bass boost, and a switch for rear or front speakers. Anyways, this frequency is marked for 40 to 400 for 2 channels. So is that the watts even though it says Hz, becuase 400 for front and rear equals the 800 the amp holds. If the speakers I just put in are 50, should I put this on 50? Currently I have 2 10" subs that I think are 175 each bridged on the rear channels so should I put this up on 350 since I have 2? thanks for the help..

RE: Amp watts?
 

alright amp 101 you can control the power out of the amp with the gain control. the lp=low pass hp=high pass that is your crossover. the higher the number the higher the frequency. subs need to be on lp with the cross over set no higher than 85-100 pending on box. high pass filter works great for highs and normally has a crossover point around 86. the amps power rating is based off 12volts(check your fusing and multiply by twelve or fourteen= peak output range) keep in mind gain is not frequency. your gain is how you control your amps output whereas frequency (crossover points) are used for tuning the system and keeping everything crisp and clear

RE: Amp watts?
 

Pending box....and pending driver.

Just curious - what gives you the idea that high pass is "normally" set at 86? I have NEVER seen a trend favoring ANY high-pass setting.

RE: Amp watts?
 

well in all the vehicles i have built, both personally and professionally utilizing two pair of 6 1/2 components in front i have always crossed around the mid eightys. i base this off my standard box o preference of a ported encloser ports tuned at about 48-54 for sq. the sound field becomes cluttered imo with your high pass dropping below 80 i have never really ran subs up over 78 - 86 even with tens. now your setting will change pending on eq parametric eq and dsp setting and naturally on user preference.

RE: Amp watts?
 

mm ok, well ill have to go do some fiddling...ok, i wish i had a camera so I could show you my setup I currently have, I will work on that

So far I have had the factory head unit replaced with a cheap Xplod, and the 4 6x8's replaced with Pioneer 6x8's. I then got the Phoenix Gold amp and have the 2 subs running of of it. I had a set of xplod 5.25's laying around so I enlarged 2 holes in the rear deck lid and mounted them in it. I have all the wires run but not connected to the amp yet. The subs are connected but im probably running them low cuz I dont want to ruin them.

I guess this would make the fading feature pointless but because of the setup of the amp, I plan on bridging the subs to the 2 rear channels and the 2 speakers to the front channels(even though they are in the back). Ideally, it would be awesome to bridge a speaker and a sub to the front/ rear right and the other to the front/rear left but lol, I dont think that would be smart...and my crossover is set up like...

lp hp by front

/

by hp lp rear

or something like that, but i couldnt anyways...

so, do you guys think it would be ok to run the subs off the rear and the speakers off the front since i have two gains, and set them for each differntly?

but I still have to ask, why the watts nominal and max if you cant set that number?

RE: Amp watts?
 

you control the power out on the amp with the VOLUME ---i understand what your trying to say but the gain control is not a volume knob.


Also in response to the original post---the amp doesn't have a control labeled "watts" becasue thats what the volume knob does. the gain control is for matching amps outputs with the signal driven by the headunit. here is a gain setting tutorial for those who are interested in getting the cleanest sound out of their setup. it can be somewhat complicated to a beginner but all professional installs should be gain matched. http://mobile.jlaudio.com/support_pages.php?page_id=143

RE: Amp watts?
 

I tried to gain match but something was wrong. No matter what I did, all I could get was 0 volts from the amp! Gain all the way down was 0, all the way up was 0. I dont know whats wrong.

RE: Amp watts?
 

Actually the "Watts" rating on a speaker is based mostly on its ability to disperse heat over a given time. The amount of Watts an amplifier is going to store and have available is not going to change by simply turning the gain down. The gain on an amp is what we call a level matching device, and allows the full power of an amp to be realized with a given input voltage. By turning up the gain, over the level of the input signal, all you are doing is allowing the amp to overdrive its distortion limits. If you notice on any amp, there are level adjustment increments, and they are labled usually from 0.1 volts up to about 4-9 volts depending on the amp. The proper way to set up any amp, no matter what you think, or have heard before, is to turn the amp all the way down, turn up the radio as loud as possible before detecting distortion, and then raising the level of the amp until you hear a bit of distortion, then you back it down a hair to remove the distortion. If you have an EQ, or line amplifier, you also turn it down all the way, and tune it the same way, before you tune the amp, which should be the last piece adjusted..

RE: Amp watts?
 

mmm k thanks