Different options for the IXL

[Julian 641]

for the Mach5Audio IXL can you add any other options to add to the power handling? i like the IXL but need about 500 more watts of therm. power handling to add to my SA 3kd

[Aaron Clinton 2,372]

What about dailing back the gain and setting it to the rms of the sub woofers?

[Julian 641]

Touché

I was just wondering, i guess im going with the Level 4's

[Aaron Clinton 2,372]

Touché

I was just wondering, i guess im going with the Level 4's

Why?

[///M5 2,833]

I don't understand either. What does the power have to do with your goals.

[mrogowski 6]

Maybe he just wants to max everything out?

[Kanaworm$ 292]

for the Mach5Audio IXL can you add any other options to add to the power handling? i like the IXL but need about 500 more watts of therm. power handling to add to my SA 3kd

If your looking at running that much power why not look into the SPL line from Mach 5?

[dubbreak 4]

for the Mach5Audio IXL can you add any other options to add to the power handling? i like the IXL but need about 500 more watts of therm. power handling to add to my SA 3kd

If your looking at running that much power why not look into the SPL line from Mach 5?

Yeah, it seems like the goal is volume, so a little loss in extension for volume and power handling seems like a good tradeoff.

Going by thermal power handling throws up red flags to me.. depending on the box alignment you are most likely gonna hit mech limits before you hit thermal (with music at least). You can model that if you have an idea what way you are going with the box (size and tuning).... If you plan on tuning high and burping with tones or something similar (i.e. definitely running into thermal limits before mech) then an SPL oriented sub makes more sense imho.

If you are going for SQ, get the ixl and don't go crazy with the gains. Headroom is a good thing (the amp will be operating at low distortion and not heating up if you aren't pushing it to the limits).

[mrogowski 6]

for the Mach5Audio IXL can you add any other options to add to the power handling? i like the IXL but need about 500 more watts of therm. power handling to add to my SA 3kd

If your looking at running that much power why not look into the SPL line from Mach 5?

Yeah, it seems like the goal is volume, so a little loss in extension for volume and power handling seems like a good tradeoff.

Going by thermal power handling throws up red flags to me.. depending on the box alignment you are most likely gonna hit mech limits before you hit thermal (with music at least). You can model that if you have an idea what way you are going with the box (size and tuning).... If you plan on tuning high and burping with tones or something similar (i.e. definitely running into thermal limits before mech) then an SPL oriented sub makes more sense imho.

If you are going for SQ, get the ixl and don't go crazy with the gains. Headroom is a good thing (the amp will be operating at low distortion and not heating up if you aren't pushing it to the limits).

It seems no one thinks of this in the car audio world these days, and I'm not sure why.

[dubbreak 4]

It seems no one thinks of this in the car audio world these days, and I'm not sure why.

I can think a few reasons:

1. Wanting to "get all you can out of your amp" , even if you don't actually use it, if you wanted to crank it that far you could (mechanical limits not being a factor)

2. People who think the speaker "sees" 3000W when it's hooked up to an amp that produces 3000W at Xohms. I've seen this a lot. I have even heard stories of car audio reps thinking this. They think an amp will always put out its rated power even with no signal. So of course you need a sub rated for that power. I wonder how these people explain gain...

3. Similar to above, thinking that the power rating on a sub or combination of subs must match your amp rating.

With class d amps the last thing you want to do is drive them into clipping. You want head room. When a class d clips it creates a lot of high order odd harmonics (bad sounding harmonic distortion, as opposed to the "nice" sounding low even order harmonics tube amps are known for). An amp that produces a really clean signal unclipped suddenly creates lots and lots of distortion. Luckily this won't wreck a sub (as long as thermal and mechanical handling isn't exceeded.. which is possible as clipping increases the amount of power..), but it definitely is good for the SQ.

Another thing I rarely see take into consideration is speaker efficiency. How loud you can go is a combination of power handling and efficiency. Who cares if you sub can handle 2000W if the sensitivity is rated at 80db.. gimme a 87db sub that can handle 1000W and everything else being equal I'll get louder with less power, less wire, less alt, less batt etc.

[///M5 2,833]

Actually Mark I think it is mostly a disease referred to as Napolean's Syndrome. One thing to have a goal, a completely other to want to just go big and not know why.

[Aaron Clinton 2,372]

dubbreak makes some great points. I answer a great deal of emails and PM's from people who are so worried about matching the rms ratting of the sub woofer and the ratting of the amplifier. What I think needs to be stressed is proper gain setting and focusing on the goals and less on just a few limited specs.

[Oklahoma Wolf 0]

Yeah - I have a pro audio background, and just about the first thing I learned was that headroom is a good thing. Especially when you have stacks of cabinets to take care of and you want them all to stay working. You don't want to start clipping the amps on a dozen pro speakers you likely don't even own. My current car sub is a 300W RMS unit being run by a 400W amp... they've been a good match for each other. I'm buying a QSC RMX-1850HD for my IXL 18 build - that's just a little excessive, but as long as I'm watching the gains it will be fine.

An acquaintance of mine came up to me going on and on about how he was the man when it came to car audio and kept bragging about how he had this thousand watt Xplod amp driving two subwoofers in his car and how it was the most awesome thing he's ever heard. He kept pestering me to show him the setup in my car, thinking I couldn't possibly get as loud as his setup with what he thought was only half the power. So I did. He's not bragging anymore. The right blend of components can do wonders. And what's in my car isn't anything worth bragging about either - just a cheap Visonik amp and sub. But I was careful about matching the sub and the amp to the car and each other to the point of reverse engineering the amp, and it does get decently loud in there. Now, if it would only sound good, then I wouldn't have to replace it

Edited September 18, 2009 by Oklahoma Wolf