Should I have more watts in my subwoofer than my amp or more in the amp?

Question

Its hard to explain. I want to make my sub sound the best, if its a 1000 watt sub, do I need more or less watts in an amp? I don't want to blow it out.

Answer 1

It is a matter of personal preference. If your amp has a higher watt rating than your woofer you know you are at the speakers max when it distorts and you risk damaging the speaker. If your amp is rated lower than the woofers clipping can occur. Clipping occurs when an amplifier is asked to deliver more current to a speaker than the amp is capable of doing. When an amplifier clips, it literally cuts off the tops and bottoms of the musical waveforms that it's trying to reproduce, thus the term. This introduces a huge amount of distortion into the output signal. Clipping can be heard as a crunching sound on musical peaks. Clipping can damage both the speaker and the amp. For this reason I prefer to have more amp than woofer, amps  cost more to replace. Either way use your ears and you should not have any issues.

Answer 2

Peak is actually a pretty useless way of looking at the specs. You want to know what it can consistantly put out, so check out the RMS ratings. If it's a reputable brand and claims 1000w RMS, go for the same (or more) in a reputable brand amp. Your main concern should be that it's a CEA-2006 compliant amp, which basically means it can actually put out what it says. The potentially dangerous thing about running an amp that isn't powerful enough is if you push it too hard, it'll clip your signal and cause dangerous signal output to your sub, which can damage both the sub and amp. Whereas with an amp more powerful all you have to worry about is blowing your sub. Though using common sense will generally keep that from happening!

Answer 3

on the amp   its has a power output stated either peak to peak or peak... find the peak power output .and you can use speakers with that watt rating or less.. also find  the required impedence of he speakers.. that is all written up on part of the amp ok.

Answer 4

Forget the watts, all you need to look at is RMS POWER.

Match up RMS power on your subs with any desent amplifier RMS power.

for example.

2 12 inch subs together 600 RMS

you need 600 RMS power amp.

Look for a good brands like alpine, kenwood ect...

Good luck