Originally posted by adz
BUT>Think of a REAL CAR with a great big whopping sound system restricted to a 6 to 9 plate lead acid battery, every time the amplifier or amplifiers require a huge lump of current draw (eg. that pain in the ass doof doof sound you hear from miles away!)
the battery suffers to supply the correct amount of current causing the driver ic's in the amp to run uneffeciantly, over heat, shutdown or in some cases 'crap out all together!'
Dunno how much into ICE you are Adz, but there's a lot worse consequences than that.
An underpowered amp (as in "too little voltage in") will pump out jagged signal spikes... this is heard as Distortion & clipping. Distortion is VERY BAD for your speakers!!! Doesn't matter that power rating they are, even if they're in excess of what the amp can pump, distortion will damage your voicecoil and cones.
Imho, most of the "DOOF DOOF" cars have owners with obviously crappy hearing and shot speakers. Their woofers work though!!
Putting a large capacitor cures most of these underruns... however one large cap eg 1F or 2F (yeah, one Farad) might not have a fast enough response time.
Your sound would become "duOOF duOOF"...
To cure this we use multiples of smaller caps in parallel... which have a faster response each. Make an array... and they don't even have to be all same size. In fact, different sizes in parallel work better too.
You now have "dUf dUf"... yeah, can't help you on your choice of music there, but you'll notice its a lot 'tighter' and 'better controlled'. It does not necessarily have to be any louder, but you'll start noticing some extra detail in your music. (assuming ears aren't shot already)
There is no such thing as "too many caps"... I know of systems that can continue running for 5-10s purely on their caps after their main power source has been disconnected. These give good sound, and the last thing you'll think to play on this is a recurring drum beat.
