If a speaker’s wire shorts out, or if you plug an amp into a head unit that’s already powered on, the amp might shut down to prevent the problem from spreading. Sometimes breakdowns in other sound system components can put your amp in protect mode when it’s connected. If your amp’s system gets too hot, it will enter protect mode to keep itself from melting. Amps that handle too much power without enough cooling airflow can overheat. This low bar for resistance is called the amp’s If an amp has an impedance of 2 ohms, a speaker with less than 2 ohms will overwhelm its circuits, putting your amp in protect mode. Amps will refuse to work if whatever’s plugged into them has a lower electrical resistance than their minimum threshold. Causes of power protect modeĪmps go into protect mode for many reasons. If you can’t turn your amp’s power light on even by pressing the button, you might be in protect mode. These amps indicate protect mode by blinking the power light before shutting down completely. Some amps don’t even have power lights, but this doesn’t mean they don’t have protect circuits. Some protect lights are green or blue instead of the usual red. Sometimes the protect light turns on for two seconds when the amp does, like a check engine light, and then shuts off. If your amp isn’t a code-talker, it’s still important to understand what its lights are saying at all times.
#Prot on amplifier manual#
Just check what sequence the light is blinking in, look in the manual to see what it means, then skip ahead to where we talk about solutions. If the last part is true, you’re on easy street.
#Prot on amplifier manuals#
Manuals contain a tsunami of information, so if you’re overwhelmed, here are the things to look for:
#Prot on amplifier pdf#
If you lost it or threw it away, you can almost always find it in PDF form by searching the model number. The boring but practical answer: read your amp’s owner’s manual. Just like with the circuit breaker analogy, if you follow the proper steps, you’ll have your amp working again in no time. It’s basically the electrical engineering version of the COVID-19 lockdown. When something goes wrong in the amp’s wiring, the protection circuit trips, shutting down the entire amp to keep the problem from getting worse. What is power protect mode?Īlmost all amps (and all amps you should be buying) are engineered with protection circuits. You’ve probably thrown a circuit breaker in your home before - it’s exactly the same principle, though a little more complicated in execution.
Yes, protection mode is a built-in feature of the amp, and yes, whatever caused it can almost always be fixed. This article is designed to help car audio beginners understand and deal with one of the most frustrating things that can happen to any amp: the system shutting down and the “protection” light turning on, seemingly for no reason at all.
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