car_lost

lets say i have a 1000 watt amp.

is 500x1 at 2ohm's the same as 1000x1 at 1 ohm?

and lets say the subwoofer is the Image dynamics IDMax 12 V.3 D2. it is a dual voice coil and it is 2 ohms. they also offer a 4 ohm version. oh and it puts out 1000 watts RMS.

if i were to hook it up to that amp,would it only be getting 500 watts?

AcuraX2

If the amp is capable of running at 1 ohm, then it might do 1,000 x 1 @ 1ohm. Alot of amps are only stable at 2ohm. if the amp capable of running at 1ohm, then you could hook up the dual 2 ohm IDMAX's voice coils in parallel and present a 1 ohm load to your amp and the sub would receive 1,000 watts or whatever the amp will do at 1 ohm. If it is stable to only 2 ohm, then you would need the dual 4 ohm sub hooked up in parallel to present a 2 ohm load and the sub would receive 500 watts. It all depends on what your 1,000 watt amp is stable into.

Lung Fu Mo Shi

A short education:

Voltage = Current * Resistance, or
Volts = Amps * Ohms, or
V = I * R

Then you also have,
Power = Voltage * Current, or
Watts = Volts * Amps, or
P = V*I

Manipulating the above equations also nets:
P = I^2 * R

So, let's say you have a 1000W peak amp (assuming it can do this full time). There is a current limit somewhere inside the amp. If you say it can run at 1000W into 1 Ohm, this means the maximum output current would be 31.6 Amps.

This 1000W max power is also a heat limit.

So, let's say you wanted to run into 2 Ohms (total). You can still only pump 1000W into it, and cannot violate the max current. Thus, 1000W into 2 Ohms is 22.36 Amps.

Another tip:
Parallel resitance = 1 / (1/R + 1/R + 1/R + 1/R ...etc)
Series resistance = R + R + R + ....etc

So if you are talking putting two 2 Ohm coils in parallel:
1 / (1/2 + 1/2) = 1 Ohm that the amp sees.

So you'd still be pushing 1000W overall, but only 500W to each voice coil.