Not Bad... Not bad at all

The Pyle Premium PPA15 subwoofer are rated at 800Watts peak power and 250Watts RMS (that’s continuous power). On the surface those are really good numbers, but what I found out you may not want to hear. I have an American Audio model VLP600, and the 600 comes from the RMS watts that it puts out at 4 ohms. However the Pyle PPA15 speakers are 8 ohms so the Amplifier puts out 200Watts RMS. For those of you who do not know, the speakers you buy are supposed to have a higher RMS capability than your amplifier puts out. Otherwise, you risk damaging your speakers and possibly your amp as well when the speakers blow up.

Now that we have that established, the speakers performed OK in a factory built box that I got at the local pawn shop. There was nothing wrong with the box, but I believed that these speakers would do better in another box. So I built one, and not just a plain boring six side box, but I took some design ideas that I saw on the internet and built what I believe is a killer box for these speakers. With two speakers in each box and the amp cranked up to about 75% of max I almost lost my basement windows. These speakers will deliver deep chest thumping bass if properly matched with the right speaker box and amp. If you are going to build a box, make sure it’s a vented design, because paper cones do not handle enclosures well.

Now for the bad… I bought 4 of the Pyle PPA15 speakers and put two in each box. That means that there were two speakers per channel on my amp. I thought that the amp would overload and start clipping. Instead, the speakers sounded like they were about the cone off and fly out the box, so I had to drop the amp down to 75% of max for them to play properly. Maybe my amp is defective or I need to do some more fine tuning, but I think that these speakers should be able to handle a light weight 200watt RMS amp easily, but they didn’t.

These are not recommended to the professional DJ who is looking for speakers that can handle club volumes and power, but rather for the small private parties DJ looking to add to the system but do not have the big cash to spend. These would work great for small scale application like that, or if you are an audio enthusiast like me who wants a killer home system, this is a nice direction to go. However, you must remember that the speakers are only as good as the box they are in.