I have an Alpine V12 amp (model MRV-T503, 2 or 1 channel), it's about 4 years old and I'm not sure the exact power, though I think it's about 150W x 2 RMS or something like 200W bridged (I can't find the owner's manual, and the Alpine website is no help because the amp is so old).
I have two 10" Orion subs, both are single voice coil and are 500W RMS max power. Up until recently, I just used the amp as a 2-channel amp and ran speaker wire from each channel of the amp to the subs. I was at Circuit City with my brother today and started talking to one of their install techs, and he said that to get the full power of the amp, I should bridge it and run it mono. He seemed very knowledgeable, so I had him go ahead and bridge it. On the short drive home, it definitely seemed like the bass was hitting harder but I'm not positive.
My question is, is this amp a good match with these subs? Which way should I run it, in stereo or mono?
Do you know how many ohms each sub is? If not do you know the model #. But assuming the subs can be wired to a 4 ohm load (the lowest the amp will go bridged to 1 channel) then the amp would put out 500X1 or 250 watts per sub and you would be using the amps its full potential.
Thank you very much for the owner's manual, it will be very helpful.
As for the speakers, they are 4 ohm per sub.
Thanks for the posts and any further advice.
Sorry with (2) 4 ohm svc subs there is no way to wire them into a 4 ohm load. Unfortunately the best you can do is wire each sub to its own channel as you have it now. Your current setup is giving you 200 watts per sub.