Selecting the correct sub amp for my sub

**tobz** · 03-24-2009, 05:29 PM

I have a 1600W peak vibe cbr 12" evo the amp in it is faulty, the sub how ever is fine it's currentley running off of a tiny little amp but it's 150W or something stupid.

it was a built in amp, in it. I have it running off of another one fine at the moment but it's too small. So what I need to know is my sub is 550W rms I beleive and 1600W peak, do I get a 1600W amp or 550W? What do I need to go for if I want my amp to take 6x9's?

Thanks!

**WuNgUn** · 03-24-2009, 06:05 PM

Built in amp?? Is this a powered surround sound sub or something??
300 or 400 real class-D watts would be plenty of power for something like that. Never go by 'peak' ratings on amps...and if it's a quality amp, it'll tell you actual, usable power figures...

**tobz** · 03-24-2009, 07:40 PM

I'm a complete newbie, sorry. It's just a normal sub nothing serious. I'm looking at the Vibe a7 slick 1300 peak, the rms values are confusing me, can you shed some light on what this means?

# Power @ 4 ohms 1 x 300 WRMS
# Power @ 2 Ohms 1 x 600 WRMS
# Power @ 1 Ohm 1 x 750 WRMS

Does this mean if I wire my sub into the terminals with 4 or 2 or 1 ohms written on them that it will throw out 300/600/750 Rms?

I need around the 600 WRMS area.
Will this amp suit me?

**WuNgUn** · 03-24-2009, 08:06 PM

RMS stands for 'root mean square', which sorta tells you what kind of clean power to expect from the amp...
It's likely capable of more, but then you get distortion (clipping), which is very bad...
Never heard of a Vibe before, so I don't know what to expect...maybe some other users use one?

About the load, or Ohms, this is what the amp will deliver at those loads...
4 Ohms is typical for a car speaker...if you connected 1 to this amp, (I assume it's a single channel amp?), then you could typically get 300 watts from it...

Now if you take 2 X 4 Ohm speakers and connected them, the amp would 'see' 2 Ohms, because your basically doubling the load...
Funny thing about amplifiers is, when you do this, you get more power from them...you also get a lot more heat!
So if your sub is a 4 Ohm, or maybe a dual voice coil, or dual, 2 Ohm voice coil, this amp will drive it pretty well!!
If it's a single, 4 Ohm, then you'll likely see 300 watts, which is still substantial...

Conversely, if you were to connect a 8 Ohm speaker (typical of home speakers), you'd likely only get 150 watts from the amp....

**thekl0wn** · 03-25-2009, 09:05 AM

What sub are you running? This is more important to know than spouting peak ratings... They mean zero.

Try to stay away from the brands like Vibe, Lanzar, MA, HiFonics, etc... Just for starters, some brands to look into would be Sundown, Alpine, USAmps, JBL, etc... They have some entry-level amps that would blow the doors off the overrated Vibe amps.