Newb question about amp and sub

jon2341 · 10-25-2006, 10:06 PM

Would a thunder 5500 4 ohm duel coil 300 watt mtx sub be able to pump out full bass and watts on a mono kicker 150 rms watts at 4 ohms and 300 watts rms at 2 ohms? or should I get a different amp? and which amp should I get if I should get a different amp? Any ideas?
THANKS

M.F.K · 10-26-2006, 12:19 AM

Yup i think it should. From the info you provided about the sub. You say its a dual voice coil sub right? that means that both the voice coils are connected in parallel they create a resistance of 2 ohms. And since your amp can handle 300 watts RMS at 2 ohms. It can power the sub.

jon2341 · 10-26-2006, 06:40 PM

Yea its a dual voice coil, but its also 4 ohms. I wasn't sure if the mono 300 rms wattage @ 2 ohms could work with it, because the sub is 4 ohms and the amp does 150W at 4 ohms. So the amp should be able to power the sub so the sub kicks at 300W?

RedGTiVR6 · 10-26-2006, 07:17 PM

moved to the appropriate forum. please pay attention to where you are posting next time. since your new, I guess i can't fault you too much!

Wire the sub in parallel and the amp will see 2 ohms. Then you will be feeding the sub 300 watts. Provided that the sub is a total of 300 watts and not 300 watts per coil.

Even then it could be fine if you tuned the gains properly and left it completely alone.

monkeyc · 10-28-2006, 04:13 PM

Ok, I bet this reply will be too late, but here it goes anyway. Im a MECP certified installer. Ive been installing professionaly for about 3yrs now. I also have college background in Physics and Electronics. Enough about me, I just wanted to give some peace of mind about my reply.

The MTX 5500 DVC Sub in this case is a dual 4ohm speaker. This simply means that there are two seperate voice coils (copper windings in the motor assymbly) that are both rated at 4 ohms of resistance each. If you wire the two voice coils in parallel as mentioned above the resistance will be divided by two.

Parallel: 1/(R total) = 1/(R1) + 1/(R2) +.......... +1/(Rn)

You will want to wire your single DVC sub up this way in order to get twice the effective power out of the amp. Since the amp is a mono block (meaning it only has one output channel), it will be able to handle ohm loads lower than 4. But, like everything else, there is some compromising. By lowering the resistance by a factor of 2, you increase the THD (Total Harmonic Distortion) by a factor of ~2. In other words, the sound quality coming from this set up is lower than a similar system with a 4, 8, or 16 ohm load (typical values for car and home use). That being said, you are probably not interested in sound quality since you have puchased products that arent really designed for sound quality, but rather SPL (Sound Pressure Level).

So, in conclusion, wire both positive terminals from the sub to the positive terminal of the amp, and both negative terminals from the sub to the negative terminal of the amp and you'll have beats!

P.S. Don't ever underestimate the power of a well designed/built speaker enclosure! Get a good ported/vented box that closely matches the volume requirements of the sub for SPL!

Good luck!