how risky

eloplayspolo

How risky is it going to be for me to bridge my TE1004 so that it will be 450x2 at 4ohms for my mmc6500? i mean obviously i need to be very very gentle with the gain, but seems like using like 4 times the amount recommended could be a bad idea... any comments or suggestions?

Reason i want to do this is because i dont like the volume im getting from the speakers right now, they are distorting if i put the gain any higher than a tiny bit over half. right now they have 125w rms

killerb

as long as you detune it it will be ok. you will have a ton of headroom.

Airplay355

If volume is your issue, why don't you look into getting some speakers with a higher efficiency?

I'm not really a car audio guy so I'm not entirely sure what would happen. I have mmc5250 or whatever hooked up to a pioneer head unit and they are certainly loud enough for me; not enough bass but they are only 5.25" and they do fine with everything else.

MacLeod

That will be entirely way too much power. Even if you put the gain on the floor, the first time you cranked the volume just a little bit it would shred the cone off the surrounds!

If youre wanting more volume than 125 watts per speaker, youre pretty much out of luck. If you doubled the power to 250 youd get a 3 db increase which isnt that dramatic and more than enough to shred your speakers but would be easier to control. 450 watts per driver is insane!

If you dont have enough volume now and want a lot more, get a set of horns. Theyll be plenty loud.

eloplayspolo

i drive with my windows down usualy... i live by the beach, wouldnt u. windows up im good.... but yeah i figured it was wayyyyyyyyyyyyy too much.

killerb

that amp has an input sensitivity of 100mv to 10v. you can detune that amp to a safe level easy. thats how i ran my sr6500 tweeters off a 120w x 4 carver amp. i turned the gains all the way down and trimmed the input signal. if you put 5v into the input you will get about half the power, 2.5v about quarter the power. i trimmed mine with my x-over output. i can make that amp put out whatever i want it to.

eloplayspolo

uhhh its not a nob, its a push button, its either 1x or 10x - If i put it on 10x the amp clips beacuse the head unit has 4v preouts.

killerb

your amp has a min/max NOB which is the gain control. the x1 and the x10 is the sensitivity range. the 1x range is 100mv-1v and the x10 is 1v-10v. you will clip the amp in the 1x range. your problem is your gains are not set correctly. in the x1 range with the gains at min it will only take a little over 1v to clip your amp and at max gain only a little over 100mv. you should use the x10 range with a 4v output not the x1. if the amp is clipping when in the x10 you have the gains set too high. the gains are there to match the head unit to the amp.

http://www.mtx.com/caraudio/products/manualsQuickInstall/amps/TE1004_InstallSettings.pdf

MacLeod

The gain is not a volume control nor does it make the amp put out more or less power necessarily. It simply matches the input of the amp with the output of the head unit so that when youre HU is at 50% volume, the amp is at 50%. Even with the gains on the floor, you put in a kick **** song and crank the volume and you could still easily get 450 watts out of it.

Having an amp that makes 450 RMS PER CHANNEL attached to a speaker rated at 100 watts is ludicrous. Even with the gain set on the floor, one good low frequency song played at a spirited volume and it will shred that speaker. Ive seen it time and time again in SQ competition cars as most of them use ridiculous amounts of power. A friend of mine just recently shredded - literally - his Scanspeak mids playing a rockin' song thru them. He's got 300+ watts going to each mid from a squeaky clean Genesis amp with the gains on the floor, but it still was enough to turn those Scans into paperweights and this dude knows more about car audio than all of us put together and knows how to set up a system yet he's still got a set of dead Scans.

killerb

MacLeod wrote: »

The gain is not a volume control nor does it make the amp put out more or less power necessarily. It simply matches the input of the amp with the output of the head unit so that when youre HU is at 50% volume, the amp is at 50%. Even with the gains on the floor, you put in a kick **** song and crank the volume and you could still easily get 450 watts out of it.

Having an amp that makes 450 RMS PER CHANNEL attached to a speaker rated at 100 watts is ludicrous. Even with the gain set on the floor, one good low frequency song played at a spirited volume and it will shred that speaker. Ive seen it time and time again in SQ competition cars as most of them use ridiculous amounts of power. A friend of mine just recently shredded - literally - his Scanspeak mids playing a rockin' song thru them. He's got 300+ watts going to each mid from a squeaky clean Genesis amp with the gains on the floor, but it still was enough to turn those Scans into paperweights and this dude knows more about car audio than all of us put together and knows how to set up a system yet he's still got a set of dead Scans.

im not saying put 450 watts to the speakers im saying that he can detune that amp to a safe level. how can my sr tweeter handle 120w? because its not seeing 120w, its seeing 30 watts. with controlling the input to the amp i can control the power put out of my amp. are you saying that headunits with different output voltages make the amp put out the same power at the same gain? he has a gain setting problem. a 450 watt amp can put out 100 watts if the input limited. a 450 watt amp can be a 50 watt amp if the input signal is limited. this can be done with a x-over output setting or simply use the fader. your friend exceded the thermal or mechanical limits of the driver. i never do that. i say if you have an amp that puts out more power than the speakers are rated for you can still use it, just limit the input to the amp. i ran my sr6500 tweets for over a year with 120 watts and they are still working? no, i just reduced the input signal and got the wattage i wanted. gains are not understood by most. i confirmed my wattage with an oscope, its all about output voltage.

MacLeod

killerb wrote: »

im not saying put 450 watts to the speakers im saying that he can detune that amp to a safe level. how can my sr tweeter handle 120w? because its not seeing 120w, its seeing 30 watts. with controlling the input to the amp i can control the power put out of my amp. are you saying that headunits with different output voltages make the amp put out the same power at the same gain? he has a gain setting problem. a 450 watt amp can put out 100 watts if the input limited. a 450 watt amp can be a 50 watt amp if the input signal is limited. this can be done with a x-over output setting or simply use the fader. your friend exceded the thermal or mechanical limits of the driver. i never do that. i say if you have an amp that puts out more power than the speakers are rated for you can still use it, just limit the input to the amp. i ran my sr6500 tweets for over a year with 120 watts and they are still working? no, i just reduced the input signal and got the wattage i wanted. gains are not understood by most. i confirmed my wattage with an oscope, its all about output voltage.

A 450 watt amp doesnt make 450 watts all the time. You car can do 100 mph. That doesnt mean its always doing 100 mph from the moment you crank it up. It all depends on what the amp is being asked to reproduce. A soft female voice singing doesnt require near the power to reproduce that a loud slap of a snare drum or a rap bass note requires. How high the volume is cranked also determines how much power the amp is putting out. Thats essentially what the THD spec is. Its telling you how hard the amp is being pushed to make a certain power. An amp that can make 100 watts at .1% THD could make 150 at 1% and 200 at 2% and so on. The output is NOT static.

By turning down the gain, youre essentially telling the amp that the HU's output signal is less than it really is. So when the HU is at 50%, the amp thinks its at say 20%. This doesnt mean the 450 watt amp is only making 90 watts, just that it thinks the HU was at 20% volume. You stick in some smooth mood music and it wont make much power - you crank some rap and itll crank up the power. You crank the volume up on some heavy duty music and that amp may not hit its 450 but itll get way up there and even if it gets to 250, thats still WAY too much for those speakers to handle.

I agree with you that turning down the gain reduces the power output at a given instance at a given volume, but if you turn down the gain, all you have to do is turn up the volume on the HU and youre back to the same level again and the gain can only go down so far.

Its not a guarantee that he'll fry those speakers like that, but its damn likely. Its not a guarantee Ill die if I jump off a bridge - but its damn likely. So maybe I should just jump off my back porch. Much less impact. Maybe he should get an amp 1/3 that size. Burning a voice coil takes time and the musical parts that require the big power might not last long enough to build up too much heat - but one big blast of a low frequency note and you can rip the cone off the suspension. That only takes a second and that can happen with a 80 Hz note being sent at 450 watts to a 100 watt, 6" mid. Thats what happened to my buddy's speaker. It literally ripped the cone off the surround of both speakers! And his gains were set to zero! 300 watts to a $500 mid with zero gain - and theyre paperweights now. Ive seen it happen a dozen other times. Go to an IASCA show and watch them do their SPL part of the SQ judging. 110 db of pink noise. Youll see mids and tweets popping all over the place - and theyve all got their gains set to nothing on their 500 watt per channel amps.

eloplayspolo

k so just looked again, i do have it on 10x, it was clipping on 1 because i had the gains too high. anyways i have the gains just slightly over half.... and like i said at volume 28 of 35 its SUPER loud with the windows up.... but windows down and driving 55, its just normal listening.

killerb

MacLeod wrote: »

A 450 watt amp doesnt make 450 watts all the time. You car can do 100 mph. That doesnt mean its always doing 100 mph from the moment you crank it up. It all depends on what the amp is being asked to reproduce. A soft female voice singing doesnt require near the power to reproduce that a loud slap of a snare drum or a rap bass note requires. How high the volume is cranked also determines how much power the amp is putting out. Thats essentially what the THD spec is. Its telling you how hard the amp is being pushed to make a certain power. An amp that can make 100 watts at .1% THD could make 150 at 1% and 200 at 2% and so on. The output is NOT static.

By turning down the gain, youre essentially telling the amp that the HU's output signal is less than it really is. So when the HU is at 50%, the amp thinks its at say 20%. This doesnt mean the 450 watt amp is only making 90 watts, just that it thinks the HU was at 20% volume. You stick in some smooth mood music and it wont make much power - you crank some rap and itll crank up the power. You crank the volume up on some heavy duty music and that amp may not hit its 450 but itll get way up there and even if it gets to 250, thats still WAY too much for those speakers to handle.

I agree with you that turning down the gain reduces the power output at a given instance at a given volume, but if you turn down the gain, all you have to do is turn up the volume on the HU and youre back to the same level again and the gain can only go down so far.

Its not a guarantee that he'll fry those speakers like that, but its damn likely. Its not a guarantee Ill die if I jump off a bridge - but its damn likely. So maybe I should just jump off my back porch. Much less impact. Maybe he should get an amp 1/3 that size. Burning a voice coil takes time and the musical parts that require the big power might not last long enough to build up too much heat - but one big blast of a low frequency note and you can rip the cone off the suspension. That only takes a second and that can happen with a 80 Hz note being sent at 450 watts to a 100 watt, 6" mid. Thats what happened to my buddy's speaker. It literally ripped the cone off the surround of both speakers! And his gains were set to zero! 300 watts to a $500 mid with zero gain - and theyre paperweights now. Ive seen it happen a dozen other times. Go to an IASCA show and watch them do their SPL part of the SQ judging. 110 db of pink noise. Youll see mids and tweets popping all over the place - and theyve all got their gains set to nothing on their 500 watt per channel amps.

i tune with a zero db signal, you cant get any higher signal than that. so any transient in a song will not effect the tune or gain structure. i dont use gain overlap. also when you reduce the gains your telling the amp the h.u. output is higher not lower. i have been using this method for many years with zero problems. he shouldnt run with 450 watts, i never said that. also i set the gains at full undistorted volume, so i cant burn my speakers by increasing the volume. i also know that power isnt static. thats why i govern the maximum amount of power the amp will make, not regulate it. like you said music is transient by nature. this is what i mean by limiting the output voltage of the head unit. its ohms law, voltage squared divided by resistance. with my oscope i can trim my x-overs output to any max voltage i want, and it will never excede that. its like the turbocharged motor in my grandnational. if i set my wastegate to limit my boost 10lbs. the car will only make a certain h.p. , but if i increase the boost to 20lbs. the car will shread the tires. check out jl audio's gain setting tutorial and do the math. well i have to go to work.

MacLeod

killerb wrote: »

he shouldnt run with 450 watts

Woohoo! We agree!

killerb

yes we do!

MacLeod

I have to have the last word. "Word."

audiobliss

"Worder."