Scared of blowing sub

[cdawg001]

AMP: 220rms bridged 4 ohms
550w peak power

Sub: 225w rms 4 ohms
450w peak power

Will this blow my sub? People have told me the rms on the sub should be more than the rms on the amp. Is this true?

[Haibane]

not true

[cdawg001]

so it will blow?

[jncodave]

Originally Posted by cdawg001

so it will blow?

you should be good, the amp is pretty much perfectly matched to that sub. and there is more chance of damaging the sub by underpowering it then overpowering it. if an amp cant keep up with the power demands of the sub, then it will begin to "clip" which will damage the sub. a sub can take much more power then it says it will handle if you know what you are doing and you dont drive the sub into distortion.
but back to the point, that amp should be about perfect for powering that sub.

[Haibane]

jncodave, not exactly the right wording, could be a bit confusing, but covered the point

[jncodave]

Originally Posted by Haibane

jncodave, not exactly the right wording, could be a bit confusing, but covered the point

correct me if i said something that was wrong. im pretty new to car audio and am learning everything i can but i still have a lot to learn. dont want to mess anybody up by giving them the wrong info

[Haibane]

if an amp cant keep up with the power demands of the sub, then it will begin to "clip" which will damage the sub.

That is wrong.

If you try to turn up the amp and the gain is set wrong it clips. Even underpowering a sub doesn't matter.

[Brandish]

Subs don't really have "power demands," only power ratings. The whole argument that underpowering a sub is just as bad as overpowering stemmed from the fact that when an amp is driven into clipping, even though the distorted signal never really exceeds the amps maximum power rating, there's a lot more continuous power being delivered to the sub because of the distortion present. So even though the subs power ratings may match those of the amp, there is still the potential to blow the sub if the amp is driven into clipping for long periods of time. On the other side of the coin, you'll hear a lot of people make statements like "you can never have too much power," because they believe that as long as you're feeding a set of subs a "clean" signal, there's no chance of blowing them. It is true that the sub will be able to handle a clean signal much better than a distorted one... I can vouch for that, because my little Pioneer 10" sub, rated for 250 watts RMS, took 600 RMS from my JBL amp for months, and only complained once (read: smelled funny) when I got a little too carried away with the Bass Mekanik. But anyways, that's not to say the sub will take whatever you throw at it so long as it's a clean signal... If you were to feed a clean sine wave to a sub at, say, 150 watts over its RMS power rating, it would eventually overheat. It depends a lot on manufacturer though as well, because a lot of manufacturers underrate, and a lot of them overrate.

Anyways, to answer the original question, your sub shouldn't blow, but there is the potential to blow it of you're careless. If you hear distortion, turn it down and adjust your gains. Chances are you're on your way to damaging the sub.