Clipping
Printed From: the12volt.com
Forum Name: Car Audio
Forum Discription: Car Stereos, Amplifiers, Crossovers, Processors, Speakers, Subwoofers, etc.
URL: https://www.the12volt.com/installbay/forum_posts.asp?tid=52411
Printed Date: April 28, 2024 at 6:50 PM
Topic: Clipping
Posted By: Teamrf
Subject: Clipping
Date Posted: March 22, 2005 at 11:04 PM
I have 2awg wire to my dist. block then split off to two different amps both taking 4awg wire. When I cut the music up the 4 channel amp clips, and shuts down. Is it too much current running causing it to clip?
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Replies:
Posted By: oonikfraleyoo
Date Posted: March 22, 2005 at 11:23 PM
Is your gain set correctly? ------------- Nik
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Posted By: Teamrf
Date Posted: March 23, 2005 at 7:45 AM
Yes they are only half way up.
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~The Rookie~
Rookie of the year that is...
Don't let the smoke out of your equiptment..it doesn't go back in.
Posted By: ss-installer
Date Posted: March 23, 2005 at 7:46 AM
ohm loads right?
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Posted By: DYohn
Date Posted: March 23, 2005 at 8:24 AM
Teamrf wrote:
Yes they are only half way up.
That means nothing. Did you adjust the input gain to match the output of the head unit? ------------- Support the12volt.com
Posted By: boricuaso
Date Posted: March 23, 2005 at 8:46 AM
cliping also happens when your electricalsystem" alternator " is not power full enogh for your system, make sure your not having problems with your battery cus it might be sucking a too large of a charging load from the alternator and limiting the spare current for your system!. are your lights diming out ? make sure your ground wires are short, add a cap, and use the shortes power cable you can!, make sure all your power line connections are clean and firm, an match your gain to your head unit low output. some times when you push your amp to its limits @ a low Ohms load, it will clip!!.
Posted By: DYohn
Date Posted: March 23, 2005 at 10:47 AM
boricuaso wrote:
cliping also happens when your electricalsystem" alternator " is not power full enogh for your system, make sure your not having problems with your battery cus it might be sucking a too large of a charging load from the alternator and limiting the spare current for your system!. are your lights diming out ? make sure your ground wires are short, and use the shortes power cable you can!, make sure all your power line connections are clean and firm, an match your gain to your head unit low output.
Actually nothing you can do to the input power side of an amplifier will cause it to clip. Clipping is a very specific condition and is determined by the signal strength, not the power. Other issues will happen with amplifiers fed unstable or too low (or high) voltage, but not clipping. I suspect the original poster is not using the term correctly either. If the amplifier is clipping (especially severely) you will hear it as distortion. Often an amplifier will clip just before it shuts down on overload, but clipping unto itself will not shut down an amplifier unless it has a very sophisiticated clipping detection circuit built into it. If the amplifier is shutting down, then either the impedence load is too low, the input gain is too high, or the input power supply voltage is too low. ------------- Support the12volt.com
Posted By: boricuaso
Date Posted: March 23, 2005 at 12:31 PM
DYohn] wrote:
p>boricuaso wrote:
cliping also happens when your electricalsystem" alternator " is not power full enogh for your system, make sure your not having problems with your battery cus it might be sucking a too large of a charging load from the alternator and limiting the spare current for your system!. are your lights diming out ? make sure your ground wires are short, and use the shortes power cable you can!, make sure all your power line connections are clean and firm, an match your gain to your head unit low output.
Actually nothing you can do to the input power side of an amplifier will cause it to clip. Clipping is a very specific condition and is determined by the signal strength, not the power. Other issues will happen with amplifiers fed unstable or too low (or high) voltage, but not clipping.
when his amplifier is not geting the right voltage not above 12v but below the requierements of the amp, alot of amp will still play and fuction and not correct the output "amplified" sinewave to the speakers, so the signal goes in properly but when it gets amplified inside the amp, the output signal is not going to be a perfectly amplified version of the input signal" when at high volume output" so the amplifier will actualy create a flat top sinewave instead of a clean sinewave, thats why i asked, if he has problems with with charging system!!! and asked him to make sure that the conections where clean an secure cus gunked up power connections limit the power going in to the amp and create erradical and unstable power supply issues inside the amp.
Posted By: kfr01
Date Posted: March 23, 2005 at 1:28 PM
Teamrf wrote:
Yes they are only half way up.
It blows my mind that more people can't understand the concept of gain. The gain control is NOT a bass volume control! See the gain tutorial here: https://www.jlaudio.com/tutorials/ Also do some searches for gain on this forum, there are different methods of setting gain, but that tutorial should give you a good overview of the concept. ------------- New Project: 2003 Pathfinder
Posted By: Chad7n7
Date Posted: March 23, 2005 at 10:09 PM
boricuaso wrote:
when his amplifier is not geting the right voltage not above 12v but below the requierements of the amp, alot of amp will still play and fuction and not correct the output "amplified" sinewave to the speakers, so the signal goes in properly but when it gets amplified inside the amp, the output signal is not going to be a perfectly amplified version of the input signal" when at high volume output" so the amplifier will actualy create a flat top sinewave instead of a clean sinewave, thats why i asked, if he has problems with with charging system!!! and asked him to make sure that the conections where clean an secure cus gunked up power connections limit the power going in to the amp and create erradical and unstable power supply issues inside the amp.
Alot of misinformation, power issues will not cause an amplifier to clip. If the power an amplifier is seeing drops below the designed working voltage, the amplifier will shut off and go into protection mode. It will not "change" its ability to reproduce certain frequencies. | Clipping - Audible distortion that occurs when continuous power-to-peak power capabilities (headroom) are exceeded. "Turn it down!" |  |
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Posted By: Teamrf
Date Posted: March 23, 2005 at 11:44 PM
Well my gains are correct...and I think it is a voltage problem. When I kick on my Kicker 1200l.1 and the amp at the same time..It shuts down quicker than when I jam it by itself. I have 2awg wire from the battery to a dist. block, and then both amps are getting 4awg. I have a small ground wire which is also 4awg. I was going to try to run another 4 awg wire from the battery tommorow and see it that helped.
-------------
~The Rookie~
Rookie of the year that is...
Don't let the smoke out of your equiptment..it doesn't go back in.
Posted By: placid warrior
Date Posted: March 24, 2005 at 12:15 AM
what size alternator u got? u could check the voltage at the batt with an ohmmeter...with my stock alt and all my regular stuff on (lights, radio...no amp though, fan, heater) my battery checks fine at 12.5V idle and 13.5V with engine reved. when i connect my amp though my voltage drops to 11V idle and 12V reved up..and i only have a 65amp alt (using about 30 more amps than the alt can supply with the amp on). I had alternator problems from running my amp, but my amp would turn off before the alt light came on...i'm still using the same alternator, but i dont run my amp untill i replace the alternator. Maybe the voltage is dropping below what the amp needs?
Posted By: Teamrf
Date Posted: March 24, 2005 at 9:50 PM
I don't know about the alt..It is the factory alt. I have a yellow top battery though. I want to see if anything will change if I ran a 4awg wire from the battery to the amp. I've ran a fosgate 200.4 and a kenwod 400.4 with a dist. block and I've never had a problem.
-------------
~The Rookie~
Rookie of the year that is...
Don't let the smoke out of your equiptment..it doesn't go back in.
Posted By: audifive
Date Posted: March 24, 2005 at 10:08 PM
im not sure how good the nissan alternators are, but you can check the size of the cables going to the battery from the alternator. they are likely much smaller than 2 ga and they are 4 ga if you are lucky. you can always upgrade the factory power and ground wires much cheaper than buying an alternator and see if that might help.
Posted By: Teamrf
Date Posted: March 26, 2005 at 12:58 PM
I upgraded the battery ground yesterday..and I will try to upgrade more factory wiring. It is hard to do since there is no room under my hood really. Those dang hondas
-------------
~The Rookie~
Rookie of the year that is...
Don't let the smoke out of your equiptment..it doesn't go back in.
Posted By: DYohn
Date Posted: March 26, 2005 at 1:05 PM
placid warrior wrote:
what size alternator u got? u could check the voltage at the batt with an ohmmeter...with my stock alt and all my regular stuff on (lights, radio...no amp though, fan, heater) my battery checks fine at 12.5V idle and 13.5V with engine reved. when i connect my amp though my voltage drops to 11V idle and 12V reved up..and i only have a 65amp alt (using about 30 more amps than the alt can supply with the amp on). I had alternator problems from running my amp, but my amp would turn off before the alt light came on...i'm still using the same alternator, but i dont run my amp untill i replace the alternator. Maybe the voltage is dropping below what the amp needs?
OK, so it's not clipping, it's shutting down. Entirely different things. UPGRADE your alternator, you are simply overloading your electrical system. Nothing else you do will solve the problem. ------------- Support the12volt.com
Posted By: Teamrf
Date Posted: March 28, 2005 at 6:55 PM
I ran a new 4awg power wire with a 80amp fuse. It helped quite a bit, but it still shuts down at high volumes. I don't want to upgrade my alt. from a 1200.1 kicker amp and a 200.4 eclipse amp. The kicker amp is hardly ever on. I did a car with a 1000/1 and a 450/4 jl amp in a 2001honda just like mines. And he didn't have anything upgraded
-------------
~The Rookie~
Rookie of the year that is...
Don't let the smoke out of your equiptment..it doesn't go back in.
Posted By: audifive
Date Posted: March 29, 2005 at 1:14 AM
how do you have your sub(s) wired to the kicker? there is no way you should be drawing more than 40-50 amps at full volume with both amps going, unless you have your subs wired to a lower impedance than the amp can handle. those 2 amps are more than enough to put some pressure on the electrical system, but usually (in my experience) other stuff goes wrong before the amps. you may need a new alternator altogether, so have it checked out somewhere to see if it is charging properly. let us know whats up.
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