Great post. Something like this was needed. I just did the big 3 and I've had no problems running my system.

 

ya if you dont upgrade your battery and alternator then you will not see any improvement with your car audio. I have 2 1000w rms amps hooked up to 2 L5 kicker subs, A sound stream 40 farat cap, a bluetop optima battery and a 200amp alt. There is never a period when the subs are not getting 14.5 volts from the amps. When I ran this same amp and sub system with just stock battery alt and 1 farat cap, yeah that sucked! when the bass hit my volts went down to about 9.5 to 10 volts and the cap read from 13.5 to 9.5 when the music was playing.
this is a good post for people who need to learn about caps and such but if you have the right stuff or the right set up caps can help bigg time!!!

 

Basically its all about how much money you got to spend lol

 

a cap can help if you do a few extras but yeah it cost a lil to make 1 efficient, get a bigger alternator and a second battery maybe a cap to help store but yeah basic battery cap and alternator + monster amp = driving down the road with barely headlights to see lol

 

dual or triple alternators. problem solved. its all about how much amps ur puttin out.

 

Im not an electricion and i dont like reading.. so i didnt read most of the post and not many replies..

I was under the impression that the length of your amp wire limits the amount of power your amp can pull from the battery, So when you hook up a capacitor (as close to the amp as possible) it makes a shorter trip to the amp (less resistance) and so you get more power to your amp(s).

When your amp draws power it takes it from the capisitor and when it needs less power the capicotor charges. You also need to remember you cant pull more power then you have a ground for . Your ground wires need to be just as thick a guage as your positive wires.

Also Your ground comming from your batery terminal. You should run a seperate wire from your batery to the frame of your vehicle. You also need to remember to scrape the paint off where you put your grounds. electricity does not flow through paint.

You also need to remember to run a seperate ground wire for your capicitors. Think of them as two loops. your capicitor to your batery. and your amp to the capicitor.

Think of grounding as a sink, whatever water comes out of the faucet, (+) need to go down the drain (-) otherwise you have a a bottleneck (resistance) (less power in this case )

Im not sure if this is correct, its just how i have learned, correct me if im wrong im here to learn.

 

Power=Voltage*Current and Voltage=Resistance*Current. Longer wire will provide more resistance but larger wire will allow more current to flow. Generally speaking the length of the wire won't change how much power the amp can see it's the size that really matters. Think of it as a highway the more lanes you have the more cars that can drive down it, the larger the wire the more current it can carry without burning up. If you think about your voltage stays constant ie 12 volts or somewhere around 14 when running so in order for your power consumption to change current will either rise or fall.

For car audio a capacitor is used for quick discharges of current it doesn't really provide power to anything it only stores it. Everything is still coming from your alternator/battery. Changing from low amounts of bass to large amounts of really low frequencies happens quickly and requires quick discharges of a large amount of current. Capacitors discharge extremely fast so it's used for the instant increases in current that your subs need to hit those lows. Sometimes your battery and alternator can't keep up.

The rest of your response is generally correct.

 

One of the easiest, most effective tricks is the Big 3 Upgrade. You upgrade your vehicle's grounding overall as well as replace the Battery+ to the alt with a larger wire for more current flow

 

A capacitors biggest advantage is not actually to discharge and support an amplifier, especially a high current drawing amplifier. The biggest advantage to having a capacitor is as a noise filter for the electrical system. This video is actually a good description of what capacitors are actually supposed to do.

Do Capacitors Do Anything - The Truth About Car Audio Capacitors - YouTube