What Wire Gauge do you run to subs?
 

Just thought id do a little poll.

I was going to run some high power subs and am using a couple wire size calculators.

2500 Watts RMS at 1 ohm... 12 AWG yeilds a pretty good result. 8 AWG follows the 300 circular mils per amp electrical current standard.

What do you guys run?

thanks in advance

So the setup will be a single amp mono amp delivering 2500W rms? How many subs? Single or dual voice coil? Distance?

2500 WRMS Amp
2 subs DVC running at 1 ohm combined.
15 feet away


With the calculator im using 12 gauge wire provides a drop of 150 Watts and .5 DB but it doesn't follow the 300 C mps electrical standard
with 8 gauge it drops 100 Watts and 0.2 db

I was going to play it safe and go for the 8 guage...but I wanted to get some opinions who actually run higher wattage subs.

For this wattage and distance use more thickness of wire as you can.

I use 10AWG wire which matches my subs direct connect leads. I am also running 28amps( fluke clamp on amp meter) at the peak of my output from my setup.

Thanks Daniel,

I ended up ordering 8 Gauge from Knuconceptz. It was 30 for the 18 foot length..not bad... its crazy what you can drop across your wires if they aren't sized properly...

What is also suprising is what the system is truelly doing compared to what the specs say.
With enclosure loading and Impedance response my 1ohm(confirmed on dc resistance) sub is 6.99-1.69 ohm impedance through the 20-140hz range.
I got bored on a stupid windy day and grabbed some test equipment out of my work truck.
One of these days I'm going to set up a data logger and measure the current draw and voltage of the input to my system and then have measurements of all the outputs of my various amps. Then see how efficient they are and how much I really draw during normal play.

Problem is dynamic resistance, current and voltage require a very high sampling rate to measure properly. ie a DMM won't give you the full truth. A Scope with data logger will give you the full story. Unless of course you are running a test tone source where the frequency is static for longer periods of time.

Its true most the time you don't hit "rated" output because...the music isn't a test tone. But you always want to build your system for Worst case scenario...

Those tests were using a function generator app on my iphone.
I have a couple fluke netdaq data loggers at work. I would have to get a few current transformer donuts to measure current. But they will do the voltage and freq measurement.

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