Impedance
 

I was in a shop today looking for some new subs and the guy metioned something that i have not previously considered.

Is it true that a sub could end up putting out less SPL when running at 1 ohm as compared to 2 ohms due to the dampening factor?

Also are there ay other advantages to running at a given impedance? other than the power gain form the amp.

Yes you can get more from 2 than 1 but not because of damping factor. If your amp maxes out at 2 you could cause it to roll back power or clip hard at 1 ohm and wind up with less SPL.

Ok, one thing I should have mentioned, I have an Exile 1200.1, rated for 1200 watts at 1ohm, 800watts at 2ohms and 400 watts at 4 ohms.

Link here
exilecaraudio

With that amp, if i were running 1 sub, or 2 wired properly at 1 ohm, would I end up losing output?

that amp will give the most power at 1ohm... distortion will be slightly higher, but not audible.... and for the most part amplifier damping means nothing...

if your amp will run at i ohm then run it at 1 ohm you wont get more output at 2 ohms because its almost half the watts my setup runs at 1 ohm and i ahve won 4 sound offs this year spl and sq so its loud and clear dont be scared to load your stuff down man.

Thats what I thought, I was a little confused, this guy said he had been in SPL for a while and seemed to know what he was talking about, I was just wondering if there is some sort of critical point I had missed in my research.

Thanks guys.

(GrizZz here, wife's PC)

I run two Orion 1200d's into one Orion H2 12.2 sub. Send both coils to the amps bridged, and I get one ohm. Is super-duper loud.

If I hand one coil to each amp seperated, it's not quite as loud (1650w instead of 2400), but my SQ goes up substantially, very noticeable. I run 2 ohms daily, and 1 ohm for comps or when I'm feeling sassy.

Try both - the higher the ohms, the higher the SQ.

How is it that you get one ohm with your amps strapped? If you paralleled the coils and strapped the amps, wouldnt that present each with a .5 ohm load?

Is one ohm final.

As soon as you bridge the amps, think of them as one amp, don't even picture two of them anymore. In fact, an Orion 2500d is basically just two 1200d's inside, which is why the 2500d is not bridgeable, yet the 1200d's are.

So, if you give both coils to the "one" amp paralleled, that's one ohm final.

If I hook the coils in series and give'm to the "one" amp, I gets four ohms.

And if I hand one coil to each amp (after unbridging them), they see two ohms each.

And then there's my new APX18Q1.4 sub, with quad 1.4 ohm coils... Can give each amp .7 ohms, or bridge the amps again and hand 'em 1.4, or 2.8...

I agree that if you parallel the dual 2 ohm coils to only one amp, you'll get 1ohm, but once you strap the amps, that cuts the final impedance of the sub in half, which is why 2 ohms then becomes the minimum load for strapping (since 2 ohms will be halved, and each amp will see 1 ohm)... is it not?

In this case of a dual 2 ohm sub, the way I understood things was -

Both coils paralleled (to one ohm) on one amp would be obviously one ohm as agreed...

But

Both coils paralleled (to one ohm) into a pair of strapped amps would be split into two, and present a half ohm per amp.