Billy,Billy,Billy.....
I must interject here, and drop some knowledge..........
Quote:
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.
on another note you mentioned impedence matching, which with a speaker is impossible without using an "impedence matching transformer" A speakers impedence changes constantly with frequency and you could never "match" two speakers by simply using the "thele small parameters" (the spec sheet you get with the subs)
I better stop now, i keep opening up new cans of worms and really need to get some work done, here at work.
Hope to not offend but to educate......
Peas,
AaRoN