amp clipping

[Vanilla Sky]

can it make a sub sound blown? i pulled the subs out from under my love seat cause they sounded blown, and i hooked them up in here, and they are smoth all the way up to where i can controllably clip my amp... it sounds well... like a blown sub... i always thought it soundind like a brief cutting out or something like it... just askin caue the amp i usually use is a 100 watt RMS plate amp that came with a kenwood home sub... hell man, in here, they even hold up to schooly d... in the living room it sounds like i'm blowing the things apart... so, does it sound like the amp, or the subs? by the way, the subs are a pair of jensen xs1212's... nothing special, but they do get the job done... i don't think i can say that about my amp

[87DXHatch]

An amp clipping shouldn't make a sub sound blown, but there are a number of scenarios that could be what you are experiencing:

1. The enclosure you have in the love seat is leaking somewhere causing the plate amp to bottom out the subs, making them sound blown (your definition of blown I'm assuming is just making very loud distortion noises, not scratching voice coil sounds?).

2. The amp is clipping and pushing the subs beyond their mechanical limits. Amps have the ability to push twice their RMS value to subs (theoretically), so your 100 watt rms amp may be pushing closer to 200 watts to the sub causing them to bottom out/go beyond their linear mechanical limits. The amp can't go beyond double it's RMS no matter how hard you push it, unless you up it's power supply voltage.

3. There is something in the way of the sub that they are hitting, causing horrible noises.

These are a few ideas, we'll try to troubleshoot this.

Clipping in itself won't make them sound blown, they will just sound very impure (it's hard to describe, but clipping just adds extra harmonics to the music that wouldn't normally be there).