Got a Pioneer 10" dvc sub rated at 350rms... thinking of stuffing it in a sealed enclosure & hooking it up to a 5-channel d-class amp whose sub channel puts out 280w at 2 ohms.

Is the amp too underpowered for SQ enjoyment? I listen mostly to latin music with lots of percussions. Not the headbanging fengtau type.... too old for that stuff.

This post has been edited by ZZR-Pilot: Jan 25 2016, 10:38 PM

Thanks Howie.

But I don't understand... how can a sub rated at 350W RMS blow when fed with 350W of power?


Thanks. Got a question - how underpowered is underpowered? 25% below the sub's RMS output? 30% blow?

I hear underpowering a sub will feed it with distortion which will kill the sub over time. Trouble is there's no rule of thumb on how low you can go when underpowering a sub before creating problems. I don't think most of us are rich enough to buy superduper powderful monoblocks, so I think my concern is shared by many.

This post has been edited by ZZR-Pilot: Jan 27 2016, 12:10 PM

Thee sub that I have is the Pioneer TS-W259D4 DVC rated at 350W RMS at 2ohm. There's a pair of Pioneer TS-A1605C components up front rated at 50W RMS at 4ohm and another pair of Pioneer TS-G1644R coax in the rear rated at 40W RMS at 4 Ohm.

Late last week I found into an Alpine MRX-V70 5-channel amp on the cheap that can do 60W x4 at 4ohm and 350W at 2ohm for the sub channel. The numbers seem to match well with the budget speakers I have... so I bought it.

Funny these Alpine amps - they come with a 'birth cert', which is an individual certificate that shows how that particular unit was tested and how much power it actually outputs in real life during the test just before it left the factory. My Alpine's birth cert numbers are actually higher than the advertised output!