computrtutr

I have a 4-3-2 channel amp stable down to 2 ohms (according to Eclipse, the manfacturer). I'm getting a DVC Image Dynamics sub, and I am curious as to how to wire it. How should I do this?
Wire it as 4ohm (Voice coils in series), which is in the instruction sheet?

Can a DVC have the Voice coils on two seperate channels (desirable so I can use the full output of my amp)?

JasonR-NYC

FYI - a "2 ohm stable" amp is one where each channel can handle a 2 ohm load. If you bridge two channels together, that bridged channel will handle a 4 ohm load (since each channel 'sees' half the load).

Assuming you want to use half the amp on the sub, and assuming your DVC sub has 2 ohm voicecoils (since you said it can be wired in series for 4 ohms), then you'll be making full use of the power available from the amp.

- Jason

computrtutr

Does that mean that I should wire each VC to a channel when the amp is bridged down to 2ch?

HIS4

Assuming that is the correct information, you can bridge channels 1 & 2 of your amp and connect it to one voicecoil of your sub which shows the amp a 4 ohm load. And then you can do the same with channels 3 & 4 and hook that up to the second voicecoil. The only bad thing about doing it this way is you need to make sure that the gains for channels 1 & 2 are matched very closely to channels 3 & 4 so that you do not feed one voicecoil more power than the other. It is also suggested, but not absolutely necessary, that you feed both voicecoils a mono signal instead of feeding the left channel of a stereo signal to one and the right channel to the other. To do that you will need to have a head unit with a mono sub out, have an amp that can sum the signals together, or get creative with Y-adapters.

Now if your other statement is correct (about wiring in series to get a 4 ohm load), then that would mean that you have a dual 2 ohm subwoofer and then you would not be able to connect each voicecoil as described above because the amp can only handle a 4 ohm bridged load. Then you would be stuck with only using two channels of the amp by either hooking up the voicecoils in series and connecting that 4 ohm load to the bridged channels 1 & 2 of the amp or you could hook up each 2 ohm voicecoil to channel 1 & 2 independently. Again you would want to feed each voicecoil a mono signal as described above. Wiring it as 1 4 ohm bridged load or 2 2 ohm stereo loads will usually result in the same power output.

You best option would be if you had dual 4 ohm voicecoils and wired it the first way I described.

computrtutr

I thought I had bought the 2-ohm VC's and figured I'd have to put up with it... I double-checked and it is the 4-ohm coils. Thanks for pointing that out. I'll take suggestion #1!

My signal in (until my next phase of audio mod) is going to be the hi-level ins for the rear speakers, so I will check for a mono switch for the sub until I can splice RCA's w/ Y adapters (or upgrade the amp).