I'm in the process of getting a new sound system together for my car. At the moment I have a set of 2 way DLS iridium components (100w RMS midbass, 50w RMS tweeters) and I'm trying to decide on an amp/amps. I have decided that I'm going to go with an active setup with a seperate channel for each component, the thing I can't decide on is whether I want to go with two 2 channel amps or a single 4 channel amp. Now I am either going to go with a single soundstream REF4.760 which has 4 channels of 115 watts RMS or a DLS RA20 (2 x 130w RMS) for the midbass and a DLS RA25 for the tweets ( 2 x 75w RMS). My problem is that it will cost less to use the soundstream amp, but I'm not sure about running a 50w RMS tweeter on a 115w RMS channel. Will it be fine to run the 4 channel amp in this way?
I'll be using an Audiocontrol DQX digital crossover/EQ after the head unit.
brands aside, even running with the passive crossover modules, you'd send the same power to both the tweeter and midrange with a 2 channel amplifier. Impedance is only affected with two drivers on one channel when both speakers produce the same signal at the same frequency range at the same time.
a 4 channel amp will work fine for running an active system since in a car you're not isolating the power supply on each amplifier as when bi-amplifying home speakers with monoblock amplifiers. The reason for active networks in cars is to allow more control over each speaker's phase, time alignment, and power.
Oh, and you can typically go to about 50% over the RMS rated power handling of a speaker with the amplifier's power rating. You won't, with music, usually approach the rated power output of an amplifier. Many factors limiting the amp's output.
Ok thanks for the reply. I'm just a bit confused, I was thinking that seeing as all 4 speakers would be running off the same amp turning up the volume would affect them unequally. As in I turn the volume up and the midbass drivers are fine because they have a higher RMS rating but the tweeters are being fed too much power. Obviously I have alot to learn about the finer details of setting it all up, but we all have to start somewhere.
you'll hear distortion before you damage a speaker with too much power most likely. clean power usually doesn't damage a speaker. a lack of current to the amp, or having the gain too high on the amp, both leading to clipping is what damages speakers most times. in a comp set if you are just removing the OE crossover module and going to an active setup, the speakers will be fine with the same power to each speaker. That's how they were fed passively anyway.. If the designer wanted the tweeter to get less power, they will usually use a 6 or 8 ohm tweeter matched to a 4 ohm midrange.
by the way, if the tweeter is too bright in an active setup, you can also always trim the power or attenuate the signal going to that speaker. That's what's nice about an active setup. you can vary attenuation, response curve, time alignment, and phase shift to every individual speaker.