Thread: subs/amp smoking

Is that amp stable to 1 ohm?

**** happens. take the cover off the amp and peak inside, pics also. also throw the cap in the garbage

No fuses?

hifonics stable to 1 ohm? doubtfull

whats with all this hifonics hate? Of course its stable. I have a brutus that runs 1ohm all day long and has for 9 years.

take the dam cover off, you may find your problem. cap inside probably ruptured.

Out of curiosity, how did you set your gains? The correct way is with an oscilliscope, but tuning by ear can work, it's just difficult sometimes to tell when you've got clipping in lower frequencies. Either you had the gain adjusted too high, or you just got unlucky.

If you've got no warranty, I agree with ITHURTZ, remove the cover and look for any visible damage or burn marks. If it's just a capacitor, you could go ahead and take the board out and just solder in a new capacitor with the same ratings. There's always a chance it can be fixed, and if you do it yourself it can be done cheaply.

Most people don't have scopes

Originally Posted by blownGP

Most people don't have scopes

Most people have access to a volt meter, which is just as effective, and if not you can get a cheap one at Harbor Freight for about $5 that will get you a lot closer than by ear.

You can do the voltage formula with a meter but it's best to tune to by ear.
no one uses expensive scopes
if you can't tune by ear you shouldn't be concerned how it sounds anyways

I can vouch for setting gains with a DMM. I set my gains with a DMM with my HU at like 85-90% volume with like a 50hz test tone iirc and haven't had problems with clipping or anything and iv run it for 6+ hours at those settings. I can notice if I go a few clicks more on the HU the speakers start to distort.

Sent from the Milky Way

Originally Posted by crazyguy03

You can do the voltage formula with a meter but it's best to tune to by ear.
no one uses expensive scopes
if you can't tune by ear you shouldn't be concerned how it sounds anyways

It's not even about sound quality. It's so you don't destroy hundreds or thousands of dollars in audio equipment.

Tuning audio by ear, is exactly like tuning AFR by smell. Sure maybe you can tell when it's way too rich, but other than that you have no idea what is really going on.

I really can't respond better than what I originally posted.
Again if you cant hear clipping or distortion you need not to be building a thousand dollar system

Using a DMM is nice but it's NOT accurate Numbers on paper vs real world results You do the math , I'll have better DBs

i did sq+ before i grew up (and detached my left eardrum).

every audio shop or build had at least one meter through it.

what good is a parametric and a DSP system if your cars not mapped out in terms of freq response.

good clean bass wuthout overamplified bands is far more enjoyable than a jewel osco parking lot job....

i melted two Hifonics via my punch power pro's (before RF sold out) the newer RF amps sucked too, i wish i had never "upgraded" from my alpine V12's

Voltage of the output = sqrt(RMS Power X impedance of the speaker) will get you close so you say at 75% volume your head unit is probably only 1/3 of its rated preamp voltage and lets say after you do the math the volts to the speaker should be 45, that still means nothing the box, the space , the signal ( how distorted is it from the HU?) , the state of the speaker new / old / tight etc I mean really... whats the subsonic set to? whats the freq of the box?
but yeah trust your ears and its nothing like tuning a car