I tired contacting EV on this, but they never responded. They advertise the ELX118 (passive) as 400w rms. I was looking at the back of the physical sub itself and it says 350w. Can anyone else confirm this for me?
Thanks.
That is only 0.5dB. Not enough to worry about.
However a possible explanation gets a bit complicated. First of all- loudspeakers don't handle wattage-they handle voltage. The "wattage" is a number that is based on (usually) the nominal impedance. The REAL wattage varies quite a bit with freq-but people do not like to see hundreds of different wattage ratings for the same loudspeaker (different freq).
It could be that the driver (in free air) is rated at 350 watts-based on a particular applied voltage and a nominal rated impedance.
If that driver is mounted in the cabinet and the impedance rises-then the voltage applied could be higher-and then the same "nominal" impedance is used (People don't like to see a rating of 9 ohms for example)-so the "wattage" number is higher-because that is the voltage that can be applied to the driver.
At least that is the "simple" answer.
Personally I would not worry about it-the difference is simply to small.