Subs Under rated

Ok, so I've got 2 Infinity reference 12s and they pound good through my JBL amp, but can i put more power to them. Spec sheet says 300 rms, but i've been talking with a few people who all tell me that Infinity and many other companies under rate their subs. I have a friend who is trying to get rid of his Fosgate 1000 watt amp, which would be around 500 to each subs, almost 200 more than rms? Would the subs hold up under that beating, or would i quickly be returning to circuit city for my free replacement under warrenty?

Shouldn't be a problem...keep the gain on the amp at a level that's suitable. If you hear any distortion from the subs, turn it down. At those numbers, the amp would drive well at 60% power. But we know you can go higher than that with those subs. 70%-75% probably...best case here is that you're never going to be pushing your amp in it's upper reaches...that's where it starts to clip the signal and wreck your subs. Just don't try to run the amp at 100%.

Originally posted by Aaron'z 2.5RS from the NASIOC forums

I must interject here, and drop some knowledge..........

>> I'm from the RC school of thought, worry about overpowering them because heat is what blows speakers... not lack of heat.


This is a VERY common misconception and is exactaly the oppisite.
When you do not have enough power and try and push things harder, amps have a tendency to "clip" or distort. An amps output is an AC waveform, when an amp clips it clips off the top and bottom of that waveform......sending straight DC out to the speaker. If you have ever dropped a screwdriver across the terminals of your battery you would see that it will weld itself to the terminals. Well, the same thing happens in an "under-powered" sub. The amp clips, sends out DC to the voice coil, it starts to heat up and eventually the glue starts to soften and finally the coil either burns to an "open" or it swells enought to come in contact with the rest of the motor structure and you get that grinding sounds and/or all movement stop peroid.

So the moral of the story is....too much power is just enough.

Most people use the "gain" on an amp as a volume control, where the gain is used to match the output of the component before the amp, to the input section of the amp. With that said, having more power allows you to use less gain to get the SAME ammount of output.

I got these subs. You should be ok because these subs have a peak power handling of 1200 watts

BTW, we are talking 1000 watts RMS for that amp, right? What RF amp are you talking about?

The amp is Rockford Fosgate 1001bd. Specs say 500x1@4 ohms, and 1000X1@2ohms, i figure since i have to SVC 4 ohm subs wired in parallel, it'll produce a 2 ohm load, so it should be receiving around 1000, right?

Yeah, that wiring would get you 2 ohms, so 500 watts per sub. Like havik said, those subs peak at 1200 watts and you know they're underrated. Of course, I've seen plenty to indicate that RF amp are underrated too. On the cardomain page, some guy said that it's probably pushing more like 1150 at 2 ohms. Doesn't really matter, just pay attention to your gain level and keep it low enough that you don't get distortion from your subs. You're far better off running a big amp at 80% capacity than a smaller one at 95% or 100%. The second scenario shortens the amp's life and clips the signal to the subs, shortening their life too.

Think of all those "cool" guys next to you at traffic lights that "race" us. I go and don't go over 3500 rpm while he's revving it real high and shifting all crappy...whose engine and tranny are working harder? Go with the big amp.

Oh, and when I say not to turn the gain all the way up, you won't be sacrificing volume for that. If your amp can put out 1000 watts but you really only want to use 600 watts of that power, putting the gain about 60% would put about 600 watts onto that channel, driving the subs to what they want, making them as loud as a 600 watt amp at full power but with much cleaner sound.

Cool, Thanks for all the info, i just got it from my friend, definately had to turn the gain DOWN, my subs were crying, its at about 50 percent, and still rocks my trunk harded the my JBL did, I LOVE THIS AMP

[xsavyor1]

it is better to over power a sub than under power it! You can always turn it down, But you can get rid of distortion in tha high volume of a low powered amp.