The installer whom I've been dealing with for the past few years told me that even though you can increase your power output from an amp running at 1ohm stable, the effiency decreases and can cause more harm to your subs than running it at a higher load like 4ohm. Is this true for everyday music listen? He went on to tell me that unless I'm competing and only bursting the subs, I should never run my sub amp lower than 2ohm.
Can someone please explain to me the advanatages and disadvanatages of running an amp that's 1ohm stable to 1ohm.
The way i understand it is like this; at 1 ohm you draw just about all the power your amp can make (providing your amp can stand 1 ohm...!),for example at "0" ohm you have "Short Circuit" so at 1 your amp will strain very hard to pull all it can but at the same time is borderline self-distructing if it's not made to sustain that load.You also cut your amps life quite a bit due to stress.Another thing is that at super-low impedance you will also increase the distorsion levels,and i almost forgot your amps will run much hotter...so you may want to add a fan for cooling.
Reason why I asked is cause I have a pair of DVC 4ohm L5 15's and I have a lighting audio 1000.1D that's stable down to 1ohm. So if I go ahead an wire my subs series/parallel to get that 1ohm load then my subs and amp should be okay then cause my amp is stable at 1ohm and I really want to give my subs as much power as I can.
Oh yeah one more thing, my amp came with a fan so I don't think heat will be that much of a problem.
-------------
live & die 4 tha luv of BASS!!!!
I dunno about that bit about the "efficiency decreases and can cause more harm to the subs". If the amp is driven into clipping for extended periods of time then the subs can be harmed, but I don't see how decreasing the impedence would make the amp easier to clip. ANYWAYS... in most situations you need to worry more about pushing the amp too hard, than about hurting the subs.
When you decrease the impedence, you increase the load on the amplifier--basically your subs will try to suck out more power from the amp than it can reliably dish out. As Dan MC pointed out, the amps will end up getting very very hot and eventually shut down. Theoretically the built-in thermal protection circuits are supposed to prevent the amp from being permanently damaged, but I've always been dubious of the value of such protection circuits. Better to just run the amp the way it was intended to be run. Yes sometimes you can use cooling fans to keep an amp that was not made to run at increased loads, stable and not get damaged. But this doesn't always work unfortunately. Even among 1-ohm stable amps, there are some that dissipate heat better than others, so it might be something to think for these kinds of amps.
Some amps are 1 ohm stable and are made to run at increased loads, but these are usually only the higher end models. It should be noted that most amplifiers out there can only handle a 4-ohm bridged or 2 ohm stereo load.
Some subs have two 2-ohm voice coils and thus when they're wired in parallel they present a 1-ohm load to the amp. But these subs are also the higher end models.
Finally another thing to note is that while an amp may be stable down to 1 ohm, some of them don't put out any increase in power below 2 ohms. So for these amps, being 1-ohm stable is really just a system flexibility thing (i.e. it can support powering more subs at once, but it will still only be able to use the same amount of total system power).
That’s bull if you have a good quality amp that is stable @ 1 ohm you will not have any problems running a 1ohm load. however if you have a amp that is only stable down to 2 ohms and your running it at 1 ohm then yes you can run into problems. But if you have a reputable amp that is 1 ohm stable you will not harm your subs running a 1 ohm load. So I would wire them up so you get the wattage that you paid for.
Well I just found out that my Ligthning Audio isn't 1ohm stable. Funny how the website I got the amp from claimed that it was but Lightning Audio says that its not. So now I have to find a replacement amp.
Thanks for the input though on the ohm stablility. It was very helpful.
Sorry to hear that I know that Audiobahn makes several 1 ohm stable amps. I have used several of them in the past and can say that they are very strong and reliable however they are not cheap.
If you want an amp that will slam those subs stupid look for a soundstream. Most of there sub amps are 1 ohm stable. I live and die by them.
About the above soundstream amp I mentioned. I have an older Reference 700s and it was dyno'ed at 962 watts RMS at 2.66 ohms, at 13.8 volts drawing 20 amps. If you got a Reference 1000 you would't even have to run it at one ohm.