Amps but no subs? (1 Viewer)

[Wayne_D]

Hello every one, i am new to this site. But I read till 3am last night to learn new information on sub building..

About a year ago I purchesed 4 car audio subs, and 2 hypex electronic HS500 amps..to run in my home theater....now that setup rocked for music but sounded like absolute ass for home theater....problem is i listen to very little music, but am all about home theater...so needless to say i am not 100% happy with what i have...

After finding this site, i reolized i should never have bought those car subs....i am not to worried because i can easily find someone to pick up the subs from me for car use..

So my question is what would be an ideal setup for subs on these to amps.....they are powerfull as hell, and would like to utilize the strength that they have...i could run one tempest on each amp? that would be a 720 watt on 4 ohm load....but it looks like may of the members on here are only feeding there tempests with 300 or so watts....

So what do you guys think? i have a friend that thinks i should run two 15" subs on each amp....only problem with that is two tempest would not make a 4ohm load....

any help would be greatly excepted!

 

[Lee Carbray]

You can wire two tempest together for a 4Ohm load. Just wire each driver's voice coils in series and parallel each driver this will result in an effective 4 ohm load.

Don't worry about having too much power, most people only have less because of cost.

 

[Mark Fitzsimmons]

Lee, actually that would result in a 8 ohm load.

Since each voice coil on a tempest is 8 ohms and you have four coils, when you wire the coils on the drivers in series that raises the impedence to 16 ohms. Then paralleling the drivers lowers impedence to 8 ohms.

To get 4 ohms out of two tempests, only hook up one voice coil per driver and parallel wire those.

 

[Jonathan_D]

Nothing wrong with running those amps into 8ohm loads as described by Lee. The acoustical power should be the same, no?

 

[Mark Fitzsimmons]

No.

The amp will do 490w at 8 ohms and 720w at 4 ohms.

 

[Wayne_D]

i am not sure what you mean by "acoustical power" the amp is 490watts at 8ohms..and 720 watts at 4ohms..

would i get good results with 490 for two tempests?

 

[Wayne_D]

I guess the question i need to ask is would i get a better result running one tempest at 720 watts rms...or two tempests spliting 590watts rms?

 

[Michael R Price]

Wayne,

720 watts is way too much for one Tempest.. but it's not too much for one Stryke AV-15. If you can tolerate a really big box you can run two Tempests in series on one amp... 250W each can actually use most of their output.

 

[Wayne_D]

Why is it too much power, they are rated at 750?

and another question would be if you make the boxes as huge as 8 to 10 cubic feet wont you run into problems with them bottoming out?

 

[TimForman]

Let's see. One channel of a 2000 watt peak RMS pro amp driving both coils of a Tempest with the gain set at half works pretty well for me. For movies with no explosions I might set the gain a little higher. Oh yeah, that's a sealed midQ enclosure.

 

[Wayne_D]

hey tim how big is your box?

 

[Allen Ross]

isn't that kinda personal question?

i find that my tempest can't handle more then half gain on my PE 250W amp

 

[Wayne_D]

how about a Maelstrom, one one each amp?

 

[Michael R Price]

The power handling of the Tempest is limited mechanically; sure, the voice coil can take 750 watts of heat, but 750 watts would push the driver way past excursion limits (it'd bottom out and possibly get damaged if the amplifier delivered near full power). In EBS vented boxes 250 watts is about enough, and in other alignments (such as sealed) 250-400 watts is plenty, I think. There's nothing wrong with using a higher power amplifier, just that the extra power won't give you more clean output. (And it might also cause damage.) The Maelstrom is no different, but it will go much louder if you tune it higher and use a subsonic filter.

 

[Wayne_D]

So Michael, what would you recomend me doing with the two HS500 i have....i think the Maelstrom is a cool sub, so what kind of box size would you recomend considering i have that much power....and i am all about home theater, so who cares about music play back........

and i know that i may sound like i want the best of both worlds, but i want thundering low bass as well and heart attack hard hitting bass.....

could i cross a pair of maelstrom over really low run by one amp say 40 and bellow....and use the other amp to run lets say a pair of tens that can produce the hard thump to produce the 100 to 40....

or am i just on crack?

 

[Jonathan_D]

What I meant by "acoustical power" is, if the amps are well built and stable, the "loudness" to which they'll be able to drive comparable 8 ohm or 4 ohm loads will be the same.

IOW, 400 watts into 8 ohms is basically the same as 800 watts into 4 ohms. He won't be "missing out" on any power if he wires the Tempests as 8 ohm loads. By the ratings Wayne posted, his amps aren't as "beefy" into 4 ohms as 8 ohms (the power rating into four ohms is approx. 1.5 times that into 8 ohms rather than an actual doubling). Four Tempests in two subs, each sub presenting 8 ohms to those amps would probably start popping drywall nails in a 4000 cubic foot room!

Oh, and Wayne, having "extra power" gives you greater "headroom" - i.e. movies and music will be more dynamic, less compressed sounding when played at loud volumes because you have the extra power to hit transitory peaks.

 

[Seth_L]

400 watts into 8 ohms is basically the same as 800 watts into 4 ohms.

I don't know where you came up with that, but it's wrong. Assuming otherwise identical drivers the 800W into 4 ohm setup is going to be 3dB louder.

 

[TimForman]

hey tim how big is your box?

I'm not shy. Lots of people have seen my box. It's 122L sealed.

 

[Lee Carbray]

Lee, actually that would result in a 8 ohm load.

Oops that was for 4 DVC drivers, sorry. Just get four Tempests

 

[Wayne_D]

so four tempest, over 2 maelstrom?

any box configurations suggestions for 4 tempests?