I have a sr6500 need help on amp

[Ecin]

I really want the xa4200 from eclipse but when u bridge it, it turns to 400w x 2 isn't that way too excessive? Is that able to be turned down?

Can it be biamped at 100w x 4? What's the optimal wattage for a biamp setup?

other amps i'm looking at are the pdx2.150 and 300/2 in the used market. The eclipse i can get brand new.

[killerb]

yes you can biamp with a 100x4 amp. just use the gains to detune the channels used for the tweeters.

[eloplayspolo]

more power is always good as long as u control your gains.

[Ecin]

so practically what is more power?? 100w to a tweeter and 100w to a woofer in biamp mode or 150w going to both(jl or alpine)? What would happen if i bridge the xa4200 to make it 400x2 400w for the left and 400w for the right? I mean that's way over 125w

[eloplayspolo]

that is a lot of power.... im not 100% sure... but i would imagine u would need to set the gains super low and still, thats prob over kill. 150 to each is prob as high as i would go... maybe 200, u just want your power to be clean and to put as little strain on your gear as possible. Distortion kills speakers... not so much over powering them.

[MacLeod]

Distortion kills speakers... not so much over powering them.

Distortion has no harmful effect on speakers. In fact a speaker doesnt know or care how clean the signal its getting is. Overpowering is the ONLY thing that kills a speaker other than physical damage like poking a screwdriver thru one.

Overpowering kills a speaker by 1 of 2 ways. 1) building up more sustained heat in the voice coil than it can dissipate which is done by overpowering it. 2) pushing the suspension beyond its limits by overpowering. Distortion wont hurt a speaker at all so long as its below its thermal limits.

A signal at 20% distortion wont hurt a speaker at all so long as its below its power handling while a clean and pure signal at double the speakers handling will rip it to shreds. The difference is that music isnt full blast all the time. You have some peaks and some dips. Now if youre playing rap which has long sustained bass notes that can hurt speakers if youre using a big amp cause its big power and sustained and makes it very hard for a voice coil to dissipate the heat. Some nice clean jazz wont have full power runs for very long. Youll have some big cymball crashes or trumpet blasts but theyll be quick and wont hurt the VC.

More power means better sound quality to a point. 150 watts will work better to a midrange than 50 will but that doesnt mean that 1000 watts will work even better. The thing youre trying to do is like horsepower. You want an engine with strong HP not because you necessarily want to drive fast, but for when you need it like when towing a trailer or merging with freeway traffic. Same here. You want a big amp so youll have plenty of clean power to draw from for nice clean dynamic reproduction of the music. So just like you dont need 1000 horsepower to have a very driveable car, you dont need 1000 watts per channel to have good SQ.

I personally think that anything over 150 watts per driver for the front stage is getting into the area of where youre not really getting a benefit.

Bottom line, that 100x4 Eclipse will be just about perfect. Plenty of clean power. Just use common sense and if you hear your speakers being overdriven, back off.

[eloplayspolo]

i read a big article on a tech site not too long ago and it said that the most common way of ruining your everyday speaker was by playing distortion which is why it is so important to have clean power... hmmm

[killerb]

what mac was saying is distortion doesnt kill the speakers its the extra power that does. when your amp goes into clipping it produces a square wave. that wave is made with odd order harmonics which produce tons of extra power that your speakers now have to dissapate. small amounts of distortion can be tolerated without a real problem. an example is a 100 watt amp getting the first odd order harmonic will produce 33.3 extra watts, 1/3 of the rms. the next 1/5 of rms 20 extra watts. the next 1/7 of rms 14.3 extra watts and so on. thats 67.6 watts in just the first 3 odd order harmonics. that 100 watt speaker now has the task of dissapating 167.6 watts with the first 3 harmonics. it wont like it one bit.

[MacLeod]

i read a big article on a tech site not too long ago and it said that the most common way of ruining your everyday speaker was by playing distortion which is why it is so important to have clean power... hmmm

Well dont know what to tell ya other than that article is wrong. If a speaker has a thermal handling limit of 100 watts and 101 watts means death, then it doesnt matter if that 101st watt is pure distortion or as clean and pure as the wind driven snow. Conversely, that 99th watt will be played with ease regardless if its pure distortion or the wind driven snow.

Test it out for yourself. Hook up a sub to a head unit and then crank the volume up full blast. That will be full tilt clipped distortion. I guarantee you, the sub wont blow. The reason is that no matter how clipped the signal is, that head unit will never be able to make enough power to either build up too much heat in the VC or drive the suspension beyond its limits.

The reason people associate distortion with dead speakers is for one, when a speaker is being overdriven it usually distorts as its being pushed to its limits. This is only a symptom of whats happening. Like if I shoot you with a gun, did the bullet kill you or the BANG!

Also, when people run too little power to a speaker they tend to crank it up way too much to get it up to the level they want. Since theyre using too small an amp, they soon push it into clipping which is a distorted signal but thats not what hurts the speaker - its the signal being shot out at 3 times the normal power that kills the speaker. For instance, you run a 100 watt speaker with a 50 watt amp and push it into clipping, itll send out 150 watts to that speaker which kills it. Again, it wasnt the distortion, it was the overpowering.