I drive for FedEx Ground and on my route is a car audio shop. I went in to deliver a package and noticed a set-up they had in the store. They had 10 pre-fab enclosures with 2 P1's in each, 2 stacks of 5 enclosures each, with 1 fosgate 1000 bd running them. I looked to see if they were all connected to one amp and they were. I then asked the guy at the counter what ohm load they were running at and he said a little over 1 ohm. Is that possbile to have 20 woofers running off of 1 amp at around a 1 ohm load? Just curious.
Yes, its very simple. Here is one way. All the subs are SVC8ohm subs. Each pair (per box) is wireed in series. That will give a 16ohm load per box. Then all the boxes are wired in parallel. That gives a final DCR of 1.6ohm
Now, lets take it a little further. Those subs are not actually a true 8ohm, their actual Re is 6.8ohm. So, 2 in series is 13.6ohm...10 pair in parallel is 1.36ohm. So, just above 1ohm.
Yea, they will be under powered, but should still be loud. Likely seeing ~50wrms per sub on a 150w rated subs. But you have so many cones moving that it BETTER be loud.
I have seen alot of dealers do stuff like this. Set up a wall of cheap subs and 1 amp. They tell the customer looking at the amp, "thats the baddest amp ever, it can push 20 subs!!!" Its just a gimmick to make a sale. Works in alot of cases though.
The general public can't figure out Ohm's Law, they just see a bunch of subs and 1 amp. Even though the subs are crap and its a middle of the road amp, they still 'want that slap'.
I figured the reason they have so many together in one spot is because 2 p1's don't sound good at all. However when you have a wall of them they are going to seem a lot more impressive and get somone to buy into them. It's a way for them to take a relatively cheap purchase for the store and turn it around for a nice profit. Clever none the less.