Brand new subs, clipping?

Clipping = the amp has run out of gas and is producing a distorted signal that we hear as crack, snap, pop in the subs. If the amp is shutting off under load, then this is a protection circuit. Indicicated usually by an led on the amp changing color or lighting a separate led. I too would take a serious look at the one sub, it with no doubt is going to be the root cause of the problem. On a mono amp, you can have 10 subs hooked up to it and if one is bad, the rest will suffer.

If the sub is bad out of thebox that is one thing. If the amp was infact clipping and damaged the sub to the point that it is now interfering with the amp, that is another. This second side of the coin reverts back to how you use the system, how it was matched together and how it was installed.

Ok, here we go, more info. If the volume is at 46 out of 50 and the gear is shutting down, my guess is that the amp is clipping all over the map. This is more than likely coming from the cd player itself as very very few cd players have non clipping preouts. Once a signal is clipped at the source, an amp will amplify this clipped signal and pass it on to the subs. The sub will look at the signal and say wtf, you want me to play this, well OK dude, but I'm not going to like it. Then one day Mr. Sub is blown or is on the way to blowing. If it is on the way to blowing the coil can infact be making an intermittent contact or grounding out, thus shutting down the amp and sending it into protection. Once a sub is damaged it is all down hill from there. If you are on your second or 3rd set of these subs, then you have a serious design flaw in the system, it's installation and how YOU are using the system.

To understand clipping is simple. Your engine has a tachometer. You know that your engine has a redline on the tachometer. If  you go above redline you know that bad things will happen to the engine, so you saty below redline. The point of clipping on an amp or cd player is the redline, in this case it is invisible and if crossed will always end in blown speakers. Learn how to use your system, get it set up properly and or modified for the performance that you expect to see from it.