Are you getting your monies worth from your AMP?
Here is something everyone buying an amp should know about.
http://knowledge.sonicelectronix.co...car-amplifiers/cea-2006-compliant-amplifiers/
CEA created a set of standards for rating the power output of amplifiers. This keeps everyone on level playing fields regarding what their amp says it is putting out.
An example of this rating might look something like,
CEA-2006 Power Rating: 100W RMS x 4 + 500W RMS x 1 (4-ohm/2-ohm, 14.4V at <1% THD+N)
What this means, is the amp in question is putting out 100 watts RMS power x 4 channels and 500 Watts RMS power x 1 channel into a 2 or 4 ohm load at 14.4 volts of power.
What is not telling you is how much signal voltage is required to get this power.
What's the difference and why should you care?
The 14.4 volts is talking about the amount of voltage coming out of your alternator/battery configuration.
Signal voltage is the amount of voltage coming across the speaker wires for High Output voltage and Low Output voltage across an RCA Interconnect.
The CES power rating is rated at 4 volts of signal voltage. Again why should you care.
If you start your car and take a volt meter and put it across the battery, at startup you would see something north of 13 volts and less than 14. aka, not making 14.4 volts.
If you test the speaker leads you are going to get something between 1.5 and 2.5 volts coming out of the factory radio. This is true about all factory radios. In the 20+ years of doing this, I have never seen a factory radio put out more signal voltage than 2.5 volts. Moreover, the louder the factory radio is turned up, the more distortion you are creating. The distortion on a factory radio is on a climbing curve. The higher it goes the more distortion it creates. Have you noticed that there is only so far you can turn it up before the speakers sound like they are breaking up. This is the poor design of the amp in the factory radio. The more distortion the easier it is to damage the speakers.
Have you ever experienced driving on a perfectly paved road after getting a set of new tires that were perfectly balanced? It feels like you are riding on a sheet of glass. A perfectly tuned and powered audio system is no different. At maximum volume everything sounds clear and perfect with no distortion and no break up no matter where the volume knob is and you will hear every inflection in the music and singers voice. It is a light switch moment.
This ultimately means that what your amplifier is rated at putting out you are not getting anywhere close to and you are adding distortion to what is coming out of the amp the higher in volume you go.
Some have argued that a processor is useless in a car and while I am no longer going to entertain that senseless argument, One of the many things a processor will do, is take whatever signal voltage you feed it and allow you to setup up the signal voltage to 4 volts or higher. Obviously you cannot feed 7 volts of signal into an amp rated at 4 volts as you would overdrive the input stage of the amp and burn it up, but 10% over is more than likely ok, and their are amps out there that will take more than 4 volts of signal, JL Audio is one, and Mosconi is another to name a few.
That solves the signal voltage problem of maximizing the amps performance but what about the battery power?
You need a voltage regulator, that adjust incoming voltage and regulates the output to a desired amount, in this case, 14.4 volts. Race cars use these on ignition systems to maximize the amount of voltage going to the plugs. Accuvolt used to make these out of Australia, but they are gone, now there is a company in Colorado called Harrison Labs.
If you have installed an aftermarket amp in your car, and spent money on aftermarket speakers, getting your monies worth is important. This would be like buying a turbo capable of making 30psi, but only asking it to put out 5psi.
I am certain some of you who have installed an aftermarket amp in their vehicle either in their Fiesta or other vehicle have played around with the gain control on the amp and noticed when you turn it up the amp plays louder, but have you ever wondered what it was for and what it does to the sound? The gain control is meant to match the output of the head unit to the input of the amp. The lower the voltage coming out of the head unit the more the amp gain has to be turned up. But what are you actually doing when you turn up the gain? You are adding distortion to the output of the amp. This is not hype and can be measured on a oscilloscope. Why do you care? If the lower the signal voltage the higher you have to turn the gain up adds distortion the same is true the other way. The more signal voltage going into the amplifier (Up to its limits), the lower the gain can be set to maximize output out of the amplifier, and not only maximize output but get the cleanest output out of the amplifier.
Why do we care?
The cleaner the signal, the louder the system will play without breaking up. In my systems, I have so much signal going into my amps, that the gain is off.
Also, the more power and more signal voltage you put into the amp, the hotter the amp is going to get. This is a good thing. Audio is a weird science. The components that make up an amplifier sound better the hotter they get. This is true not only in the home, but in the car environment as well, but at a cost. The law of thermal dynamics comes into play here. Most amps today have circuits that will cause the amp to cut off if it overheats, so it is important to make sure the amp is getting plenty of ventilation. All competitors that compete on a high level, will bring their car to a show, Turn the system on, play pink noise, at a medium level for an hour or more before being judged. This will break in the speakers, and get the amplifier hot to where it is performing at this best. This is no different than warming up a car to temp. You dont start your car at the gate to run the 1/4 mile.
One last piece here and this once is a very hard concept to come to terms with.
Speaker ratings are designed around the voice coils ability to handle power and speaker ratings are more of a guideline. If you have a speaker that is rated at 75 watts if the signal is clean it will take anywhere from 25-50% above that.
Which is better,
You buy 2 speakers that are rated at 250 watts nominal, 1000 watts peak, (Most Morel Drivers) how? They have over sized voice coils.
Which amp do I buy?
Option 1 an amp rated at 250 watts per channel?
Option 2 an amp rated at 100 watts per channel?
If you said option 2 you were right but why?
Imagine the amp operates on a scale of 0 to 10. 0 is off and 10 is full power output. All things we talked about above are taken into account. On the 250 watt amp, you are out of listening range by the time you get to level 5 for no other reason your hearing is about to explode.
On the 100 watt amp, you can play up to about level 8 before you reach that point.
You want your amp to play at about 75-85% of its capability all the time. This also makes the amp hotter and is the sweet spot for the amp. If you are using the 250 watt amp you will never get there, and the amp will never work hard enough to get up to temp.
The difference here is between getting listening fatigue and not. Imagine being a car that has 2000 watts of power, and sitting in that car for 3 hours at full volume(I mean volume turned to maximum), and when you get out of the car, you don't have listening fatigue. Your ears don't hurt and you dont feel like you have been to a concert where your ears are just ringing, but you were immersed in sound for the whole 3 hours. This happened in my car I competed with. Me and another judge, and he at the time was about 15 years older than me. When you ask him about it today, he gets this look of it was one of the most unbelievable moments he had experienced in a vehicle. My hearing is still perfect and I get tested on a regular basis. When you are just playing a system loud, without getting the amp to perform in its rated area and sweet spot, fatigue and damage is what you get.
Lastly the Capacitor, what is it and why do we care.
Your car battery and charging system was not designed to deal with the demands of high end car audio. The batter is slow to charge and slow to discharge. A Capacitor is the opposite, It is fast to charge and fast to discharge. Even if you get a alternator that puts out 220 amps of power. All you are doing is increasing the amount of amps out of the alternator to put into your batter to charge the battery quicker. It does not make the batter discharge quicker. Music is not constant. in that music has transient peaks. These are points where the music demands quick peaks in output. This can happen with regular music, and it can happen with a lot of bass enhanced music. It happens on regular rock music and classical. What the cap does, it is sits between the car battery and the amp, mounted close to the amp, and it is there to respond to the amp when the amp has a transient musical peak. Imagine you have a brand new battery in your car, and your alternator is in good shape. Your driving down the road at night, your listening to a song with a lot of bass and you notice on certain times in the music when your headlights go dim. That is a transient peak. Your audio system asked for more power than what your car could produce at that moment. Believe it or not, in the very first system I ever built, I was traveling on highway 29N of Lynchburg Va, I was playing the p&&& out of my system at night. I had not done anything I have talked about here. I had a Kenwood 1021 amp, at the time this thing was the biggest baddest amp available it was like 2.5 foot x 1.5 foot. I had the windows down and had the volume as far as it would go. I kid you not,it hit a section in a song, and the tach reved up and the car shut off. It was the 2nd most insane car audio moment I have ever had. I thought the car had died or something. It was the audio system that have over demanded the power system of the car.
Additionally, regarding sub output, these modification are the difference between your sub sounding muddy and it sounding tight and controlled regardless of ported or sealed.
As with anything, there are various opinions, as this is no different.
If your goal is to achieve the best possible sound reproduction in your car. This is one of many ways on the path to getting there.
If your goal is just to play your music as background noise, or you just want to play the system loud without regard to quality, None of this should matter.
I share this information for no other reason to share with those who are interested in getting the best sound out of the Mobile audio system. I am not putting down anyone who would not do what is suggested here. I offer this information freely.
Here is something everyone buying an amp should know about.
http://knowledge.sonicelectronix.co...car-amplifiers/cea-2006-compliant-amplifiers/
CEA created a set of standards for rating the power output of amplifiers. This keeps everyone on level playing fields regarding what their amp says it is putting out.
An example of this rating might look something like,
CEA-2006 Power Rating: 100W RMS x 4 + 500W RMS x 1 (4-ohm/2-ohm, 14.4V at <1% THD+N)
What this means, is the amp in question is putting out 100 watts RMS power x 4 channels and 500 Watts RMS power x 1 channel into a 2 or 4 ohm load at 14.4 volts of power.
What is not telling you is how much signal voltage is required to get this power.
What's the difference and why should you care?
The 14.4 volts is talking about the amount of voltage coming out of your alternator/battery configuration.
Signal voltage is the amount of voltage coming across the speaker wires for High Output voltage and Low Output voltage across an RCA Interconnect.
The CES power rating is rated at 4 volts of signal voltage. Again why should you care.
If you start your car and take a volt meter and put it across the battery, at startup you would see something north of 13 volts and less than 14. aka, not making 14.4 volts.
If you test the speaker leads you are going to get something between 1.5 and 2.5 volts coming out of the factory radio. This is true about all factory radios. In the 20+ years of doing this, I have never seen a factory radio put out more signal voltage than 2.5 volts. Moreover, the louder the factory radio is turned up, the more distortion you are creating. The distortion on a factory radio is on a climbing curve. The higher it goes the more distortion it creates. Have you noticed that there is only so far you can turn it up before the speakers sound like they are breaking up. This is the poor design of the amp in the factory radio. The more distortion the easier it is to damage the speakers.
Have you ever experienced driving on a perfectly paved road after getting a set of new tires that were perfectly balanced? It feels like you are riding on a sheet of glass. A perfectly tuned and powered audio system is no different. At maximum volume everything sounds clear and perfect with no distortion and no break up no matter where the volume knob is and you will hear every inflection in the music and singers voice. It is a light switch moment.
This ultimately means that what your amplifier is rated at putting out you are not getting anywhere close to and you are adding distortion to what is coming out of the amp the higher in volume you go.
Some have argued that a processor is useless in a car and while I am no longer going to entertain that senseless argument, One of the many things a processor will do, is take whatever signal voltage you feed it and allow you to setup up the signal voltage to 4 volts or higher. Obviously you cannot feed 7 volts of signal into an amp rated at 4 volts as you would overdrive the input stage of the amp and burn it up, but 10% over is more than likely ok, and their are amps out there that will take more than 4 volts of signal, JL Audio is one, and Mosconi is another to name a few.
That solves the signal voltage problem of maximizing the amps performance but what about the battery power?
You need a voltage regulator, that adjust incoming voltage and regulates the output to a desired amount, in this case, 14.4 volts. Race cars use these on ignition systems to maximize the amount of voltage going to the plugs. Accuvolt used to make these out of Australia, but they are gone, now there is a company in Colorado called Harrison Labs.
If you have installed an aftermarket amp in your car, and spent money on aftermarket speakers, getting your monies worth is important. This would be like buying a turbo capable of making 30psi, but only asking it to put out 5psi.
I am certain some of you who have installed an aftermarket amp in their vehicle either in their Fiesta or other vehicle have played around with the gain control on the amp and noticed when you turn it up the amp plays louder, but have you ever wondered what it was for and what it does to the sound? The gain control is meant to match the output of the head unit to the input of the amp. The lower the voltage coming out of the head unit the more the amp gain has to be turned up. But what are you actually doing when you turn up the gain? You are adding distortion to the output of the amp. This is not hype and can be measured on a oscilloscope. Why do you care? If the lower the signal voltage the higher you have to turn the gain up adds distortion the same is true the other way. The more signal voltage going into the amplifier (Up to its limits), the lower the gain can be set to maximize output out of the amplifier, and not only maximize output but get the cleanest output out of the amplifier.
Why do we care?
The cleaner the signal, the louder the system will play without breaking up. In my systems, I have so much signal going into my amps, that the gain is off.
Also, the more power and more signal voltage you put into the amp, the hotter the amp is going to get. This is a good thing. Audio is a weird science. The components that make up an amplifier sound better the hotter they get. This is true not only in the home, but in the car environment as well, but at a cost. The law of thermal dynamics comes into play here. Most amps today have circuits that will cause the amp to cut off if it overheats, so it is important to make sure the amp is getting plenty of ventilation. All competitors that compete on a high level, will bring their car to a show, Turn the system on, play pink noise, at a medium level for an hour or more before being judged. This will break in the speakers, and get the amplifier hot to where it is performing at this best. This is no different than warming up a car to temp. You dont start your car at the gate to run the 1/4 mile.
One last piece here and this once is a very hard concept to come to terms with.
Speaker ratings are designed around the voice coils ability to handle power and speaker ratings are more of a guideline. If you have a speaker that is rated at 75 watts if the signal is clean it will take anywhere from 25-50% above that.
Which is better,
You buy 2 speakers that are rated at 250 watts nominal, 1000 watts peak, (Most Morel Drivers) how? They have over sized voice coils.
Which amp do I buy?
Option 1 an amp rated at 250 watts per channel?
Option 2 an amp rated at 100 watts per channel?
If you said option 2 you were right but why?
Imagine the amp operates on a scale of 0 to 10. 0 is off and 10 is full power output. All things we talked about above are taken into account. On the 250 watt amp, you are out of listening range by the time you get to level 5 for no other reason your hearing is about to explode.
On the 100 watt amp, you can play up to about level 8 before you reach that point.
You want your amp to play at about 75-85% of its capability all the time. This also makes the amp hotter and is the sweet spot for the amp. If you are using the 250 watt amp you will never get there, and the amp will never work hard enough to get up to temp.
The difference here is between getting listening fatigue and not. Imagine being a car that has 2000 watts of power, and sitting in that car for 3 hours at full volume(I mean volume turned to maximum), and when you get out of the car, you don't have listening fatigue. Your ears don't hurt and you dont feel like you have been to a concert where your ears are just ringing, but you were immersed in sound for the whole 3 hours. This happened in my car I competed with. Me and another judge, and he at the time was about 15 years older than me. When you ask him about it today, he gets this look of it was one of the most unbelievable moments he had experienced in a vehicle. My hearing is still perfect and I get tested on a regular basis. When you are just playing a system loud, without getting the amp to perform in its rated area and sweet spot, fatigue and damage is what you get.
Lastly the Capacitor, what is it and why do we care.
Your car battery and charging system was not designed to deal with the demands of high end car audio. The batter is slow to charge and slow to discharge. A Capacitor is the opposite, It is fast to charge and fast to discharge. Even if you get a alternator that puts out 220 amps of power. All you are doing is increasing the amount of amps out of the alternator to put into your batter to charge the battery quicker. It does not make the batter discharge quicker. Music is not constant. in that music has transient peaks. These are points where the music demands quick peaks in output. This can happen with regular music, and it can happen with a lot of bass enhanced music. It happens on regular rock music and classical. What the cap does, it is sits between the car battery and the amp, mounted close to the amp, and it is there to respond to the amp when the amp has a transient musical peak. Imagine you have a brand new battery in your car, and your alternator is in good shape. Your driving down the road at night, your listening to a song with a lot of bass and you notice on certain times in the music when your headlights go dim. That is a transient peak. Your audio system asked for more power than what your car could produce at that moment. Believe it or not, in the very first system I ever built, I was traveling on highway 29N of Lynchburg Va, I was playing the p&&& out of my system at night. I had not done anything I have talked about here. I had a Kenwood 1021 amp, at the time this thing was the biggest baddest amp available it was like 2.5 foot x 1.5 foot. I had the windows down and had the volume as far as it would go. I kid you not,it hit a section in a song, and the tach reved up and the car shut off. It was the 2nd most insane car audio moment I have ever had. I thought the car had died or something. It was the audio system that have over demanded the power system of the car.
Additionally, regarding sub output, these modification are the difference between your sub sounding muddy and it sounding tight and controlled regardless of ported or sealed.
As with anything, there are various opinions, as this is no different.
If your goal is to achieve the best possible sound reproduction in your car. This is one of many ways on the path to getting there.
If your goal is just to play your music as background noise, or you just want to play the system loud without regard to quality, None of this should matter.
I share this information for no other reason to share with those who are interested in getting the best sound out of the Mobile audio system. I am not putting down anyone who would not do what is suggested here. I offer this information freely.
