Don't get me wrong, I agree that a cap is a bandaid, but you guys need to read up on how capacitors work. They do in fact work as advertised. They're designed for the person that doesn't want to, or care to, spend the amount of money to upgrade their alternator or even their battery. Yes going that route is the "better" way.

Ever hear of Rockford's 15kw amp and how it works?

http://www.caraudiomag.com/0606_cae_...ier/index.html

 

Saying a 1000 watt setup is for SPL and to annoy the neighbor is BAD stereotype.....I'm running a PDX 1.1000 to a single 12w7 and I know for a fact you cannot hear the sub outside the car with the windows rolled up and you'd be hard pressed to hear it very far in front of the vehicle with windows down at my normal listening levels. It's all about proper tuning. If you properly tune, the sub will sound great inside the car but won't project itself outside the car. It's a poorly setup system that you can hear a 1/4 mile away....it has nothing to do with the amount of watts.

 

bad stereotype but a true one. 99% of the people in my area get a bigass sub and hook it up to whatever amp and call it a day. Then they drive around and straight blast that **** like they have something to prove. You guys know what i'm talking about.

 

Holy crap I shouldn't have even mentioned Caps and how they are useless. It always starts a **** storm.

http://forum.ecoustics.com/bbs/messages/4/452834.html

This is one of the easiest to understand articles I've read about Caps. In fact read any article by Richard Clark about the subject of caps. They are in fact *useless*. If you're getting voltage drop between your battery and your amp then you have problems. Check your grounds, add/upgrade the existing ground wires, upgrade the power wire going to your amp, check the amp ground wire.

 

http://forum.realmofexcursion.com/sh...ad.php?t=17919

Here's another article by RC as well. They're somewhat hard to find as they don't pop up on google.

Capacitors in amps serve their purposes. Adding an external "cap" does nothing.

 

lol, enough? bass is like power/money/women, you can never have too much, i have 2 diamond audio 12" in my acura CL with 1600watt amp to them, some days its enough, some days its not...

 

I'm sorry, I wasn't trying to start an arguement either. The guy that wrote the article in the first link you posted needs to do a little more research. The second article is pretty good, but even at the very end he basically says that they do serve a purpose. To me it seemed like somewhere he got the idea that someone said a cap could replace a battery. The big thing I have with both articles is they're basically saying that a 2nd battery in parallel is a waste of time also which I'm sure no one will agree with.

I know and understand the theory. I agree they don't provide the benefits of an upgraded electrical system. I personally don't use caps cuz I'll spend the money on a better battery and have never had a system where I needed to upgrade the alternator. I have used a cap before and it did exactly what I wanted it to do, eliminated my headlights dimming.

 

the rockford p3 total output is 1000rms and 2000 max... the diesel audio is 1400rms and it doesn't list its max watt... if the max watt of the amp is less than 2000 max...would it cause clipping of the sub? or probably will be fine..

 

Whether or not an amp clips is completely up to the person that sets up the amp and headunit. Any amp can clip or not clip.

The gain of an amp is a multiplier and works in a ratio. Lets say you have a headunit that puts out 2 volts on the RCA outputs. Lets say x amp puts out 50v on it's output to make 500 watts on a 4ohm woofer. When the gain is properly set, it's set at a "gain" of 25:1 meaning that 2volts of input will create the 50v of output or a 4 volt input will create 100volt output which in this case you'd set the gain to half of what you would for 2volts. Now when you look at a sine wave (music) going through this particular amp, the positive output would be +25v and the negative would be -25v. Lets say the max output voltage of this amp is 60v. The highest this sine wave can go is +30v and -30v. You want more power, so you turn up the gain to a factor of 35. The amp is now going to try to create a 70v output, but it can only produce 60v. Now this sine wave, instead of being the nice rounded peaks we like will cut off at the +30v point, sit there at that max value, until the sine wave starts to come back down and will do the same thing on the negative side. So instead of our nice rounded peaks, we have a plateu (close to a square wave). You are effectively "clipping" off the tops of the wave forms. You will audibly hear this (it's harder to hear through the backseat) and is probably 95% of the distortion present in most systems. While the sine wave is sitting at this peak voltage of the amplifier is essentially putting out a dc output and the woofer isn't moving. This is very destructive to a woofer. It relies on it's movement for cooling and without this it will overheat very quickly. This is probably the cause of the majority of woofer failure. It's for this reason, and a few others, that matching speakers with a slightly higher rated amplifier is better.

If you are serious about running this kinda power though, you need to ditch the small battery and get a fullsize like an Optima yellowtop, etc. The cap will help next to none in your situation.

Sorry this is so long and probably confusing, but hopefully you will understand it. Feel free to ask any more questions, and I will do my best to keep it on topic from now on.

 

god dammit.. i still can't decide if i should go for the 1000 rms...i want loud bass but i dont want it to be overkill.... anyone else can recommend a good sub setup that pushes up between 500-1000 rms at 2ohms

 

300rms is enough for a little extra bump... not loud contest winner though.

Cheers!

 

anyone use any shallow sub setup? rockford also have the p3s shallow subs that push out 400 rms each so for my setup by 800 rms which would be a great and in my range and they save 20 lbs over the standard p3s...im just worried about the sound quality be any different because its a shallow sub...

 

I ran a premier shallow depth for a while. Was never happy with the extension compared to a convential sub

 

Jls have shallow subs. I believe they're rated around 500wrms. They're supposed to be pretty good, according to JL.

Shallow subs seem to be getting popular, so it shouldn't be too hard to find a good one.

 

what was the rms on that setup? was it just not loud enough or performed poorly??