DD-1 "Wheres the power go?"

[BillKessel]

Seeing as amplifiers put out
"x" @ 1 ohm
"x" @ 2 ohms
"x" @ 4 ohms and so on,
When apply a DD-1 to your amplifier you eliminate that ohm system, seeing as you crank the head-unit AND gain to reach a clipping LED and then back it off.

With that being said WHERE does the power go, Lets take this to a bigger scale. In the form of using a 5-9k watt amplifier. Where does all the power being generated from the amplifier go? I certainly know my DD-1 does not make any kind of noise when i set my gains

My DD-1 works fine i set gains with it often, but wouldn't you think over time couldn't this burn someones amp up (via heating up the internals because the power generated has no where to go?) Just want to know if there could be any problems behind the tool / Internals that reduce the wattage, not starting a hate/bash thread in any means just interested in where the power goes

Thanks!

[rockFord_Expedition]

Are you serious?

That's like saying my walls are going to catch fire because I haven't drawn power from certain outlets in a long time even though the power is sitting right there.

Think of the wattage coming from the amplifier as potential. The amp isn't going to bust at the seams bro.

[BillKessel]

Lol i can dig the outlet example didnt think of that. I was just wondering hey it works in my car but just had a random question pop into my head.

[rockFord_Expedition]

Nothing wrong with curiosity. That's how we learn.

[S15_Silvia]

Same way we are able to measure large-scale things with sensitive equipment. In the case of where I do research, we use toroidal step-down transformers (with a certain current/voltage ratio) to take the high voltage and current down to something more acceptable. The equipment does the measurements at this lower level, then multiplies by the transformer ratio and voila.

[Wicks]

You can think of things in terms of "load impedances" to help visualize what's going on.

As you said, your subs are ~1 to 4 ohms so we can consider that low impedance.

I don't know the number offhan, but I believe the DD-1 has an input impedance of 10kOhms which you can consider the "load impedance".

Therefore the DD-1 draws very little current to do its measurements which is why you can connect it to large amplifiers.

Oscilloscope probes are mostly 1Mohms.

So you can see oscopes draw VERY little power for their measurements.

But since they are sensitive tools, the probes can only handle a limited amount of volts so you have to be careful.

When you have nothing connected to your amp, it's actually connected to the air.

Air has a resistance of probly 100Mohms or more.

You can see it puts a HUGE impedance on the amp so practically nothing comes out.

As was said above, another good way to state it is that power is "drawn", not "pushed".