1 sub, more power or 2 subs, less power ? What's better ?
 

I'm debating on wether I should get a single 10" sub and plug it to a bridged output on my amp that would give it around 240 watts, or if I should get 2 subs and connect it to the unbridged output, and would give them about 80 watts each.

This is for a more SQ oriented setup for listening to mostly rock / metal with a bit of industrial on occasion. Opinions greatly appreciated.

More power = more SQ.

When I doubled the power to my one sub, by adding a second amplifier, my SPL went up a wee bit but my SQ went up BIGtime.

& Giving only ~80 watts each to two subs would probably sound weak, kinda like my large magnet 6x9's. They sound weak with only 50w each, but give them a 100 and the bass really starts snapping.

What subs are they?mabey you can run them both bridged!

In your case the 2 subs/less power may be slightly louder... if the subs are compairable the pair with less power will also suffer less power compression...

But if I were you I'd be looking at a pair of subs that you can get the whole 240watts with.... :thumbsup:

Well, I can probably get a deal on 2 phoenix gold Octane Rs at 4ohms each.

My amp can deliver around 240W bridged or give 80 some watts per channel @ 4ohms. or it can give around 120W @ 2ohms per channel, but it can't do 2ohms when bridged.

Well, I finaly went a different route altogether and put in and Alpine Type R 10" with an Alpine M450 amp. So far, so good... I'll start on the fine tuning and final setup tomorrow.

I know with my setup (2 subs bridged to map 200 watts). They sound nice but you can tell are begging for more power.

If I where you I'd get 2 subs...and put them in a large box...building a larger box will allow the amp to push the subs to thier MAXIMUM-X-max excursions alot easier due to the larger cavity behind the woofer itself...thus creating more SPL since the sub is reaching it's Maximum excursion limits with less power...although building a small enclosure will limit the amount of perceived SPL due to the fact the amp is struggling to move the Woofer's cone inside such a small cavity...mostly to reproduce upper mid-bass freq's...the trade off is that you get low bass with-out having to buy a more power-full amplifier...which you can do later down the road.