Is this safe?

[skeavs]

My 6x9's are 200 watt peak and 60 rms, i want to run a amp to them but im not sure what size. A local store around here has a 2 channel amp that puts out 320 watts peak and 60 rms. The RMS on the 2 of them are the same but is it safe to use that amp when the peak is 120 watts higher? Thank you for any comments.

[AndonD454]

never go by peak ratings

but.. an amp with an RMS rating over 5 times less than the max rating is liekly to be crap. what brand is it? and whats the rms per channel at 4 ohms.. cause thats most liekly how they will be run.

i think 30-50 rms per speaker will be just abotu right to get the most out of em.

but you should really focus on your frontstage before you go crazy trying to make the rears sound good. components make a HUGE difference in how your system sounds

[skeavs]

Originally Posted by AndonD454

never go by peak ratings

but.. an amp with an RMS rating over 5 times less than the max rating is liekly to be crap. what brand is it? and whats the rms per channel at 4 ohms.. cause thats most liekly how they will be run.

i think 30-50 rms per speaker will be just abotu right to get the most out of em.

but you should really focus on your frontstage before you go crazy trying to make the rears sound good. components make a HUGE difference in how your system sounds

Alright thanks.. it's a Jensen Amp its just something cheap to use. I am gonna return my 4" speakers and get some components. It's recomended i use 4x6 speakers so what size components should i use in my car, to be safe and let the window fully unroll

[AndonD454]

youll have to make custom baffles for the doors out of 1/2" mdf and then i would assume most 5 1/4" components would fit in the space youll have available.

[92pontiacbonny]

what are RMS and all that uther stuff, i love huge system, but i dont know that much bout them??

[fred495us1]

RMS is the wattage that speakers are built to run at continuously.
Peak power is how much wattage they can take before they explode and burn up.

Ohms are the load that is created by the speakers on the amp. Different amps are stable at different loads most common are 4ohm and 2ohm, there are also amps that are stable with a 1 ohm load.

amps put out different amount of watts at different ohm loads.

[sr20de4evr]

not exactly

There are 2 different types of "peak" power, there's the electrical definition and the cheater definition. For the electrical definition, you take the peak voltage (audio is made up of a bunch sine waves of varying frequency and amplitude, if you played a solid tone the voltage would look like a single sine wave, the "peak" voltage is just the voltage of the peaks of that sine wave) and multiply it by the peak current and you get the peak power (P=I*V). However, some companies (normally crappy companies) take the word "peak" to mean the max amount of power the amp could theoretically make if for some reason it was struck by lightning while sitting in a vat of dry ice, and you only needed that power for a fraction of a second. Basically, they stick whatever number they want there and call it a day. On the other hand, there's no way to "misinterpret" rms power, you take the voltage waveform, fit an equation to it, square it, take the integral over one period (find the average), and then take the square root (root-mean-square, rms), that gives you the rms voltage. By definition, the rms voltage of a sine wave is exactly equal to 70.7% of the peak voltage, and if you multiply the rms voltage by the rms current you get the rms power, which will be equal to exactly half of the peak power. The rms power is the real world power, it's not the "continuous" power or any of that crap, it's just the maximum amount of power the amp could make or the speaker could take before you run into problems like clipping or the speaker's voice coil melting. The peak power, if it's equal to twice the rms power, is just another way to rate things. But if the peak power is more than twice the rms power, you know the company is just trying to take advantage of consumers by telling them they're getting x amount of power when in reality it's much much less. Marketing gimmicks....aren't they fun?


"Ohm" is a measure of an electrical device's resistance to current. When you apply a voltage (using say, an amp) across a device (say, a speaker), you get a certain amount of current that flows through the circuit. The amount of current you get is equal to the voltage applied divided by the resistance of the device (I=V/R). If you then multiply the current by the voltage, you get the power, as I went through above. You can see that if you reduce the resistance (aka impedance, resistance is a dc term and impedance is an ac term, but apart from that technicality they basically mean the same thing and are used interchangably), you get more current and therefore more power. In an ideal world, if you cut the impedance in half, your power would double, but because of power supply inefficiencies you normally get a little less than double, as you can see from just about any amplifier's spec sheet. If you drop the impedance too low however, you'll end up trying to pull too much current from the amp than it's capable of supplying and bad things happen. That's why when you see an amp that's "4ohm stable" or "2ohm stable", it means you can attach any speaker or combination of speakers to that amp as long as the resulting impedance is equal to or higher than that value.

I'm not sure what all you need/want to know, as for the thread starter, you can use whatever size amp you want on the speakers, it doesn't matter. People put way too much emphasis on amp sizing, it's pretty stupid if you ask me. You're going to play the system at whatever spl sounds good to you, if you have enough power available to do this then you're golden, if you don't then the amp will clip and your music will sound like ass. You can use a 2000 watt amp on your tweeters if you want, all that means is you'll never have to worry about clipping the amp. You can never have too much power available, the only downside is larger amps are expensive and take up more space in your trunk.

[fred495us1]

dang i wasn't trying to go all technical. I just wanted to give a general answer.

[AndonD454]

haha nobody plans to get PWNED by sr20 but it happens to many a noob

[G-man422]

Originally Posted by AndonD454

haha nobody plans to get PWNED by sr20 but it happens to many a noob

.

tis true.

[CBFryman]

that wasnt all that technical
BCAE1.com for all who thought it was

[fred495us1]

I've been to that site before. I like the pictures. Simple yet informative.

[fred495us1]

so does anyone know where i can get a replacement antenna for a 92 crown vic. I accidentally broke it off the other day.
Involved an air mattress, air pump, and a car wash.

[skeavs]

Ok thanks everyone, but about the amp should i run the speakers of this amp

[L|_|da]

id suggest your headunit, since there rms is about 60W, i think an amp would be a waste of money, get some nice componet,s focal, MBQuart, Boston acoustic, RE if you can mount 6 1/2s, lok in the newbie thread theres a HUGE list of brands.