Originally Posted by
JCsAudio
There are a lot of things that determine the actual power handling of a subwoofer, including the box type, tuning frequency if ported, and size. Then there is the speaker coil size and it’s thermal ability to shed heat, and there is cone excursion which is tied to box type and size and power level. Subwoofer sensitivity and Thiele Small Parameters all play a part. Then you have really no standard for manufacturers to rate their subwoofers consistently in an apples to apples way across the board, so some are conservatively rated and some are not. I can tell you you’re better off getting an amplifier that is rated about 125% of the rated power of the subwoofer and then set the gain of the amplifier to match the power required. This gives you dynamic headroom which most all speakers handle just fine when playing music. You can go much bigger and be safe as long as you set the gain correctly and don’t abuse the volume.
If you are building a high fidelity system that will be balanced and it’s not just all about the bass or SPL then whether to get a 600 watt amplifier or an 800 watt amplifier shouldn’t matter as much and you should be more concerned with driver parameters, driver distortion characteristics and tech, and just using the highest qaulity parts you can afford and also using them in a way for which they will perform optimally. The box type and construction will play a significant factor in how good it sounds as well as DSP tuning or even basic tuning, especially with cabin gain involved. The box location, time alignment with the midbass, crossover selection, and type will be important.