I'm a newbie just registered to the forum, cos I'm a finder of the reality of sound...
Unfortunately, here in Sri Lanka, it's quite a bit difficult to find a branded subwoofer driver, where audioholics are almost nowhere to standardize the quality of sound and where lots of myths have been created by many of sound equipment sellers, not only as their marketing strategies, but also due to their lack of knowledge in sound... So, I bought a pair of unbranded (named J AUDIO, a Chinese one) 8" bouble-coil & double-magnet of 8 ohms 300-450 watts as mentioned (though ridiculous for an 8") for just 30 bucks... Plus, I wanted to spend a little money on them, cos my intention was only to experiment my own design of a subwoofer enclosure (to see how it works)...
Thereafter, I asked a veteran technician (a professional amplifier maker) to build a two channel subwoofer amplifier for those I bought and installed separately in the two enclosures built to my design... What makes the story interesting is that, he told me he'd make it with an original STK 4191, which is a stereo IC, capable of delivering 50 watts RMS per channel (including a low-pass filter to extract bass), and when I questioned about its sufficiency for those I bought, he answered a 50 watts RMS would clip them at high volumes and could even blow them up at the max volume...
Now, the puzzle for me is that, I've got many resources under the topic "subwoofers" from the Internet and found most of the subwoofers are powered with amplifiers of 200/300/400/500 watts RMS, but at the same time, I gotta know that even a musical concert can be powered with a 500-1000 watts RMS amplifier...
Ah, forgot to say, you'd ask me about my usage, well, they're just for my home entertainment (a living room of 30' x 30'), but I need a thundering bass to enjoy...
Please help me in solving the puzzle and, btw, I hope this thread, in future, would be a great help for those like me who are curious about the wattage of amplifiers...
Note, here I meant nothing about that bullshit PMPO, a trap of the salesman to hunt down the poor customer, though technically makes no sense at all...
Thanks...