When to install power capacitor ?

[appleyard]

an audio caps comes in alot of sizes. from 0.5 farad to a hefty 20 farad. ussually those 20 farads is for those demo car which have more than 10 amps or military use. 1 farad equals to a million micro farad. a cap is needed when a systems draw to much current or juice in an instance. means the alternator or bat cant withstand a sudden increase of power needed. this is where a cap kicks in to help. a cap work as a reservoir. it save a sum of power and then release back. so when the amps needed power, a cap should be able to give it. so the summarry is. it gives power when needed or it gices power at a constant rate. so that means better amp performance and tighter and more powerful bass

i dont recall installing caps makes your bass tighter also i dont recall amp can perform better with caps on.

Caps is like a battery. It supply current when there is shortage of it. If you are using these so called 1 - 20 farad (there are 50 farad RF caps out there), it only can supply current at for a few seconds and it takes more than that to recharge. So your sub hit hard on few thumb only. Most caps has high ESR so caps has higher resistance than battery.

I will only install caps for decoration only.

 

[appleyard]

read this especially RC posts http://www.carsound.com/cgi-bin/UBB_CGI/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=1;t=022965
and tell me about caps makes subs and amp perform better.

 

[kyheng]

Well, I've check the forum, the first 3 pictures it never state how many watt of system is using. But i assume that the system is more than 1000watt. Without a cap the car system volt will drop to a very minimum at 9.8v, with a 1 farad the minimum is 11.6v, with a 50 farad the battery never load at all. These minimum peak is when the music bass is the highest on that time, the same time the alternator also cannot supply back enough power. If the battery starts to get old, the bass when hit at these time, the bass will not be deep like new battery can perform.
On the 4th pic, the 50farad can perform best compare to the other 2 when on 1ohm load which is some subwoofer load at 1ohm. From here we can know that with a 50 farad cap the sub can perform best on 1ohm, not like the other. So sometimes the installer say when install a cap your woofer will have a deeper bass is true on some sence, but for true statement is with a cap your bass will not much affeted by the battery power as the cap is doing its job...