under the specs of some amps it says damping factor : >x@x ohms

the x's just represent random numbers, it says dampning factor at certain ohms.
what does this mean and what qualities does it affect??

 

well, in electrical engineering, damping of the system is basically sensitivity of the system and how well it recovers. although for sound engineering, it pretty much seems to relate to how accurately the amp can control the speaker. example: some amps cannot drive loads at two ohms, so the damping number would drop lower, telling us that it cannot accurately control the load (in this case a subwoofer) at that ohms rating. the higher the number the better. i suppose you could comparatively shop for an amp solely on the damping factor, although there are many other features i would look at first. some manufacturers don't even bother listing that info.

i wouldnt worry about it too much if i was you. just don't try driving a load it can't handle. hope this helps!

SSTS

 

Satin that is a great definition on dampening factor. While it is not the most important spec to buy an amp by, I would consider it a factor. I guess it depends on how someone is going to play their subs and what type of music they will be playing.

 

thanks for the props Batman

true on your second point also. i know for instance that an orion competition amp is stable at 1ohm. i suppose if you were a real audiophile and into competitions you would want to know what the damping factor is at that 1ohm rating compared to a rockford fosgate/pheonix gold/etc. at the usual 4ohms/2ohms rating. no sense in buying in amp that can't accurately reproduce sound i suppose.

SSTS

 

i see
does that first number have any relation w/ the watts or something, or is it just some random scale of measurement??

 

well, i would say the scale was chosen arbitrarily. i would imagine it could have been 0 to 1 or 1 to 1,000,000 if they wanted. (honestly i'm not 100% sure of it's origins offhand anymore). it's not related to watts though. it's really a representation of the system at the specific load rating. how many watts the amp puts out really won't affect this number much, if at all. this number is affected by how it was designed and what components were used during assembly really. does this actually help or did we make it worse?

SSTS

 

cool man, yea thanks, that does help...