BunnyRabbiy
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Take a seat. lol Get comfy.
The big caps for car audio power & the small ones in electronics do the same thing. They act as a buffer for current. They also smooth out any spikes in ac voltage. Looking at an oscilliscope the row of spikes at the top of the sine wave is called ripple voltage. Ripple voltage is crappy when you're trying to get dc voltage (which is the only usable stuff) from ac voltage (which can travel wayyyy farther than dc). And now you'll probably never hear about ripple voltage again lol. Caps are also used in speaker crossovers, but you're not asking about that use.
When a car is running, the alternator supplies current for everything, but not all at once or else the 100 amps would fry everything. That's why alt's use a voltage regulator. When the demand comes for current, the voltage in your car dips a bit, so the voltage regulator ups the voltage, thus upping the current that is supplied. I think the ppl that say caps have no use haven't considered how the voltage regulator works. Maybe they think the max amperage comes gushing out all nice & steady from every alternator. Or don't realize alternators have them and are just staying on the dont-use-caps bandwagon.
When an amp needs power to play a big bass note (which is why people consider buying caps), that amp is GOING to get it's power from somewhere. It steals the power from the other electronics in the car and that's why lights dim on cars when a loud bass note hits. The alt's voltage regulator will help for this by bringing the voltage back up, but it doesn't switch it up very fast, but these caps are lightning fast with enough voltage(pressure) going through them. So contrary to the people that say these caps are made to "stiffen" voltage, and nothing else, buffering current like this for bass is the big reason these big caps were put on the market. And when used correctly, they work great!
The correct way is to have approx. 1 Farad per 1000 watts rms of the amp it's hooked to. Also it needs to be fed plenty of power. It charges & discharges so fast it needs an alt with a lot of amperage that won't strain by charging the cap as well as powering all the other electronics in the car. And of course thick enough wire to carry the current.
You can wire 2 caps to one amp by wiring the caps in parallel. This adds the capacitance of the 2 caps together. The cap terminals can be hooked up to the amp in the same way you would hook a battery to the amp.
In general, a cap stores current. In smaller electronics, when you turn something off that has an led, for example, the led might slowly go out. This is one of those small capacitors discharging its stored current. Also, sometimes at home there will be a voltage dip on your mains, but your tv or whatever stays on. Well those little caps happen to be storing current, which is why the tv can stay on a voltage dip. Just like in a car, the amp stays powered up even thru a voltage dip.
700 days ago
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