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I don't agree on a few.

~The whole cap thing, buy a decent battery yield better results, but you guys have not tested that scenario, and which is what majority of people will recommend.

Even on that video description

1F capacitor didn't add any power on the continuous RMS test, but it OWNED the Dynamic Burst testing!!

So great the 1 fared capacitor is gained you few hundred watts on a burp style test.

Now the question is what would a battery gained you in the same price point like a XS Power D680?

~As for the running of ground wires front to back. Sure it may not have much effect on a smaller setup, but now lets talk people that are using multiple 5000-7000+watt rms amps?

How about how dbdrag street cars that are doing 157+ db with the car off and a single group 31 battery under the hood, and 10-20 runs of positive and negative wire each if not more, and you when you meter the car over and over after adding a new run of pos and neg wire it keeps getting louder and louder. Must mean the amp is making more power due to the added positive and negative runs.

Again, tests where done with smaller sized amps, and again tony said if you have a system of 2500watts or less the chassis is just fine. But going and saying it is fine for everything and saying myth busted is not true because your db drag street cars prove your testing wrong.

~Now for amp clamping...

Sure I know the whole ordeal behind this, and that's to prove a old technology useless and sell the new technology. Thats marketing.

But to say it doesn't work when it does??? Mind blown!

Tested with a oscilloscope or tuned with a dd-1, using a true rms clamp and multimeter you guys showed 258va (not watts, as the video put it).

Then you tested it with the AD-1 and showed 254 watts.

Fluke 155 true rms multimeter $170 (ebay price for a new unit)

Fluke 274 true rms clamp $240 (ebay price for a new unit)

SMD DD-1 $150 (wccaraudio.com price for a new unit)

Total $560

So a $2800 tool came up with 4 less watts as a true rms clamp/multimeter, oscope/dd-1 setup.

Is that 4 watts worth $2240?

Not to mention that the clamp meter and multimeter will come in use over and over for the average person that likes to tinker with other things besides car audio. Let alone its easier to come by and or save for the average person where maybe one week they can buy a clamp, their next paycheck a dd-1, and so on.

Which also brings me to how can a user find its impedance rise for whatever reason they may want to know if you cant clamp an amp?

Dont get me wrong, Id love an AD-1, but for the average end user its not a reality. Now for an actual audio shop I feel the AD-1 would be a MUST HAVE, which is what it was made for, not the typical end user..

But again, to come out and say "YOU CANT CLAMP AN AMP because the numbers are not watts even though the numbers only differ by 4 (not watts) is wrong.

AF - I like your style. The title of this thread was supposed to ruffle a few feathers. Now, let me address your points one at a time.

Capacitors . . . music is dynamic in nature. No song that I know of requires 100% duty cycle of an amplifier, even those with bass in the title. Now, let's just say for a second that we listen to Blurred Lines and we want to play that song as loud as our system can possibly play it. Even though this song, like many recorded in the last 15 years, is heavily compressed (dynamic range minimized), and it will require more power on average than a song like say, Gold Dust Woman by Fleetwood Mac, it's far from a pure sine wave. The immediate power requirements of different transients of the song are short - think milliseconds.

Everyone seems to be so anxious to compare batteries to capacitors. When in reality, they're two entirely different animals and they each have their place. Take out a pen and paper, draw a straight line and write 14.4 Volts (operating voltage of a spinning alternator) next to that in the margin. Now, skip two lines down and draw another straight line and write 12.6 Volts (nominal voltage of a fully charged 12 Volt battery) next to that in the margin. Now, you obviously have a space between these two lines. A charged capacitor occupies that space (or does it?). Without it, as one pulls current from the alternator, that 14.4 Volt line you just drew will droop everytime that occurs. Since an alternator doesn't store any energy, it has no ability to maintain it's output voltage as current is pulled rapidly from it (recall in the Charging System 101 video when I first turn on the light and voltage dropped - know you know why). A fully charged, and properly sized, capacitor will minimize these droops as current is pulled from the alternator dynamically, as it would be when playing music.

OK, so what about the battery. Good question. With the engine running, a battery has greater than 12.6 Volts of potential. The difference between what it actually has and 12.6 Volts is called a surface charge. A simple way to determine that is to connect your DMM to your battery(ies) with the vehicle running and then turn it off. What does your DMM say? Let's say, you read 13.4 Volts. Then, the battery has 1.2 Volts of surface charge on it. This surface charge, no different than the charge of a capacitor, can be put to work. So, go and actually measure that . . . now that you've done so, come back and draw a new line on your sheet of paper with that number. Then, the real answer of how a capacitor can, will, and does work is that its storage occupies the space between that line (surface charge) and the output voltage of the alternator. Incidentally, the battery in the Jeep Grand Cherokee was a massive (Group 31 or so) AGM style battery.

AK - test it for yourself. No tricks. No seven of diamonds . . . I promise. Build a scale model if you need to. Batteries absolutely have their place. Not everyone can afford that big alternator and the surface charge can be a powerful thing. In addition, batteries offer parking lot play time - caps can't do that under any circumstance. Building a charging system with both batteries and capacitors is the way to go and is what I've done for 25 years now. If we only had XS Power batteries back then . . .

Clamping . . . Brother, you're just wrong. Passionate but still wrong. I suggest that you watch that video again. One cannot determine amplifier power via clamping. Can't be done. No eloquent explanations will do. It just can't work. To imply that it can would be the equivalent of me looking at a gallon of milk and reading 128oz. Then, deriving that that gallon of milk weighed 8 pounds because there are 16oz in a pound (128oz / 16oz = 8). Hey, it's close . . . but it's wrong because fluid oz and oz are not the same metric. As D'Amore explains, the reason this isn't possible is because in an AC signal, voltage and current are not always in phase. Plain and simple - can't be changed. D'Amore did an excellent job of debunkng that one. Time to get you on board my friend. Sure, those Fluke products you point out are MUSTS in any serious enthusiasts tool box, but a yardstick would be just as good as they to determine amplifier power - useless.

Grounding via the chassis versus cable . . . I had a long chat with D'Amore on this topic today. We are in agreement that we can indeed prove this further. In the meantime, because we're both crazy busy, I'd like you to think about something from that picture you attached. What has more mass - the body of that vehicle or all that cable? What has more surface area - the body of that vehicle or all that cable? Give us time on this one . . . we'll show you guys how to determine which is a better choice, no matter how much current you're talking about. Tony and I both believe that there indeed is some point at which cable will be a better choice, but I bet that answer blows a few minds.

In the meantime, keep the passion. I admire it my brother.

Just curious; if there is no possible way to "clamp" the amplifier as you suggest, what special technology does the AD-1 have that allows it to break this rule?

Also, I don't mind clamping as it might not give exact results but as long as true rms tools are in use, it keeps the results relative. For example it may not be correct with the exact wattage output, but it will still prove the power an amplifier can make when compared to others tested in the same manner.

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2007 M/T Honda Civic Coupe EX

(4) Sundown Audio X-8's

(2) Ampere Audio 3800.1's

(3) Stinger SPV-44 Batteries

(1) Mechman 240

3:1 Ratio 4th order sealed from the trunk

TEAM NWSPL

Best termlab scores to date in Honda trunk:
151.7db legal (official) IASCA trunk 3 class

Best termlab scores to date in my walled Subie:
152.9db legal (unofficial) IASCA advanced 2 class
155db outlaw

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Relative to what? True RMS has nothing to do with phase. A DMM is the wrong tool to assess amplifier power. Any data obtained in this manner is useless ... whether analyzed on its own or used for comparative purposes.

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Tony Candela - SMD Sales & Marketing
Email me at [email protected] to learn about becoming an SMD Partner!

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Relative to what? True RMS has nothing to do with phase. A DMM is the wrong tool to assess amplifier power. Any data obtained in this manner is useless ... whether analyzed on its own or used for comparative purposes.

Relative to other people that test different amps in the same manner. While it may not be correct, it has become sort of a baseline to judge an amp in general. If you were to use it on two amps, you would be able to find out which one is more powerful, would you not?

2007 M/T Honda Civic Coupe EX

(4) Sundown Audio X-8's

(2) Ampere Audio 3800.1's

(3) Stinger SPV-44 Batteries

(1) Mechman 240

3:1 Ratio 4th order sealed from the trunk

TEAM NWSPL

Best termlab scores to date in Honda trunk:
151.7db legal (official) IASCA trunk 3 class

Best termlab scores to date in my walled Subie:
152.9db legal (unofficial) IASCA advanced 2 class
155db outlaw

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I understand the question and you raise an excellent point. I'm going to let D'Amore answer this. Keep in mind that the "baseline" you speak of was not established according to the laws that govern AC circuits, rather it was established according to laws that govern DC circuits.

It's due time to establish a correct baseline.

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Tony Candela - SMD Sales & Marketing
Email me at [email protected] to learn about becoming an SMD Partner!

CEAES_468.gif

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Reason 1) The AD-1 amplifier dyno uses resistive loads. This ensures that the power factor = 1.00 in the equation for AC power, which states Volts * Amps * Power Factor. The equation for DC power is volts * amps. People are using clamps and doing the math for DC power which is totally incorrect. Unless the power factor = 1.00 Which it will not be using subwoofers for "loads".

Reason 2) The AD-1 uses our patented DD-1 distortion detection circuitry to make sure that all power that is measured is clean power. (Certified mode) If one doesn't care about distortion or has a Class D amp that always has some distortion the AD-1 can be used in Uncertifed Mode which ignores distortion completely and looks only for clipping. A scope can be used to look for clipping but not distortion.

Reason 3) A DMM won't tell you about clipping, as the signal clips, a DMM will keep reading higher and higher, the more you clip the higher it will read. All the way up to 141% higher as the signal completely clips into a square wave. The current clamp will do the same. 141% times 141% = 200%. Double. Just based on that alone clamp "wattage" readings can potentially be wrong by 2x. Amp Dyno does not have this problem. The high speed analog to digital converters and high speed computer inside the AD-1 know what a actual sine wave looks like and will not count any voltage or current that is clipped.

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back to the den i go to redo my system idea for the idk how many time angry2.gif.pagespeed.ce.SCQIpjclNM.gifangry2.gif.pagespeed.ce.SCQIpjclNM.gifangry2.gif.pagespeed.ce.SCQIpjclNM.gifangry2.gif.pagespeed.ce.SCQIpjclNM.gif

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deepsilencer, on 22 Aug 2011 - 17:32, said:

splzx3, on 22 Aug 2011 - 17:27, said:

i had my fun on one of his videos...till he blocked me then i got my mother into it lol after her he closed the comments xD

lol your mom is a G! good.gif

WTF, I never thought I'd have a conversation about cross dressers and trans-genders on a car audio forum.

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Awesome read fellas. I like it.

Clip city bitch, clip clip city bitch. 10's, 12's, 15's, goin up in flames bitch.

TaylorFade, on 02 Jul 2013 - 9:38 PM, said:

Go back to that place, ask to speak to that dude again, look him dead in the eye and then.... pop him in the snot box.

Tell him T-Fade sent you.

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