For those of you who haven't seen the other tread on 'ohms', Dalton and I had a disagreement. He is certain that a dual 2 ohm sub run in parallel (1 ohm) to a given amp will be no louder than the same sub run in series (4 ohm), all other things being equal, despite the fact that the amp will put out roughly 4 times the power into the 1 ohm load.
I said that it would be louder, in parallel, by 4-6 db.
To test this, we took the Critical mass 12 (dual 2 ohm) in my esclade, and hooked it up first in series (4 ohm) to my Sundown 3000 and then in parallel (1 ohm). Each time, we did a full volume pull, with a 45hz sine wave, and measured on my Termpro, recording max db.
In Series, we pulled a 140.1, and in parallel, we pulled a 143.8. These were back to back pulls, no other changes.
Like I said, I was wrong...it wasn't 4-6 db, it was only 3.7
On paper, it should have been 6, so it could be that I was reaching Xmax at that frequency, or it could be power compression, or some other variable. Point is that 3.7 db is both substantial and noticeable, Despite what Dalton preached as gospel in the other thread.
All this will be repeated at the meet next Saturday, provided Dalton still shows up with my $10.
As for PO57 saying that in the demo he heard sound quality suffered...that I haven't tested. Again, on paper, the dampening factor will be lower, and the amp will have less headroom, but I don't know what that will translate to on a very over motored sub like my CM and a beefy amp like my Sundown. At 1 ohm, it sounds better than just about any sub setup I have heard...could it sound better at 4 ohm...dunno. Perhaps we will do some soundquality A/B testing at the meet, as well.
On a slightly unrelated, but interesting note, I was setting the gains on the 3000 using a voltmeter. 3000 watts into one ohm (what the amp is rated at) works out to about 55 volts. Well, with no load on the amp, I was able to get over 90V, and that was with lots of gain left! I didn't have a scope, so its quite possible that the wave wasn't pretty. And, there is no saying that the supply has enough guts to carry that type of voltage with an actual load hooked up, but it is still quite substantial.
Toby