I hate reading new things...

I was at the12volt.com and I read this post on sub wiring...now I am completely confused. It was talking about DVC subs and if using 1 VC will harm the sub. They said no. Now...someone said that using only one VC will half the power handling. And my Vmax has a power handling of 600 wrms. So it would technically be at 300 watts right now. Only using one for time being. And if I was to was to use the other one on the other channel would that be a total of 600 again? And doing that I will be putting a 4 ohm load on my amp which lets me push 300 wrms. (I think that's what it is 300 or 330.) So would that be best or what?

Using one coil on your amp will cut the power handling in half and lower the efficiency by 3dB, meaning you need twice as much power to reach the same level of output. Put those together, and if you normally have a 600rms sub that needs 200rms to get to your desired level of output, if you only use one coil you now have a 300rms sub that needs 400rms to get to your desired level of output. With the two of those together, the chance that you'll blow your sub is much higher.

It would be better to wire the coils in series and cut the power you're sending the sub in half, it will actually stay just as loud as it is now (even though power is being cut in half, because your subs efficiency is rising by 3dB), and the power handling will be doubled.

So in I need to wire it pos to pos, and neg to neg, or is it pos to neg, and neg to pos?

And crutchfield.com says "Parallel: A dual 4-ohm voice coil subwoofer with its coils wired in parallel presents a 2-ohm load to your amplifier. Since an amplifier produces more wattage at a lower impedance, the parallel connection ensures you'll get the most output from your amp. In the same fashion, if you have a stereo amplifier and two DVC subs, wire both subs for 2-ohm impedance (one per channel) for maximum output.


Series: Series wiring lets you configure multiple woofers to one amplifier at an acceptable impedance. Wire both coils in series for an 8-ohm impedance, and then wire two 8-ohm subs together in parallel for 4-ohm total impedance (perfect for most 2-channel amps bridged to mono operation). Another example: if you have a high-powered 2-channel amplifier, wire four 8-ohm subs per channel (each channel sees a 2-ohm load)."
So that means technically I would be losing power if wired in a series?

yes, power would get cut in half, but because efficiency would rise by 3dB, output would stay the same and power handling would double - no bad, all good

for series you would wire amp + to voice coil 1 +, voice coil 1 - to voice coil 2 +, and voice coil 2 - to amp -.


You might not need to wire in series though, you never told us what sub you have or what amp you have, so I have no idea how you should set it up correctly right now. All I can tell you right now is that it's better to wire in series than to run a single coil. You might be able to wire in parallel though, depending on your amp and sub.

Yeah I guess that might help. I have a Power Acoustik TS1920-2 amp and a Cerwin Vega! Vmax 12.4 sub. The amp is capable of doing 2 ohm stereo. The sub is a DVC and each VC is 4 ohms each.

Best you can do is wire in series and bridge the amp then

So what would that put power at...I think bridged at 4 ohm is 800 watts...and series is pos to neg and neg to pos for the voice coil?

They rate it at 370x2 @ 4ohm, which would put it at 740x1 @ 8ohm bridged

And that won't thermally kill my sub? I have a fear of doing that now.

Almost any amp has the ability to blow your sub, even one rated at half of the sub's power handling. It's the user the blows the sub, not the amp.

Ok...well, right now I am well below clipping the only thin that is up would be my bass boost. I also have my loud on. So with these settings would I be fine?

bass boost and the "loud" feature are your worst enemies

How do you know you're well below clipping? Have you actually tested it?

Haven't tested but someone adjusted my amp and it's way lower on the gain than what I had it...what's an easy way to test for clipping. I read somewhere using an osclioscope or something like that. I know I don't have one of those. All I have is a Digital Multimeter and a polarity tester.

The kid that tuned my stuff did the method number two. He put my volume at 22 on my hu and then adjusted from there. He did everything as listed in the second method. And he had the bass boost and loud up. But I am going to try the third method...sadly I don't know how to use my multimeter.

The problem is, unless he was using a tone at the exact frequency where the bass boost and loud features adjust, then it's useless. He could have done the test at 40hz, and set everything so that it's just right at 40hz, but if the bass boost and loud features boost 80hz, then with music you could be clipping horribly and not realize it, even with the volume well below 22.

Ok. So download a test tone at how many hz? I listen to rock and some rap. Then after that I need to unhook sub and adjust amp then rewire my sub so that I can run bridged?

The best thing to do would be to turn off loud and bass boost and then you can use any frequency you want. If you just have to leave them on then you'll need to use several frequencies and do it many times, taking the lowest setting of them all.

Ok. So turn loud off and bass boost completely off? It's the dial one on my amp. And then use the DMM to reset my amp.

yeah