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Question About Adjusting Gain With Volt Meter

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Old 03-19-2009, 04:29 PM
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Default Question About Adjusting Gain With Volt Meter

Quick question if anybody can help me out on this. My setup is 2 10" Re Audio Se D4 subs, and a hifonics brutus bxi1210d. Now the subs are rated at 600rms and the amp is 1200 Watts RMS @ 1 Ohm which is how it will be wired. Now when I'm testing with my volt meter, will I be looking for the "600Watts RMS under 1ohm (24.49volts) or the "1200Watts RMS under 1ohm (34.64volts)??? Thanks in advance

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Old 03-20-2009, 01:08 PM
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updated question
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Old 03-20-2009, 01:30 PM
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You will be looking for 34.64 volts. Since you will be wiring the subs in parallel to achieve a 1ohm load, the voltage will be the same across both subs.

However, be careful, because the impedance of the subs actually changes based on the pitch being played based on the frequency response of the subs. The best way to set gains is to use a dummy load resistor to simulate the subs because it will have a constant resistance (plus you won't blow out your eardrums because it won't produce deafening noise will you're tweaking it).
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Old 03-20-2009, 01:31 PM
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Default Re: Question About Adjusting Gain With Volt Meter

Originally Posted by Rizzie
The subs are rated at 600rms and the sub is 1200 Watts RMS @ 1 Ohm which is how it will be wired.
Are the subs rated for 1200 watts or is the amp?
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Old 03-20-2009, 01:32 PM
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the amp is 1200watts at 1ohm my fault. thanks rcf but whats a dummy load resistor???
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Old 03-20-2009, 04:48 PM
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You would put a 1 ohm resister on the speaker wire that would represent the subs instead of the subs being hooked up.Make sure stereo is tuned to flat and at about 75% volume.The most important part is to use a tone disk for proper tuning,I use an 80 hz to tune the sub amperage to amp.but tune the crossover with a 50hz tone disk.
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Old 03-20-2009, 05:01 PM
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Happy birthday ;)

I called it a dummy load, but it's basically just a resistor with a large power dissipation capability. Basically, the impedance of a sub varies based on pitch (called its frequency response), and so that makes it difficult to see how much power is actually being sent to it.

Since P = V^2/R and R is constantly changing, so is P and you can't measure it adaquately. So use a resistor with a constant resistance of known value and you can compute P more easily.

I'm honestly not sure where you can find a resistor that can handle that much power to test with. I used something like this for my components that only handle 90W though:

http://www.parts-express.com/pe/show...number=019-015

If anyone has experience tuning higher power systems like this, how would you do it? I guess you could wire several of these resistors in a series/parallel combination, but that would get expensive for just tuning the system.
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Old 03-20-2009, 08:56 PM
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sounds good im learning and definatly appreciate the help. ill look around for something for higher power
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