It's my understanding that bridging two channels on an amp makes the amp see half the impedence of the speaker. True?

Now, if I wire a dual voice coil sub into a 2ohm load, and then bridge the amp, will it stay a 2ohm load, or will it try to push a 1ohm load?

I've confused myse entirely thinking about this too much

 

You are almost there! The amp "reacts" to what ever load it "sees"

So, if you bridge two channels of an amp to a 2 ohm mono load, it is equivalent to hooking up a 1 ohm driver to each channel in stereo.

What you will notice is that typically, amps are designed to be stable down to a 2 ohm stereo load (one 2 ohm driver on each channel) or a 4 ohm mono load.

Hope that helps.

If you want to read up some more....go here, and definitely bookmark it - it's one of the best sites on the net period:

http://www.eatel.net/~amptech/elecdisc/

 

You are correct. I think the confusion comes from how amps are rated. No one uses the same system. Normally you would use the nominal impedence. So if your amp said it was stable a 2 ohms bridge then you would be fine.

Usually on clue is what they rate the unbridge channels at. So if an amp says 2*100 at 1 ohm then it would be able to handle a bridge two ohm load.

Confused more?

hope that helped

 

so let's say the amp is rated at 50 x2 @4ohm rms

Would bridging it make that a 2 ohm load or a 4 ohm load? And then what would I need to wire the sub to?

I'm trying to understand, but I guess I just don't yet.

 

there's two things to look at here....

1. Bridging channels does NOTHING to the actual load....the load is the load no matter what

2. When an amp is bridged, it's essentially the same as connecting a stereo load that has an impedance of one half of the briged load.

So, if you take a 4 ohm sub (SVC) and hook it up to a 2 channel amp by bridging the two channels, the amp sees a 4 ohm mono load which is equivalent to it seeing a 2 ohm stereo load. The sub is and will always be a 4 ohm nominal load.

It's a lot of techno-babble.

 

hmmm, well what I'm actually wondering about is if it would be save to run a 4ohm DVC sub from a bridged two channel amp that's 2ohm stabe in stereo.

I can only do an 8ohm or a 2ohm load from a 4ohm DVC sub, right? Or am I completely off base there as well?

Before I started really thinking about this, I was planning on wiring the sub to 2ohm, and then bridging the amp (50 x 2 rms @ 4ohm, 200 watts x 1 rms bridged), but now I'm confused and thinking it won't be safe.

 

More than likely it is not a good idea to hook it up as you mentioned. Depending on who made the amp sometimes it is possible. Usually what I recommend if you are trying to squeze more power out is to just hook it up the way you mentioned. Then just watch the amplifier. Most amps nowadays have all kinds of circuit protection in them if they don't like what they are doing they will shut off. More than likely yours will shut off.

For example an Autotek Mean Machine is only rated for a bridged 4 ohm load. I have driven 1 ohm loads with no problems.

disclaimer: If you blow your amp don't come crying to me. Yes sometimes it works but with cheap amps you never know what they will do. It's like rolling dice.

 

hah, that's what I figured.

Am I right on the DVC subs? dual 4ohm can only be run as 2ohm or 8ohm, right? You can't run it 4ohm.

Am I correct?

 

correct

 

could I wire the sub into an 8ohm load and then bridge the amp? Or would that still screw it up. I still don't understand exactly how the speaker load and the amp correlate.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by Jonathan_EH &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">could I wire the sub into an 8ohm load and then bridge the amp? Or would that still screw it up. I still don't understand exactly how the speaker load and the amp correlate.</TD></TR></TABLE>

Yes you would be fine. You would only get 100W to your sub though. What brand amp?

Try to think of it this way imagine you had a wheel barrow. Now you needed to push this up a hill. Think of your 4 ohm speaker as a 100lb bag of cement. When you go up in impedence the load goes down. When you go down in impedence the load goes up. So a 8 ohm load is a 50lb bag. A 2 ohm load is a 200lb bag and a 1 ohm load is a 400lb bag. You can see it would be much harder to push that 400lb load up a hill.




Modified by nsxxtreme at 11:38 AM 7/9/2003

 

alpine type R sub, and a Lightning audio 200.2 amp.

I was just trying to see if I could get away with not having to buy a new amp right away.