car audio questions

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civic-93

Member
well i must say i know next to nothing about car audio so i have a few questions that hopefully somone is nice enough to answer..and i know some of them are going to be stupid questions but i'm brave enough to ask them

1. how many watts can your car handle without having to get an amp?

2. i have a 50 watt x 4 car deck does this mean i can't use 80 watt speakers or will they be underpowered and sound shitty?

thats all i can think of now, don;t make fun..peace
 
are the speakers 80w max or rms? If they are 80w max then they should sound fine but will get distorted at high volume.

I would suggest getting an amp sooner or later though cuz your speakers will sound alot better.
 
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well i must say i know next to nothing about car audio so i have a few questions that hopefully somone is nice enough to answer..and i know some of them are going to be stupid questions but i'm brave enough to ask them

1. how many watts can your car handle without having to get an amp?

2. i have a 50 watt x 4 car deck does this mean i can't use 80 watt speakers or will they be underpowered and sound shitty?

thats all i can think of now, don;t make fun..peace
umm your wattage on the stereo deck means that you have 50w per channel..(per speaker) but after all the bypass and shit you actually only see about 45W. Um you can have 80W speakers I have 800W 6x9's in my rear with the 50w x 4 and they sound good...but if your putting subwoofers in you NEED a amp. Other then that your fine. I really can't remember what the honda's have for amps...they are built in somewhere but I can't remember how big they are.
 
Quoted post[/post]]
are the speakers 80w max or rms? If they are 80w max then they should sound fine but will get distorted at high volume.

I would suggest getting an amp sooner or later though cuz your speakers will sound alot better.

is rms the minimum amount of wattage u can use?
 
RMS(Root Mean Square) is a term used for what the speaker would use or the amp/head unit will put out constantly. The 50w x 4 in your head unit is peak, meaing 50 watts are put out as a max at one note, not the constant output. Depending on what brand for Head unit is they usaully range from 18 watts rms to 24 watts rms.

If your Head unit puts out 20 watts rms per channel and you use it to power a 50 watt rms speaker it will sound okay but get muddy/sh*tty sounding when the volume getts higher. I have ran pioneer speakers in my bonneville of my headunit for over 4.5 years and they are okay but i would much rather have them runnign off an amp for power and clarity

A good way to look at amp and speaker purchasing is to have an amp's rms output be the same as what the speakers rms is.

Hope this helps. :mrgreen:
 
1. How many watts stock? Well, my accord is pushing 1k to my sub right now, going to add a four channel (just to front doors) like 200x2 pretty soon and I doubt I'll have problems. I have no problems now with dimming even when I slam a full 1k at my sub.

2. Underpowering just limits maximum spl. The problem you run into is pushing an amplifier too far, attempting to gain volume, and it clips and creates distortion. Now the difference between 50w and 80w, even clean power, is realistically only 1 db.

But, again realistically, this is probably more like 20-25w(HU amp) vs 80w(amp) of clean power, which distorts less with more strain. So you can possibly gain 3-5db with less distortion.
 
off topic, but At The Drive In is a great band :happydance:
 
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