danyman

iTrader: (1)

no u have it connected right but i have a feeling that it will blow soon.. my nice digital designs amp started nice and cool and 6 months later it was hot as hell.. theennnn poof a little smell coming from 10ft in the back.. bring the gain down a bit to like 4.. tune it for sound quality and save up some cash for a new amp bud. even check the classifieds on here u can get some wicked deals on some great gear.

Shawnp

okay so ive figured out that for some reason my amp will run fine for hours if it isnt bridged. I can crank it up all the way and leave it there for hours and it wont heat up much, but if I bridge my sub it heats up gradually within about 10 minutes of constant use being cranked. What is the reason for this? I want to have this setup bridged as this amp just isnt powerful enough to do anything much if it isnt.

The other thing is, I cant seem to bridge one side of this amp as the negative on that side doesnt seem to be working? Any clues why?

Something has to be wrong if its running correctly when it isnt bridged and that is supposed to be 4 ohms and my speaker is 2 and 8 ohms stable doesnt it?

Any suggestions are appreciated.. and no that doesnt mean to suggest I get a better amp! lol I will eventually but this is what I have for now and I love my bass. I would like to fix this issue.

Nagamitsu

iTrader: (1)

The amp heating up issue, is simply that it is taking more load than it can handle from the subs/speakers.

I know, been there, done that. Had my subs running off an amp that would go into protect (overheat) if played loud for a longer duration of time. That amp now runs my front stage, and a better amp powers the subs (bridged) and barely heats up at all after more than an hour of high volume.

Tim

RomanticMoments

+...................+..........+ < COIL 1&2
-
+
-....................-..........- < COIL 1&2
^
AMP

Ensure that ground wire is secured to a spot that has been cleared of paint, and that the connection is tight. Make sure that the cap is grounded as well and that it is grounded in the same fashion I just described. The sub is dual 4 ohm, right? so wiring it the way I've described brings total impedance that the amp "sees" down to 2 ohms, taking full advantage of your amp's potential.

Shawnp

so are you saying to hook up a set of wires to each coil and hook each of the positives and negatives on the same terminals bridged?

Shawnp

and my amp actually goes + - - + and the weird thing is when i try to bridge on one side as show it doesnt work. But if i do it the other way as per the second illustration it does. wtf?

+ - - +
+ - - +

so basically only 2 of my 4 channels work. When I switch over to the front channels it does the same thing?

and I dont know if this is normal or not but my cap runs inbetween 11.x and 12.x when my car is shut off but runs between 12.x and 14.x when the car is running? Oh and, my cap will just shut off sometimes but when I shut the car off and turn it back on it resets. Is this normal?

Shawnp

and the other 2 channels also dont work when it isnt bridged. Im so lost..

RomanticMoments

OK, so did some digging... Turns out that Sony recommends that the amp be used as a three channel system, and not solely as a 2 channel or mono amp. You could in theory just use the "3rd" channel and not utilize the first two channels (Sony suggests that you use ch 1 & 2 for front or rear speakers and to bridge ch 3 & 4 for a sub). They suggest that you have a 4 ohm load minimum (I'm assuming why you are only using one coil) for the bridged channels. Soo.... It would appear that you have taken the proper approach up to this point. The reason you aren't seeing signal on one side I'm not sure.... Some amps don't carry Sine waves on both the positive and negative terminals, but why when you are connecting to one set and finding signal and then to the other with no signal I can't explain beyond saying that channel is blown... Not to jump to conclusions, I would assume that enabling the LPF disables the second channel. The only way to confirm that would be to measure it with a multimeter. If the channel is in fact toast, it would somewhat explain the heating issues you are having. So in reality, this amp/sub combo is simply not designed to do what you would like it to do. Having a dual 2 ohm sub would allow you to operate the sub efficiently, but I don't think it would really matter to be honest. You could try running one RCA to the first set of channels, the second to the second set of channels, bridging both and running those two channels to the sub (ch1 pos to pos coil 1, ch 2 neg to neg coil 1, ch3 pos to pos coil 2, and ch4 neg to neg coil 2). The problem with this setup appears to be that you cannot control HP or LP filters. If your deck will allow you to set the LPF, set the filter via the deck and shut off all filters on the amp. The impedance should be OK for the amp, and it would run the sub efficiently. Beyond that, I'm outa ideas seperate from finding another amp. Hope this helps,

Ciao

RomanticMoments

You also could use the setup I described above with just ch1 and ch3 (using the pos and neg off both of those channels) but the amp would "see" 8 ohms, so I doubt you'll get much out of it in the way of power/sound. The setup above uses all four channels, essentially making it two two channel amps. Each "two channel" would "see" 2ohms, and combined its a safe load of 4 ohms. Power wise, I don't think it will be any louder than using ch3&4 bridged as Sony described, but it uses the sub to it's full potential, and should cut down on heat

Shawnp

Romantic moments.. I just wanted to say thank you! With the setup you suggested, running pos. on 2chs. and neg. on 2 chs. after a half hour of solid play there is almost no heat building up.

Ive routed the rcas to one on each channel, disabled both lpfs. on the amp and set my HU to 78hz and Ive lost a bit of sq. but im sure I can regain that with a better box as right now im using a home stereo speaker box that has some air leaks.. haha..

now all i need is alot of sound deadening and a new box and things should run smoothly until im ready to upgrade.

Thanks again, this seems to have fixed all of my issues!

Shawn