2 x Rockford amps and capacitor?

Hi there,

Basically the setup will consist of 2 rockford amps, one 415s (2 channel) to drive 2 x DVC 12" subs, one 551X (4channel) to drive 2 sets of components! the subs are 2 Ohm DVC hence I should get maxium power from the 425s amp which is 225 RMS @ 2 Ohms as for the components they will run at 4 Ohms the tricky bit for me is the power wiring as far as my understanding goes I need a single 0 Guage power wire from the battery to a 2 Farad powercap, then from the power cap I run 2 x 4 guage power cables both with an inline fuse to each relevent amp.  does that sound right? do I need a distribution block at any stage? can I add one for show? is there any problem with grounding all of these i.e powercap amps etc on the same point?

All help advice appreciated!

Many thanks

how are you wiring the subs up? if you run them in parallel you will get an 1 ohm

if you wire them up in a series you will get 4ohms

i do not think you are putting enough power to require 0 gage wire and a 2 farad cap

Hmm I am a little puzzled I saw a similar diagram on Rockford site but with 2 DVC subs in paralell showing 2  Ohms? as shown below

I suppose 2-4 Guage power will be enough then?

I thought the rule to powercap was 500Watts per Farad I will have a total of approx 1800Watts

I couldn't find any info on you amp, the 415S, but I did see a 451S. Was that a typo? If your amp really is the 451S, you only need 8 gauge according to crutchfield. Also, how were you planning to run the subs? It is only 4 ohm stable bridged.

i see what you did now.  i did not know that people like to bridge their 2 ch amps to power 2 subs.  my set up is 1 ch to 1 sub in a series which is 8 ohms.  i guess i am not giving the subs enough power?  i do not know much about audio and this was the way the salesperson told me to wire it up.  if i were to copy your setup with my 4ohm dvcs, it would be much louder?  any disadvantage in running 4 ohms to 8?

With two dual 2-ohm VC subwoofers, you could do a few things:

• Wire each sub in series for two 4 ohm subs, wiring them together in parallel for a single resulting 2 ohm load
• Wire each sub in series for two 4 ohm subs, wiring each 4 ohm sub to one channel of the amp (two 4 ohm loads)
• Wire each sub in series for two 4 ohm subs, wiring them together in series for a single resulting 8 ohm load

If you had a single channel class D amp, you would not have a problem as most class D mono amps are 2 ohm stable - making max power into 2 ohms.

Unfortunately, you have a 2 channel amp, which is likely 2 ohm stable.

With a 2 channel, 2 ohm stable amp, maximum output power is given at either 2 ohms stereo, or 4 ohms bridged.

If you haven't gotten the sub amp yet - I would reconsider your options, because this option will cost you nearly two times the $$$ to get the same power you could otherwise supply to your subs.

If you already have the amps and subs, you could explore the future possibility of upgrading the amp...

If you don't want to upgrade either, you still have options -

Good luck!

I almost forgot to mention...

I am not sure how much less power you are delivering to the subs than they are thermally rated for, but since you have dual voice coil subs, you have another very interesting possibility presented before you... and it would get you the impedance you need to get your amp to deliver it's maximum power to the sub.

The technique is called Resistively Damped Operation...

Basically, you only wire up one voice coil of the sub to the amp, that's all that will be driving the sub (so that one voice coil needs to be able to handle the power you are sending to it, thermally... the power from your amp shouldn't exceed 1/2 of the subwoofer's RMS thermal rating).

In doing this, you can vary the resistance, by turning the potentiometer, across the "empty" coil....

The end result? 

Here's a paper from the guys at Adire on the subject if you want to learn more:

http://www.adireaudio.com/tech_papers/rdo_operation.htm

Okay after reading all reccomendations I am a little confused :-(

Using the  451X 2 channel amp 225RMS @ 2 Ohms, running 2 x RFP4110 subs (2x2Ohm DVC 400RMS ) wired in paralell as shown in previous diagram I dont need to bridge do I? doesnt each sub run of each channel?

Am I right in thinking that the above setup will run at 2 Ohms hence I will be delivering each sub with 225RMS if not which would be the optimum setup?

as far as a powercap scenario I will have 2 amps running in total so if I install 1 powercap 4 guage in can I run 2 x 8 guage to respective amp i.e 415s and another similar amp, if I can do this then I pressume the capacitor acts as a distribution block?

if I still want to include a distribtion block I suppose I would run a 4 guage from the power cap to the block then then my 2 x 8 guages from power block to amps

is it okay to use same groud point for amps and powercap etc?

Cheers

Okay I have just been look on the rockford website they do a 501Bd single channel amp, 500W RMS @ 2ohm how would I wire 2 x 2Ohm DVC subs to the amp?

Cheers