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What better way then some ass.

This is huge news, saddening to see so little support or coverage of it here in the USA. Maybe the toung-in-cheek naming it the "God Particle", made a lot of people butt hurt. I have my computers crunching for the LHC, very exciting stuff. Maybe the clueless will get a slight understanding, thanks to Ironman. Anyone else watch that announcement live at 3am eastern time? 4 years of undergrad physics and understood half the words during that presentation. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmzwuYj5w1U

Hence the "or above" statement. Now I'm sure your jumping up and down thinking your going to lose a bunch of power and loudness if you wired higher, but if you had a basic understanding of sound, then you would know that you wouldn't really notice any audible difference. My analogy isn't off because your not even using identical amplifiers, and turning the dials so they look the same doesn't mean squat. Even if you used a dmm, there will be a difference in signal and power output between the two. If you were using the same amps, and same coil configs then I would be more likely to agree that you could match them close enough with a dmm. I make this post in the hopes to persuade others from making the mistake you are about to do.

Watching the boy get his first ink.

This is huge news, saddening to see so little support or coverage of it here in the USA. Maybe the toung-in-cheek naming it the "God Particle", made a lot of people butt hurt. I have my computers crunching for the LHC, very exciting stuff. Maybe the clueless will get a slight understanding, thanks to Ironman. "Dude did you hear about the LHC?" "THC?" "No, the Large Hadron Collider." "Oh, uhh yeah that's from Ironman. That movie was pretty sweet. Remember when he saved Pepper..."

If you increase cone area, and enclosure volume isn't prohibiting then it should be louder. However, your way of going about it is a BAD IDEA. If you put 35" tires on three of your wheels on your Jimmy, and the last wheel had a 33" tire, would it still drive, and function? Yes, but it's not a good idea now is it? I know your thread got a little side tracked, but it was informative among other things, even if it didn't exactly pertain to your question. So yes you can put 3 drivers in the same enclosure, use one amp for two drivers, and a third amp for the last driver, but there will be a difference in signal & power between the "groups," and it's very likely that this combination will not sound correct. You would be better off using three drivers with the same coil configuration, and wire at or above 1ohm (presuming your amp is 1ohm stable) with your current single amp. If your current enclosure does not offer adequate volume for the three drivers then a new enclosure should be in order.

I gave up a lot too. One of the biggest mistakes I have ever made. I sacrificed too much of what made me happy and defined who I was for someone else.

They also discovered the Higgs Boson and managed to photograph the shadow of a single atom yesterday too. European Parliament even struck down ACTA. Helluva day, it seems.

seeing as I had more to celebrate this year I did the only responsible thing and drank a fifth of rum and set off enough munitions to start World War III

Holy fucked up forum Batman.

Clipping will happen when you reach the voltage threshold of the amp, not the power threshold (assuming it can supply the needed current to keep the voltage up). What this means is, you could run a 500 watt amplifier into hard clipping while producing less than 500 watts if the impedance is relitively higher than the power rating load impednace. This happens all the time... The whole point here is, what is the reason to set something very precisely when the results are meaningless?... You spend all day with a voltmeter measuring down to a mv, but as soon as the impednace changes (additionally, you have no idea what it is) everything you have done is for nothing... Also, clipping doesn't hurt a thing. Too much power does. I wouldn't worry about clipping at all, I would worry about potentially sending too much power to my subwoofers and causing thermal failure...

Impedance changes based on frequency, enclosure, temperature of the voice coil, etc etc. But the goal of the DMM method isn't to set the gain based on the impedance of your subwoofer. What you are attempting to accomplish with the DMM method is setting the gain based on the output voltage of the amplifier at a known power output at a known impedance, namely the impedance the amplifier's output power was rated at. If the amplifier is rated 100 @ 4ohm and you are attempting to set the gain....in theory it doesn't matter if your subwoofer is 4ohm, 3ohm, 2ohm, 1.3ohm, 3.6ohm, etc. What you need to know is what rail voltage the amplifier should be operating at, and adjusting the gain control of the amplifier to achieve that rail voltage. Ideally the output voltage of the amplifier would actually be independent of impedance. If the amplifier is rated at 100w @ 4ohm, that means the amplifier is capable of operating with a 20v rail voltage. In a perfect world, this voltage (20V) would remain the same no matter what impedance load was connected to the other side. The actual power output would depend on the load, as that determines the current output and ultimately the power output, but the rail voltage itself wouldn't change. So, in a perfect world, all we need to know is where the output voltage of the amplifier should be, and we determine this based on the rated power (which is a specific power output into a specific impedance load) and not what the impedance of the load is that is actually being connected. In practice it does matter as there are some design features and losses that occur within an amplifier that affect it's ability to maintain that rail voltage at higher power/higher current output situations. In many amplifiers the output voltage will decrease as impedance decreases, which decreases it's power output (normally due to current output constraints, power supply constraints, etc etc). But, again, we can use the rated power to approximate where the rail voltage should be for the approximate nominal impedance of the load we are connecting. It won't be perfect, but it doesn't need to be as small differences won't be noticeable in either direction. Another issue is where rated power falls in relation to actual power output. The amp might be capable of more or less power than it's actually rated for into the specific impedance it was rated at. In all but the most extreme circumstances they will be different but not by an excessively large amount. That means the voltage setting could be a little high or a little low....but again, small differences won't matter. The larger issue for me is the level of the test tone. If you use a 0db test tone (which most people use/recommend), 90% of people will end up unhappy with the result and think the need to buy a more powerful amplifier. Since music hardly spends any time at 0db, you will have a very low average power output from the amplifier. With a -6db or -10db test tone (depending on circumstances), the DMM method is good enough to get the gain set to a level that is relatively safe and leave most people happy. The problem is, you could probably do just as well by setting it by ear....so why bother? There are other issues as well that overall just make setting the gain by ear the easiest and best solution a majority of the time.