The lower ohms your amp can go the more power it can produce. It doesn't affect the sq.
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Just a quick thought though...if you are overpowering your speakers by going into a 2 ohm vs 4 ohm load they could sound bad. All speakers have a point where they will distort...just a thought.
That's why it's important to regulate current to the subs in other ways such as sub-out control on your deck or remote bass control on your amp. Wire it down to the least resistance (2ohms?) that your amp can handle and then just turn down the bass boost on your deck or the amp. That way if you need more power you can get it by turning the nob and not rewiring the subs.
An amplifier will provide more headroom, less distortion, and overall better SQ (probably not noticeable in most cases, though) when the resistance is higher. For SQ, 4 ohms is better than 2, but it's more expensive.
I concur with Jon here. a stero amplifier for a car run at 4 ohms will not work as hard as an amp at 2 ohms providing the same wattage. SNR will be better at 4 ohms, distortion will be lower, you'll have more dynamic headroom for transient demands in the music, the amp will produce less heat, damping factor will improve, and so forth. The only reason people really wire things at 2 ohms is for the added power (per dollar to be accurate) but if money weren't a factor, I'd say go 4 ohms for all the amplifiers. The problem is your amps will cost quite a bit more to get equal power at 4 ohms as opposed to 2.
My current car is set up for purely SQ, and I use 3 amplifiers. 2 for subs, 1 for front stage. All are running at 4 ohm loads for a total of ~3200 watts RMS of power @ 14.4VDC. The drawback to doing this, is that I'm using all class AB amps, which means more cost, and I'm running higher impedances which also means more cost for the amount of power derived. End result is $3750 in amplifiers. If I went with class D mono amps for the subs, and a cheaper class AB amp for the fronts, I could probably do the whole system power for under a grand easily, but distortion would spike near full output from class D amps, and my THD and damping would suffer at the lower load, as would my signal to noise ratio, at any volume. I preferred to go with the better choice and suffer the cost.
Call Kicker and get the dual 2 ohms. Tell them the problem, you can even say their blown. They'll send you a new pair of subs, the ones you need. Don't run your amp at that load. You'll blow your subs. It may sound good at first but trust me, they'll blow. Your amp will be running a clipped signal. At the top and bottom of your sine your subs will stick, causing the coils to get red hot and blow. TRUST ME I did the same thing. I did get an extra pair of subs from kicker though. Now I have 4 dual 2 ohm subs. Not using 2 of them, any takers? First $350.00 takes them.
Al, if you do want a good amp to run at 1 ohm that's designed to do it for a pair of L7 subs, the Kicker KX1200.1 or SX1250.1 are perfect matches to those subs. wired to one ohm you get ~1200-1250+ watts total. Actually up to about 10% more than that based on the amps' birthsheets usually.
Hey GlassWolf, those are some great recommendations regarding the amps but I just found out that my 2 12" Kicker-solobarics are DVC 2 ohm subs (Oooops!). I am now looking for either one or two amps that will power my subs. Again, I wouldn't mind wiring under a 1 ohm load but these are 2 ohm subs and it gets more complicated overall. Please help me figure out which options to explore. Which amp or amps would give me the best "bang for my buck"? I personally like RF but I know that there are many other great names out there.
Which would you rather have running two 12" Kicker-solobaric L7's (DVC, 2 ohm, 750 RMS), an MTX 1501 (1500 RMS x 1 at 2 ohms); a RF 1000.1BD (1000 RMS at 2 ohm); or some other something else that costs less than $500.00? If not a RF amp, please explain why you made the decision. I am looking for as much feedback as possible because I am going to make a purchase most likely by today or tomorrow and it will help me to determine whether or not I should sell my RF 1000.1BD amp to get something else. Thanks!
please stop posting the exact same messages to multiple threads/areas of the board. Once is plenty. people really will answer you. asking more than once generally just gets on peoples' nerves and makes them ignore all of the questions. at least that's how it makes me react mostly.
particularly when it involves hijacking other peoples' threads.