Car Amplifier Power Cable Calculator

This calculator for amplifier power voltage and current has little significance but is rather interesting.

Car amplifier power cable calculator.

Using your current speaker and power wire current amp power is calculated allowing you to see any potential losses in watts with undersized cables. Our amp wire calculator helps optimize your amplifier s power output by recommending properly sized awg wires. This is telling you the rms power or more correctly the continuous power with a 8 ohm load and a different continuous power with a 4 ohm load. When using only one battery refer to the primary.

If you connect a pair of 4 ohms speakers the maximum power is 1300 watts. This calculator provides line loss with 2 conductor cable on a constant voltage line. In your case if you connect a pair of 8 ohms speakers the maximum power from the amplifier is 700 watts. 4 gauge will work fine for that amp.

Topics range from basic system installation head units amplifiers speakers etc and mobile security car alarms and remote start to subwoofer box design and fiberglass fabrication. Ploss 10 log 1 2 rl 2 rl vline squared prated rl rref 1000 d. The car audio help dvd catalog includes five different videos covering many areas of car audio installation and custom fabrication. Current draw figures are based on rms power of the amplifier with a 50 efficiency rating.

D length of wire used ploss power loss in db prated power driven on line rl wire guage resistance vline voltage. Hi joseph the maximum power output of an amplifier depends on the impedance ohms of the speakers connected to it. An amplifier s expected output power determines what size wire to use. With our wattage chart below the choice has never been easier.

The ratings of your subwoofers have no bearing at all on what size power and ground wire for your amplifier to use. Although wire gauge sizes smaller than 10 gauge may be acceptable for the amount of current draw we recommend using 10 gauge as the smallest wire size for any amplifier of 100. Equation used to calculate the data. Make sure the main power cable is thick enough that it can handle the total current draw of all the amplifiers.

Your two 12 subwoofers are wired together to present a total impedance of 4 ohms with a total power rating of 600 watts rms. Check out our amplifier wiring diagram to see how the wiring gets connected in a typical 2 amp system. Ground cables should be the same size or larger as the power cable. Choosing which battery to use to power your audio system can be daunting when faced with all sorts of numbers and specifications that don t seem to have anything to do with car audio at all.

Step 5 connect the power wire.