My question is this: It seems that over the last four or five years, power ratings are going up. Mainly I am talking about subwoofer/amplifier combos. I still remember when five hundred watts rms was a lot of power. I have recently purchased two 12" kicker L7 dual 4 ohm subs that have an rms of 750. I am wondering if I am really going to notice a difference in sound if I give them 300 watts apiece or if I give them 600 watts apiece? If anybody could help me with this wattage/power question, I would really appreciate it.
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I be tossin and flossin, my style is awesome. Causin' more family feuds than Richard Dawson.
Power ratings on subwoofers are just thermal ratings that are sometimes over rated, and sometimes under rated. But they will not tell you how much power the subwoofer will handle since that changes with the enclosure used. With larger enclosures, it will take less power to reach Xmax. Now to answer your above question, I will assume the same size enclosure is used. Theoretically you would expect to see a 3 dB gain in output by doubling the power like that. But other factors are present and a lot of the time it doesn't go up that high due to BL and power compression.
Power is getting cheaper and cheaper. Because of this, many manufacturers are designing their subs to work in smaller and smaller enclosures. This means that the subwoofers are more inefficient, but it is likely that the customer won't mind buying more power for the smaller enclosure.
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YUP...One other thing...when you see the amplifier power rating...check to see what voltage it was at. what a lot of stores and companies don't tell you, is that if the amp is, say 600W max...that's a 14.4V not the car 12.6 or 13.1V Mostly, it's a gimick, to make people buy the more expensive stuff, because it is so much louder...and the impression the louder is better. which not the case for everyone. Use your own judgement.