I have a alpine 12" type r. 500 watt rms, and 1500 watt peak. what would be a good amp to supply power to this? What do the amps mean by the different channels? mono, 2,3,4 and so on? Thanks.

 

You want to get a sub that about the same rating in watts RMS. Channels means how you can distribute the power among different speakers. 4 channel is for for 4 speakers mono is just one. So a 500w amp in 4 ch mode will give each speaker 125w. Now in 3 ch you get 125w for 2 ch and 3rd might be 250w but you have to see specs to be sure. Max watts doesnt really mean anything but distorted sound so we only use RMS watts when talking about max power. You have to do some planning as if the amp is two ohm or even 1 ohm stable you can connect multiple speakers to one channel.

To most important thing you want to do is see how many speakers you want to be amplifield and what equipment you have to work with so far.

 

thanks venom. right now I'm just going to have the one sub hooked up. so should I get a mono channel amp with 500 rms?, the sub says its 4ohm, I'm not sure how much that means though. thanks

 

I think your sub is a DVC dual voice coil. Which allows you to raise or lower the ohms on the sub. You need to get the exact model as you can hook up your sube for 2ohms and match it to an amp that is 2 ohm stable at the same rating as the sub.

 

it is a Alpine 12" Dual-Voice-Coil 4-Ohm Subwoofer

here is the link to the sub: http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage....=1108124880979

thanks if for helping me out

 

Since it has DVCs you can either get a 500w mono amp at 2ohms and wire the sub in parrallel or 500w mono amp at 8 ohms wire the sub in series or 500 watt amp 2 ch 250 per ch at 4 ohms and hook up each ch to 1 coil since you have two. Other option is to hook up 1 250 ch mono amp to one coil at 4ohms. Each coil can be reffered to as a speaker since you have two you have two speaker each rated at 250 at 4ohms. Unless you connect the two coil together either parallel 2 ohms at 500w or series 8 ohms at 500w all you are going to get if you connect each coil sperate is 250w at 4 ohms with is not the same power at 2 ohms. The higher the ohm the more resistance therefore more power requirred to move the driver.