i'm about to put a profile 200watt amp into my tC along with a Pioneer Premiere 12" sub and i was wondering if i'd need a battery capacitor or not, and if so, how strong? Does anyone here with those sort of stats experience lights dimming, etc. when your sub hits without a capacitor? thanks for the responses.

 

with a 200 watt amp...i doubt it, but it will not hurt if you install one

 

save your $...caps are a waste of money

 

i got a good 1000 watts from 2 amps runnin and i don't have a cap. i don't think those really do much. save ur money and get a good optima battery. that'll do more good than a cap. im still runnin my stock battery but gonna switch out to a optima on my 1 year anniversary when i bought the car.

 

Caps are not a waste of your money if you understand the concept and when to use them. Caps work to smooth transient spikes, which will not be helped much by an alternator, better grounding, etc. But, in most normal systems they are not needed. The problem is that a lot of people dealing with audio really dont understand a lot of the underlying electronic concepts.. so they slap a cap, extra battery, bigger alternator, etc on to fix any problem.. which turns into wasted money much of the time.

for your system you should not need anything at all. I have run 500W before with no cap, no high output alternator, etc. 200W you will be fine. The only thing you might deal with is a whine in the audio depending on how everything is wired. This is solved by running power wires away from RCA and speaker cables and using a good solid ground with the shortest ground wire you can use. If you still experience that, then a good ground loop isolator can help. But most likely you will be fine as is.

 

sounds good, thanks for the help

 

Thank you thank you.... I was getting ready to get into all that as well and read what you said.
A cap is not a waste of money if you know how the work and what they do for the system. Most people think it is a fix all for there system flaws.