Why dual voice coil subs?

[Offroadr]

dumb question

Why would you want a dual voice coil sub?

[idbl_Fanatic]

SO that you can get more wiring options

[TribalVision]

Originally posted by idbl_Fanatic
SO that you can get more wiring options

B-I-N-G-O and Bingo was his Name-o!!

[ExcessiveSpeed]

Originally posted by Tribal Vision


B-I-N-G-O and Bingo was his Name-o!!

That's not all...

Dual-Voice-Coil Or Dual-Channel Speakers
These are woofers with two separate voice coils mounted on a cylinder connected to a common cone. They can be connected to separate amplifiers in order to produce a common bass wave from two amplifier channels through a single woofer. Since bass has a non-directional character, this does not interfere with the optimum reproduction of the stereo image in the other speakers. Thus, a correctly configured single driver can often provide as much bass as multiple drivers, and in a smaller enclosure.
Great care should be taken in making connection from the amplifier, to observe proper polarities. Failure to do so, can result in the quick extinction of the driver if the amplifiers are pulling the voice coil form in different directions at once.
Impedances for these speakers can be configured in a variety of values including different levels for each one. The most popular format is to have each coil optimized for 4 ohms, although 6 ohms and 2 ohms are not uncommon. Some specialized units may have 4 and 2, or 8 and 4, although these are fairly rare and usually proprietary designs.
The same considerations of enclosure volume, power handling, and frequency response apply to these drivers as they do to all others.

You'll see a lot of SPL competition guys running dual amps on one DVC sub.. More BASS

[ExcessiveSpeed]

More info from JL Audio:

What is the advantage of dual voice coils?

The primary advantage of the dual voice coil speaker is wiring flexibility. A single dual voice coil driver offers the user three hookup choices...parallel, series and independent. In a parallel hook-up the drivers impedance will be half that of each individual coil (a dual 4 ohm speaker would be a 2 ohm speaker in parallel.) A series hook-up results in twice the impedance of each single coil (a dual 4 ohm speaker results in 8 ohms if its coils are wired in series.) Finally, you can wire each voice coil to a separate channel of your amplifier, which can be useful if your amplifier is not mono-bridgeable or if you are bridging a four channel amplifier down to two channels to run your sub.


The independent wiring application is the one that brought about the need for dual voice coil speakers in home audio. Unlike most good car amplifiers, home amplifiers and receivers are typically not mono-bridgeable. For this reason, dual voice coil woofers were developed so that a subwoofer or center speaker could be driven from the left and right channels of the average stereo home amp/receiver. Since sub-bass frequencies are hard to localize, the dual voice coil subwoofer allowed sub-bass reinforcement within one cabinet and one speaker. This cabinet could be placed inconspicuously in a corner or along a wall of the listening room, with the obvious benefits being space-efficiency and lower cost than two independent bass cabinets or a larger cabinet with two subs in it. Many popular home subwoofer / satellite speaker systems still use this basic configuration.

[Kevn3Nape]

So what would be the most efficient way to wire a Jl 500/1 to a single 12W3 (dvc) ? Pics would be nice or diagrams for those of us who are less knowledgable....

[ExcessiveSpeed]

According to JL's web site that amp is most stable at 4 ohm.

However we need to know what the woofer is. Their site states it can come in dual 2 ohm, dual 4 ohm, or dual 6 ohm configurations.

Let's assume it's dual 2 ohm (hopefully).. Then you'd wire it in series, to present a total of 4 ohm's to the amp... In the picture I posted, it's the diagram in the middle.

Take the + from the amp and connect it to the positive of VoiceCoil1. Take the - from VoiceCoil1 and connect it to the + of VoiceCoil2, take the - from VoiceCoil2 and connect it to the - of the amp.