how much is too much?

[acarolan]

how much (many?) watts is too much?

i had a polk pa 500.4 rated at 4 ohm 90wx4 and at 2 ohm 125wx4sitting around from a previous car and when i put it it my current car i hooked it up to a set of focal components KRX2 and a set of polyglass 6x9s. the components are rated at 100wRMS and the 6x9s are rated at 80wrms.

If i ran the amp at 2 ohms would that be too much power for the 6x9s or the components? what about other speakers also, i believe its better to overpower speakers a little bit but what is the threshold?

[OrionStang]

Threshold (lol) could be the speakers max rating, if your smart with the volume and have a clean signal.

[UnderLoK]

Don't go over RMS of the speakers simply because tweets cook with a quickness (can you? yes, but I would bet money stuff will cook). It should be loud as hell regardless... On a related note, not sure how you plan on going from 4ohm to 2ohm... I could see 4 to 1 (because you would more then likely be bridging 2 channels), but not 4 to 2 unless you are disconnecting the 6x9's.

[Sanitarium]

you have those magic 6x9's that can change from being wired at 4 ohm to being wired at 2 ohm?

[acarolan]

thats the thing though, i SHOULD HAVE a clean signal because thats what the DD-1 tells me i have but when i turn it up i still get clipping and distortion? so i though maybe it might be something power related but again unless my speakers were getting 125w each that couldn't be possible. besides i think the clipping is coming from the components which have a higher power rating anyways.

and i have no idea about impedance, i really don't understand ohms at all. even in physics class lol all i know is that the amp manual says 4 ohms 90wx4 and 2 ohms 125wx4

and sanitarium, do i sense sarcasm?

[Bluliner]

If you're clipping, have you tried turning the x-overs off on the Polk amp? Don't be surprised if you sound a lot better when you do.

I don't know what a DD-1 is. But if it's an o-scope, run sine waves through the amp with and without the x-over on the amp turned on. You'll notice that the x-over adds so much dirt that you'll never make max power without distortion if you use them. Older Polk amps did this...same goes with the older Alpine V12 amps. Garbage processing.

[acarolan]

DD-1 was designed by Tony D'Amore, and conceptualized by Steve Meade. you can read more if you just search dd-1 distortion detector, its for the most part more accurate than an o-scope at detecting distortion and its used for setting gains. I usually have everything running on flat and i tried it on high-pass and that helped a little but but i still had distortion/clipping. I think it might just be the amp, i've never really heard of polk amps being widely used and also they no longer make amps which leads me to think that if they were worth using they would still be available........

[UnderLoK]

thats the thing though, i SHOULD HAVE a clean signal because thats what the DD-1 tells me i have but when i turn it up i still get clipping and distortion? so i though maybe it might be something power related but again unless my speakers were getting 125w each that couldn't be possible. besides i think the clipping is coming from the components which have a higher power rating anyways.

and i have no idea about impedance, i really don't understand ohms at all. even in physics class lol all i know is that the amp manual says 4 ohms 90wx4 and 2 ohms 125wx4

and sanitarium, do i sense sarcasm?

You might have a blown speaker or aren't cutting off the frequency in the right place. It should all be listed in the speakers specs then just set it at the amp or on your deck.

[acarolan]

so... i realized my front speakers are 2 ohm and my rear are 4 ohm does this mean that the fronts are getting 125w and the rears are getting 90???

#ihatephysics