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yup if no speakers are attached to the amp, and the speaker leads aren't touching, that's an open circuit, and an infinite load.
the amp shouldn't enter protection at that point unless it has internal damage.

ok,here's the deal. if the amp went into protection with out any speakers hooked to it at all, the output section is bad, have it replaced, period. the sub wired in paralell hooked to a mono channel is NOT the problem, you are running 2 ohm on a mono channel, not a problem. what the manual refers to is running a 2 ohm load on a bridged amp, which will result in the rails see half that load, 1 ohm, which most amps can't handle. your sub sounds like it is wired fine. make sure the + is to the +, and the - is to the - on thesub itself. if theygot them crossed, that would do it and it would play for a little while and then burn up, possibly causeing damage to the amp. Soundstream used to be really good stuff about 10 years ago, but now they are owned my the same company as crunch, so the quality isn't as good anymore. get the amp replaced, replace the sub and start over. the only time you ever cross + with - is when you are wiring in series, which will double the impedance=4 and 4=8, which you want to do in this instance, as it cuts your power in half. running 400 watts to a 300 watt sub isn't the problem, if anything you need more power, underowering subs is much worse than overpowering.

Take a picture of the wiring on the back of the sub.

Now that I am awake and reading that post it almost sounds like someone wired it up to short out?

In any even just rip ALL WIRING OFF THE SUB! and start over. FOllow the pictures exactly!!!

Also the sub is 300 WRMS and your tossing 400 WRMS at it, not a good idea.

So there are two possiblities:

1) Sub is wired wrong- shorting

2) Sub is blown closed and puts the amp into protect mode

Alright, the sub makes the amp reset on the other channels as well. Looks like I've been blowing the sub somehow?

The sub is wired as follows:

Theres a small wire that connects the positive and negative sides to each other, then another set of wire on one side which connects to the amp.

http://www.eatel.net/~amptech/elecdisc/spkrmlti.htm

According to that (middle of the page where it talks about DVC), it says thats a 2ohm mono load, and most amps cannot handle it. Is that true? Is the wiring messed up? That website has a slightly different wiring though, so it's possibly not the same...

I am going to put it back together, and test it on the 1\2 channel, to see if its the 5th channel, or the sub.

Yike, yeah I didnt read that well... Tired...

Thats very odd!

Try rewiring the sub and using all new speaker wire for it. Maybe sumhow it is shorting out?

Short of that who knows...

Huh?

I dunno if you misread, but if I hook up regular speakers to the 5th channel, it doesn't turn off. Only when the sub is connected does it start going into protect mode. Doesn't that mean the 5th channel works fine at both 2ohm and 4ohm, and the only thing that is messed up is the sub?

In related news, I opened up the sub. I smell something burnt. It's faint, but there. The sub sounds a little scratchy when I push on it.

I'd call it a blown sub, but don't they usually still work after being blown, they just sound like crap?

Sounds like the 5th channel is not working.

It really sounds like the amp now

Alright, just checking.

A friend suggested I do some tests on the 5th channel with regular speakers to pinpoint the problem.

Results:

Retested sub alone again, amp still went into protection mode
Put 1 speaker on the 5th channel, result: everything was fine
Put 2 speakers on the 5th channel (2 sets of speaker wire, positives together, negatives togther), result: everything was fine (mimicing 2ohm load, correct?)

Adding the fronts to both setup on channel 1\2 did not affect the system. After it was all tested, I once again put the sub back on the 5th channel, and it once again went into protect mode.

Any ideas on what this new information tells us? Maybe the sub is wired wrong inside?

Lets not concern oursleves with stuff that does not directly apply to your problem.

The specs I find show the output are as follows:

OUTPUT (watts):RMS @ 4 Ohms-50 x 4, 200 x 1 (sub)
RMS @ 2 Ohms-100 x 4, 400 x 1 (sub)
RMS Bridged @ 4 Ohms-200 x 2, 400 x 1 (sub)

This is taken from Soundstreams site and does not make much sense... Pay attention to the Ohms/sub RMS values...The 1/3 are the same, but I believe the 3rd should be 200 also :)

BTW with dual 4 Ohm VC's your amp is seeing that sub as a 2 Ohm sub, so it should be getting 400 WRMS :) So its not an impedance problem...