What amp should i get to power 3 4ohm subs?

Question

I want to get 3 12" Single 4 ohms Xplod Series Subwoofer (Sony XS-L124P5B) with RMS: 380 watts and Peak: 1300 watts. Its impedance is Single 4 ohms. I want an amp to power all 3 of these equally. What should i get for up to $350 max.

Answer 1

ok a couple of things

with three SVC 4ohm subs you can get impedances of 1.33 or 12ohms (the lower the impedance at the amp the lower the sound quality but the easier/cheaper it is to power them), here is a diagram of how they should be wired http://www.the12volt.com/caraudio/woofer...

so the amp you need will have about 1140watts RMS @ 1 or 12ohms (i know you will go with 1ohm because you would spend at least a couple grand on amps with the 12ohm setup)

when it comes to car audio you always get what you pay for, which brings me to my next point

always buy from companies that are CEA-compliant- which means that their amps/radios have beed tested and produce or exceed the advertised RMS wattage with minimum distortion and that their subs/speakers can handle their rated RMS wattages also (and you wont find a CEA-compliant amp with the nessacary wattage anywhere ner that low of a price)

the reason to buy CEA-compliant brands is for matching of subs and amps- if you dont have any idea of how much RMS wattage something is really making you cant match it to subs because you will be under or over powering them

If you send too much power to your sub, you risk damaging it. The cone of the speaker and the mechanical parts that make it move may break under the stress. Surprisingly, too little power can also damage your subwoofer — in fact, it's actually more common than damage caused by overpowering.

When the volume is turned up and the amp doesn't have enough power, the signal becomes distorted, or "clipped." This distorted signal can cause parts of the speaker to overheat, warp and melt. Not good!

You don't have to match speaker and amp wattages exactly. An amp with a higher output than the speaker's rating won't necessarily damage the speaker — just turn the amp down a bit if you hear distortion from the sub and don't run the speaker at extremely loud volumes for lengthy periods. Likewise, you'll be OK with a lower powered amp if you keep the volume down and don't feed a distorted signal to the sub.

here are the CEA-compliant brands

Alpine  

Bazooka  

Blaupunkt  

Clarion  

Eclipse  

Infinity  

JBL

JL Audio  

Kenwood

Kicker  

MTX  

Pioneer

Polk Audio

Rockford Fosgate  

Sony

most CEA-compliant brands are not stable below 2ohms (i know that fosgate amps are) because of the lowered sound quality you run a higher risk of them be distorted (the main cause of sub failure)

here is a good amp http://www.sonicelectronix.com/item_2809... or http://www.sonicelectronix.com/item_9850...

or you could look into three smaller amps for each sub

hope this helps, good luck

Answer 2

Well you can get a 2.66 ohm load from them subs, I guess when you use the basic woofer calculators you can't figure that out hey guys?

You would wire 2 in series then one in parallel, which would give you 2.66 Ohm. So any 2 Ohm stable amp that is the correct wattage would be fine. I'd recommend a 1200W Class D Mono Block, look for an amp that is rated as 1200W @ 2 Ohm. Your not going to get the full 1200W as your running a 2.66 Ohm load and not a straight 2 Ohm load. It should fit them subs about perfectly.

Answer 3

you need a mono amp that is stable @1ohm and pushes 1200w.  The load your amp will see from your subs will be 1.3ohms so that should match up right. Check out a concept 1200.1