Strapping.

[Electric_Road_Guy]

So...
Ive been doing this for quite some time, but never have "strapped" amps together.
I also, dont use multiple amps for my dual coils...

What exactly is strapping an amp? And why bother, over finding a more powerful amp.

Thanks! And sorry for the dumba$$ question.

[lukaQ]

well, is also called bridging, and from this you probably see that you bridge something. what you bridge is 2 amps, that are the same(or 2 channels inside one amp), and you bridge them with speakers... you will always have one that is master (that drives + coil of sub, sets LPF, HPF, subsonic, gain,...) and slave

What you need to know is also, each amp in bridge configuration drives 1/2 of load... and this means, if you have 2 amps that each are 1R stable, then you need load that is 2x that or more, again, each amps will "see" only 1/2 load

Good point, why not get bigger amp just... well, you may have one amp, and you feel like to step up in power, so you get another one, bridge them and you are done, more power. also driving high impedance load will be easyer with strapped amps

for example, I have 2xm1a, driving 2R at say 2.5kw... now tell me what amp does this too... m4, z1, z1a and up... which are all 1R stable amps, and don't deliver really any big power to load above 1R load, at least compared to their 1R rating... also comparing price, 2x m1a a lot cheaper then M4 or similar size amp...

[SPL15]

one big benefit is being able to find 2 cheaper smaller amps that when strapped put out comparable power to one larger amp that costs a lot more. Also, you can buy one amp for now, & upgrade power later on without having to pawn your old amp. Also, two amps often have more heatsink area, more output devices per watt to dissipate the power which leads to improved reliability.

The reason each amp appears to see half the load it is connected to is because the current capability of the strapped amps combined is still only what one amp could produce by itself, but the voltage ability of the amps combined is double. for example, you need approx 45.5 amps of current & 44 volts to produce 2000 watts of power into 1 ohm, but you need about 90 volts & 45.5 amps of current to produce 4000 watts into 2 ohms. Current stays the same but power is doubled. If you were to wire the strapped amps into the same 1 ohm load, you'd need around 63 amps of current from the amps to produce 4000 watts which the amps can't do. This is why people say each strapped amp see's half the load. Strapping amps effectively doubles voltage output, but the current ability remains the same. It's simply like batteries, wiring the batts in series (bridge mode or strapped amps) doubles voltage, wiring the batteries in parrellel doubles current (parrelled amps). Increasing current is expensive in amplifier design, increasing voltage swing is cheaper.

[MakeItCount]

great info guys...