KICKER L7!

[NickD85]

around two weeks ago I ordered a kicker L5 subwoofer, and an amp to power it. The amp came in a few days, but the L5 was back ordered. After contacting the place I ordered from, I was informed that the L5 is still out of stock. The good news... they're very sorry for the inconvenience, and would like to make it up to me by allowing me to upgrade to the L7, which will ship out today (a muchh better sub, usually way more expensive than the L5) for ten bucks. My only concern is that the amp I bought will put out 370 amps, while the L7 will operate up to 450. Do you guys think this will be a problem? Will the sub be underpowered? Would I ever even come close to turning it up to that kind of volume anyway?

[KyooX4]

That's awesome! The L7 will be fine with that kind of power.

[fueler]

[Fisherdude]

just adjust the amp to whatever you think sounds balanced...unless you want to pound the nig-bass so the whole town can hear.

[NickD85]

no I definitely don't want overpowering bass, and for that reason I'm really happy to get the L7, even though I won't be able to power it ALL the way up. Especially considering my speakers are still stock, I'd never want the bass up that high. More to come... if you want to see pics of it installed check out the "subwoofer goes in today" thread within the next week or so.-Nick

[Turbogst]

Whats the rms on the sub? You want to feed it that at least, or you will push distortion and take a chance in messing up a voice coil.

[NickD85]

the rms range is 50-450 watts. I think I'll be fine with the 370 watt amp

[W O T]

Theres no such thing as underpowering a sub, nor can it do any damage. Your fine

[KyooX4]

As long as the power being delivered to the sub is in the RMS range, it should be fine.

[fueler]

Theres no such thing as underpowering a sub, nor can it do any damage. Your fine

true, but only as long as youre not overdrawing the amp... thought i should clarify that

[Turbogst]

Lets make an example. Most subwoofers are rated with a thermal power rating. Now, say you hook up a subwoofer that is rated for 800 watts thermally, to an amplifier that is putting out 600 watts rms. Now, when the amplifier is properly adjusted (depending on the quality of the amp, of course), it will probably put out around 600 watts rms.

Now, when the gains and/or bass boost is turn up higher, it will send the amplifier into what is called 'clipping'. What clipping is, is exactly that - a clipped sine wave. When an amplifier starts to clip a sine wave, it starts to put out much more power than it was before, and these higher power levels, capped with the flat tops of the sine waves, are what cook speaker's voice coils. When the flat top of the sine wave is being played by the speaker, the speaker is not moving (you probably can't see it, we're talking ms here), therefore there is no cooling of the voicecoil. This leads to heat buildup, and later leads to voicecoil failure due to overheating it.

So yes a underpowered amp , would amplify distortion because you have to turn the gain up and the volume way up to be loud. Lower the volume with more power is cleaner.

Ps I have put together many SQ and SPL systems I didn't pull this out of my a**.

Modified by Turbogst at 9:15 PM 7/29/2009
Modified by Turbogst at 9:16 PM 7/29/2009