16 gauge speaker wire with 4 gauge power wire?
Im currently running 8 gauge power wire from my battery to my amp which is a hifonics zxi8408 i have it bridged to 2 channels so its pushing 440 watts x2 to 2 alpine type Rs. The current speaker wire im running is 16 gauge.
My question is...since im going to go down to 4 gauge power wire, should I lower the speaker wire and get 12 gauge speaker wire also? What will sound the best?
actually 16 gauge wire will burn up at 400 watts, 16 isn't even good for 200 watts.
You amplifier max wattage will determine the power wire. At 880 watts, 4 ohms is the minimum impedance it can handle. Now your amp should have two 40 amp fuses on it. Indicating a need for an 80 amp in-line fuse at the battery.
***To handle 80 amps you need a minimum of 4 gauge wire. In-fact the product specs say 4 gauge is the bare minimum to feed the amp (and ground).
Using 8 gauge wire would start a fire if it wasn't limited by a 50 amp fuse, which would get blown by the amp trying to draw 73 amps.
I can't believe no one else caught that in their answers!
At 440 watts per speaker, you require a minimum of 10 gauge stranded copper.
The cheapest way to get your wire is to go to Home depot and buy THHN by the foot.
The in-line fuse holder you have will likely hold an 80 amp fuse.
It is VERY important that you use correctly sized wire, because excess current through stranded speaker wire at low voltage can very quickly melt the wire and potentially start a fire, and damage sensitive car electronics. If you don't believe me, go ahead and hook it up, and turn it on. When the 50 amp fuse blows, go get an 80, then put your hand around the power wire either next to the battery or the amp (it get's hottest at the connection points) and see how it burns your skin. It's not supposed to get hot like a toaster wire. Nearly all wire is rated for temperature. THHN has a max temp of 90 degrees Celsius. That is the failing point. And this is why wires have a maximum amperage rating. They all have inherent resistance, relative to the passing load, they dissipate this as wasted heat energy. The more you pull through, the more heat. This is why speakers have maximum wattage ratings. (I hope you got those right). The fine wire of the coils don't dissipate heat as easily and will melt very quickly if wattage is exceeded even for a moment. But RMS value represents it's long-term stability, because heat will build up at lower wattages. So a 440 watt supply SHOULD have a 400-500 watt RMS speaker which will have a max wattage much higher. Under these circumstances you wouldn't be able to blow the speaker.
Now you CAN use a speaker rated lower RMS (with a minimum max wattage of 500). Just make sure it is in a ported box, and that you don't over do the base. If you hear distortion (from the speaker cone maxing out and smacking the casing) Then you are likely damaging it and will blow it out.
To avoid this outcome, start out with the amp all the way down, set your head unit at the highest volume you would ever use, with base and drivers turned up to where you like them, then slowly increase the volume of the amp and bring it to the point before any speaker noise occurs (or if you have an amp meter, you can measure the wattage output on the speaker and turn the volume up until you reach the highest capability of the speakers).
Then you simply never touch that amp setting again, and rely on your head unit to control the volume.
I'm glad you asked on here, because you don't seem to know what you're doing, and are heading for losses.
More Info:
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