Powering speakers and sub

[Lutkeveld]

@Laederem

Earthquake is not a bad brand. Because you have the Thiele/Small paremeters you can tune the enclosure to your liking.

I think you misread my post, I said 100 to 300 watt. There is no need for 3000 watts, will give loads of issues and cost a lot more.

He already has the sub and power supply, he needs to buy the wood and amplifier.

I can guarantee that it'll beat any commercial active sub in that price range.

You don't see many 85 liter enclosures with a 12 incher with a couple of 100 watts in the commercial space.

 

Who are 'those dudes'? Peak is indeed useless. Heck, even RMS is often useless because it's lied about.

Often when you plot the parameters in a simulator you'll see that you'll run out of mechanical handling way quicker.

If thermal handling (the quoted RMS power) would be the only consideration, you could even get away with an amp that is 10 times more

powerful than the subs RMS rating due to the high crest factor in music.

[Agazed]

Why would you want that? You're not competing in SPL decibel dragraces?

Plus the fact that your PSU would collapse under the load.

I would look at 100-300W amps from a decent brand.

Guess you can get good ones for 50 dollar.

Or take an amp out my list of cheap but good amps. Can be powered with a PC PSU, but a power brick is neater.

Will not impress your friends as much, but will definitely go loud. Louder than you'll ever need for normal listening

 

So the past few hours I have been looking in my basement for things. I stumbled across my dads 1989 G&S Competition 200 Amplifier. So, with the help of the internet, I hooked it up correctly and it powered on. So I plugged in my phone to the left and right audio in jacks and it worked! I was so happy until I put up the volume. Then the amp powered off, so I plugged it back in. It turned on again but the same thing keeps happening. When I put up the volume to a little more than halfway, the amp shuts off. Do you know why?

[Lutkeveld]

Insufficient power capability from the PSU?

[Agazed]

Insufficient power capability from the PSU?

 

The PSU is 300 watts the Amp is 200. I dont think thats the case. Could it be the resistance?

[Lutkeveld]

200W output needs a lot more input because of the losses in the dc/dc converter and amplifier stage. What do you have hooked up to it right now?

[Agazed]

Its just my 300 watt PSU, the amp, and the sub. I highly doubt its the PSU because by half volume I mean half the volume of my phone. Heres a quick video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xhP0xuCO_A&feature=youtu.be

 

The red led is power btw.

 

The only way of fixing it is to unplug the PSU and plug it in again

[Lutkeveld]

You have it hooked up with the voice coils in series right? Otherwise it will probably be a overcurrent protection from the amp that's kicking in.

[Agazed]

You have it hooked up with the voice coils in series right? Otherwise it will probably be a overcurrent protection from the amp that's kicking in.

 

Series meaning only the positive and negative wires are hooked up to one channel of the sub? Yes I do.

[Lutkeveld]

Like this: 

Amp+ => VC1+ => VC1- => VC2+ =>VC2- => Amp-

[creatip123]

Sounds like an over-current/over-drawing protection. Either the amp or the PSU got a fail-safe system that kicks in on that point. 

 

If it's just a malfunction, it maybe cut off, but it shouldn't stay off (until restarted). By PSU do you mean PC's PSU? Don't PC's PSU got individual power caps, i.e. these colors are capped at 1A, or something like that?

[Lutkeveld]

Old power supplies can't deliver their full power at the 12V rail, which may be part of the problem.

Which tutorial did you use for wiring the PSU @Agazed ?

There are tutorials which don't use all 12v wires, and thus not all power rails

[creatip123]

Old power supplies can't deliver their full power at the 12V rail, which may be part of the problem.

 

Is it proly better if, say I got a car battery lying around, to hook it up to a car battery? I'd imagine it won't run very long due to the drain without recharging though.

[Lutkeveld]

Can be done, would eliminate the amplifier being the problem.

[Agazed]

Like this: 

Amp+ => VC1+ => VC1- => VC2+ =>VC2- => Amp-

 

Yep.

[Agazed]

Old power supplies can't deliver their full power at the 12V rail, which may be part of the problem.

Which tutorial did you use for wiring the PSU @Agazed ?

There are tutorials which don't use all 12v wires, and thus not all power rails

 

[Agazed]

Sounds like an over-current/over-drawing protection. Either the amp or the PSU got a fail-safe system that kicks in on that point. 

 

If it's just a malfunction, it maybe cut off, but it shouldn't stay off (until restarted). By PSU do you mean PC's PSU? Don't PC's PSU got individual power caps, i.e. these colors are capped at 1A, or something like that?

 

Not sure if they are capped. And yes its a 300w PSU from an old Dell computer.

[Lutkeveld]

Yep.

 

Are you sure? Can you give us a pic of the wiring? Because what you said sounded more like you had only one voice coil hooked up:

 

 

Series meaning only the positive and negative wires are hooked up to one channel of the sub? Yes I do.

 

It's not smart to pump multiple 100's of watts of power trough a molex connector. 

You have to follow another tutorial which bundles all the 12v wires (rails) together.

[Agazed]

Are you sure? Can you give us a pic of the wiring? Because what you said sounded more like you had only one voice coil hooked up:

 

 

 

 

It's not smart to pump multiple 100's of watts of power trough a molex connector. 

You have to follow another tutorial which bundles all the 12v wires (rails) together.

 

Well its not exactly like you said. Its like this 

 

 

Connecting all the yellow and black wires would be a pain. I dont want to ruin the power supply.

 

EDIT: Connecting it like the way you said wont work.

[creatip123]

Well its not exactly like you said. Its like this 

 

 

Connecting all the yellow and black wires would be a pain. I dont want to ruin the power supply.

 

EDIT: Connecting it like the way you said wont work.

 

It might be better to take a picture of your actual wiring setup to avoid miscoms. 

[Laederem]

@Laederem

Earthquake is not a bad brand. Because you have the Thiele/Small paremeters you can tune the enclosure to your liking.

I think you misread my post, I said 100 to 300 watt. There is no need for 3000 watts, will give loads of issues and cost a lot more.

He already has the sub and power supply, he needs to buy the wood and amplifier.

I can guarantee that it'll beat any commercial active sub in that price range.

You don't see many 85 liter enclosures with a 12 incher with a couple of 100 watts in the commercial space.

 

Who are 'those dudes'? Peak is indeed useless. Heck, even RMS is often useless because it's lied about.

Often when you plot the parameters in a simulator you'll see that you'll run out of mechanical handling way quicker.

If thermal handling (the quoted RMS power) would be the only consideration, you could even get away with an amp that is 10 times more

powerful than the subs RMS rating due to the high crest factor in music.

My post was an addendum, not a reply. I posted with a response fitting to any arbitrarily brand where there's a large degree of uncertainty (because I don't know about them) 

 

What I was suggesting with the "3000w" amp was under the premise of a "meh, idk" subwoofer. In this case the "3000w" amp would be off-brand and dirt cheap, "3000w" can be considered the name, or you could just pretend that number isn't even there because you damn well know that thing is going to struggle to hit more than 200~300w clean, which is sufficient for the OP. I'm specifically referencing those doofus amps from the likes of Boss, Pyle, Lanzar, and [modern] Pyramid etc. In the situation of buying used this is even more applicable because the stream is more reflective of a runny diarrhea than velvet quality market, at least from what I've seen. 

 

of course he could pick up a more expensive quality 300w or lower from a decent name, which is worth doing if Earthquake and that subwoofer are as you have said, acceptable or good (drawing assumptions, since you said not bad.) 

 

The 200w amp he has I doubt he'll be having issues with excursion. Hopefully it can at least provide the majority of the 200 (given that we know nothing about the amp either).

 

This entire conversation is moot anyway, since he has everything he needs now except the wood and perhaps a PSU. 

[Agazed]

Ok. So I decided to cut off all the connectors on the power supply. I took all the yellow wires and hooked them up to the 12 volt input, as well as connected the remote to it. I took all the ground wires and connected them to ground. So, to power the thing, you need to connect the green cable to a ground wire. As you can see in the video below, my problem is when I connect the green cable to ground, there is only power for a split second. You can tell if it's on if the fan is spinning. Sorry for the lighting I did my best. Oh and whats weird about my amp is that for all the connections, there are wires sticking out already.

 

The red wire from the amp is 12v input

The blue wire from the amp is remote

The yellow wires from PSU are 12 output

The black wires are ground

The green wire is to turn on the power supply.

 

http://youtu.be/VKGKD4q67x4

[ShearMe]

If the PSU is shutting itself off, you either have something wired wrong, tripping some kind of current protection, or it is died.