# RMS Questions



## guitarsage (Mar 26, 2005)

Say I have an amp that's total power is 1600W and the RMS is 800w. And I have subs that are max power 1200W and rms is 600W... Will the amp do any damage to the sub?


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## MrFurious (Oct 30, 2005)

Not as long as you dont turn it all the way up. You have to set it up correctly. You could put a 600w max speaker on it, but you couldnt use its full wattage.


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## guitarsage (Mar 26, 2005)

MrFurious said:


> Not as long as you dont turn it all the way up. You have to set it up correctly. You could put a 600w max speaker on it, but you couldnt use its full wattage.


So set the gain to like 3/4 or less?


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## MrFurious (Oct 30, 2005)

uh' gain isnt what you need to adjust for the most part, but it can affect it. What all levels do you have that are adjustable (in other words, what do the knobs say?)? Look for In and/or Out puts. Which do you have, or both?


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## guitarsage (Mar 26, 2005)

MrFurious said:



> uh' gain isnt what you need to adjust for the most part, but it can affect it. What all levels do you have that are adjustable (in other words, what do the knobs say?)? Look for In and/or Out puts. Which do you have, or both?


Ummm, I don't have the amp yet... but here is a link. They have a volt meter, would that tell me how many watts are going through?

Check this out:http://www.sonicelectronix.com/item_72.html#


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## MrFurious (Oct 30, 2005)

It has a "level" knob. Putting it at 3/4's will be close, but you might want to turn it down just a little less than 3/4's. After you bass boost and fiddle with your gain you may be pushing close to the speakers limits. I would go a little less just to be safe, and to leave some playing room for you to tweak with. But I have never heard of an amp that provides RMS & Peak ratings. Amps are totally different than speakers. The large varience between peak and RMS on this amp just doesnt sound correct. But that is a 800w amp, and you dont want to have the amp set much higher than the speakers RMS, atleast thats my opinion. You can though. I had a 600w max speaker on a 600w amp. It did fine for the most part, but it would pop and stuff at times, so I pushed it a little to much. But my opinion is, dont set the amps much past the speakers RMS rating. That will guarantee long life of your speaker. Plus keeping your amp at 100% probably isnt best. Plus one more factor is, even if you have your amp at 100%, it wont be pushing max wattage unless your head units volume is at 100%. There are so many different places in systems that can affect things like this. But what I said before is a safe setting, and should produce plenty of bass.


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## ga16freak (Dec 31, 2004)

MrFurious said:


> It has a "level" knob. Putting it at 3/4's will be close, but you might want to turn it down just a little less than 3/4's. After you bass boost and fiddle with your gain you may be pushing close to the speakers limits. I would go a little less just to be safe, and to leave some playing room for you to tweak with. But I have never heard of an amp that provides RMS & Peak ratings. Amps are totally different than speakers. The large varience between peak and RMS on this amp just doesnt sound correct. But that is a 800w amp, and you dont want to have the amp set much higher than the speakers RMS, atleast thats my opinion. You can though. I had a 600w max speaker on a 600w amp. It did fine for the most part, but it would pop and stuff at times, so I pushed it a little to much. But my opinion is, dont set the amps much past the speakers RMS rating. That will guarantee long life of your speaker. Plus keeping your amp at 100% probably isnt best. Plus one more factor is, even if you have your amp at 100%, it wont be pushing max wattage unless your head units volume is at 100%. There are so many different places in systems that can affect things like this. But what I said before is a safe setting, and should produce plenty of bass.


Ok, please stop giving such bullshit advice. The gain is not a power knob, nor should it be used like one. 3/4 is not what he should set it on, he needs to start out very low and adjust it from there and shouldnt ever have to go over 3/4 and he really shouldnt even have to go that high.



> you may be pushing close to the speakers limits


Yeah he will be pushing them to the limits because he will probably be clipping the f*ck out of the signal with the gain that high.


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## ga16freak (Dec 31, 2004)

> But I have never heard of an amp that provides RMS & Peak ratings.


Actually most lower quality amps do have peek power ratings just impress morons like you. :thumbup:


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## ga16freak (Dec 31, 2004)

guitarsage said:


> Ummm, I don't have the amp yet... but here is a link. They have a volt meter, would that tell me how many watts are going through?
> 
> Check this out:http://www.sonicelectronix.com/item_72.html#


Audiobahn amps arent horrible or anything but you can get better for your money. Hifonics makes great amps for people on a budget, they arent flashy and most of them put out the watts they say the will. On the other hand Audiobahn likes to overrate a little and they put more time into the looks of thier stuff and less time into the preformance.


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## ga16freak (Dec 31, 2004)

> Look for In and/or Out puts. Which do you have, or both?


Well I would hope he has inputs and outputs since its a f*cking amp.


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## MrFurious (Oct 30, 2005)

ga16freak said:


> Well I would hope he has inputs and outputs since its a f*cking amp.


I wont reply to the rest of your comments , but I will reply to my somewhat of a typo. I mean in/out level knobs/adjusters.


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## guitarsage (Mar 26, 2005)

ga16freak said:


> Audiobahn amps arent horrible or anything but you can get better for your money. Hifonics makes great amps for people on a budget, they arent flashy and most of them put out the watts they say the will. On the other hand Audiobahn likes to overrate a little and they put more time into the looks of thier stuff and less time into the preformance.


I had about 13 people suggest this amp over at caraudio.com and other places. Few people still use it to power such subs as the XXX. It seems to be a very nice amp for the price. I didn't mean to say peak power... It says that the maximum out put is 1600 watts, which I guess means the same thing


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## sr20dem0n (Mar 19, 2003)

guitarsage said:


> I had about 13 people suggest this amp over at caraudio.com and other places. Few people still use it to power such subs as the XXX. It seems to be a very nice amp for the price. I didn't mean to say peak power... It says that the maximum out put is 1600 watts, which I guess means the same thing


max = peak
and it's a BS spec, don't pay attention to it


As for the gain, it is not a volume knob, max gain does not mean max power, and min gain does not mean min power. It's used to match the input sensitivity of the amp to the preout voltage from your headunit. You can normally get full output out of the amp with the gain less than 1/4 of the way up, unless you have a headunit with very weak preouts or an amp that can accept very large input voltages.


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## sr20dem0n (Mar 19, 2003)

MrFurious said:


> It has a "level" knob. Putting it at 3/4's will be close, but you might want to turn it down just a little less than 3/4's. After you bass boost and fiddle with your gain you may be pushing close to the speakers limits. I would go a little less just to be safe, and to leave some playing room for you to tweak with. But I have never heard of an amp that provides RMS & Peak ratings. Amps are totally different than speakers. The large varience between peak and RMS on this amp just doesnt sound correct. But that is a 800w amp, and you dont want to have the amp set much higher than the speakers RMS, atleast thats my opinion. You can though. I had a 600w max speaker on a 600w amp. It did fine for the most part, but it would pop and stuff at times, so I pushed it a little to much. But my opinion is, dont set the amps much past the speakers RMS rating. That will guarantee long life of your speaker. Plus keeping your amp at 100% probably isnt best. Plus one more factor is, even if you have your amp at 100%, it wont be pushing max wattage unless your head units volume is at 100%. There are so many different places in systems that can affect things like this. But what I said before is a safe setting, and should produce plenty of bass.


please stop giving advice, honestly

btw - on an amp, the peak rating should be exactly twice the rms rating, by definition. If it's not then the company is full of shit and isn't giving you the true peak power rating. Most decent companies won't give you a peak rating, but if they do, it better damn well be exactly twice the rms rating.


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## ga16freak (Dec 31, 2004)

guitarsage said:


> I had about 13 people suggest this amp over at caraudio.com and other places. Few people still use it to power such subs as the XXX. It seems to be a very nice amp for the price. I didn't mean to say peak power... It says that the maximum out put is 1600 watts, which I guess means the same thing


Well then they are complete idiots, the XXX can handle like 2500 watts and they dont want a damn audioshit powering a 500 dollar SPL sub.


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## captain_shrapnel (Sep 10, 2004)

sr20dem0n said:


> please stop giving advice, honestly
> 
> btw - on an amp, the peak rating should be exactly twice the rms rating, by definition. If it's not then the company is full of shit and isn't giving you the true peak power rating. Most decent companies won't give you a peak rating, but if they do, it better damn well be exactly twice the rms rating.


SR, I was under the impression that RMS would be ~70.7% of maximum power, all things being equal. Not that most companies would actually use math to derive their numbers. How did you get 2x rms? Just curious.

Regarding the original post, feeding a respectable sub rated at 600 watts rms 800 watts rms from a respectable amp will usually be fine. Well engineered equipment has a buffer between the recommended power level and the level at which it will fail. Just don't clip it, that will kill anything.


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## sr20dem0n (Mar 19, 2003)

captain_shrapnel said:


> SR, I was under the impression that RMS would be ~70.7% of maximum power, all things being equal. Not that most companies would actually use math to derive their numbers. How did you get 2x rms? Just curious.


RMS voltage is 70.7% of peak, but power is proportional to the voltage squared.

.707*.707=.5


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## captain_shrapnel (Sep 10, 2004)

Thats right, I forgot that RMS is root mean SQUARED. Duh.


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