Ok, I was fixing to buy all new stuff for my car and was wondering what the difference is in amps. Lets say I have a 200 watt RMS Rockford Fosgate amp and a 200 watt RMS Kicker amp or a 200 watt RMS Profile amp will all the amps sound the same?? I guess what I am saying is will the watts coming from a higher dollar amp be better or is a watt a watt???

 

you get what you pay for. Period. Kicker and Rockford will be VERY comparable (although that brand new rockford stuff seems to be getting pretty cheesy). Profile is in a whole other category and can't come close to comparing. Do yourself a favor and when you compare some of these amps, check their fuse size. The efficiency of most MOSFET amps hovers at around the 50% range, so you can get a pretty fair idea whether you're looking at cheap garbage or a decent amp, although that's never a guarantee. It's also not useful to compare two good amps or two cheap amps. All it does is give you a very general ballpark idea about the legitimate current consumption (and subsequent output) capabilities of an amp.

 

exactly what was posted...you get what you pay for. The higher dollar amps are definitely worth the money. You will notice a difference in sound.

 

Yep, a watt is a watt, no matter what. (Watt?)

BUT- it's how the amp's wattage is measured!! I could sell you a Boss Audio amp and tell you it does 1000 watts. What I -don't- tell you is that it does 1000 watts for a microsecond, and that past 50 watts, the music sounds very distorted, and distortion blows out speakers & subs & reallly hurts your ears.

The higher-dollar amps like old Rockfords and the MTX's and etc will tell you the RMS (basically means "continuous") power. And usually, since people use those amps in competitions, they under-rate their amps. MTX might sell a 37x2 amp that hits as hard as a Pioneer 100x2 amp!

I remember my old system... showed it to some kids, they were impressed. They asked me the wattage, I told them RMS- it was around 200 watts. They told me that my system was louder then another kid they'd seen, who said his system was over 1000 watts! He obviously quoted the peak power to them, which don't mean crap. I left that parking lot with a big smile on my face!! Too bad I never saw the other guy they talked to.

Plus if you buy a high-quality amp (we had this discussion before about a german-sounding amp name, I forget what it was named), it tends to "follow you" from system to system, and holds it's resell value better. Just like Snap-on socket sets versus Target/Walmart socket sets.

[edit] Found it; it was talking about Volvefnhawg (sp) amps. Link is here: https://www.thirdgen.org/techbb2/sho...hreadid=167367

 

Tom, even if you compare RMS ratings, there's still a huge fantasy on the part of the cheap amps. Plus, when you try to drive a reactive load, those amps will put out EVEN LESS power than when driving a purely resistive load (which is what they're tested with). Some good amps (kicker, rockford, etc) will actually produce more power into a reactive load than resistive. But of course, this requires higher quality materials and better engineering.

Speaking of which... those cheap amps use the cheapest electronic components available, which are very high tolerance components. This translates into a finished product that has no consistancy from one unit to another. The electronics inside an amp are designed to pretty tight standards. If you don't bias a fet properly, it doesn't do very much. Well, when you build an amp with a bunch of 20% tolerance caps, resistors & chokes, you wind up with a piece of equipment that doesn't even live up to the original design.

 

Alright so its pretty much guesswork when it comes to picking out an amp unless you can hear it since the rated watts and what it actually puts out and the way it handles the power is pretty much unknown until hooked up and listened too. I am wanting to run some real good 12's and want an amp that will make them things hit. If money was no object which way would yall go.

 

There's no guesswork involved if you stick with quality products.

Actually, come to think of it, there isn't much guesswork involved with the cheap sh*t either. It's pretty much guaranteed to suck.

 

LOL!

Here's my suggestion, if you can do their payment plan. You know, I love doing this. If I won $1 million in a lottery, I think I'd just buy systems for my friends.

Amp: http://www.crutchfield.com/cgi-bin/S...=0&cc=02&avf=N

Sub & free box: http://www.crutchfield.com/cgi-bin/S...=0&cc=01&avf=N

Hey are those MTX 8000's any good?

 

If you have the cash, I would probably go with:
Sub- Adire Brahma 12" $369
Amp- Kicker KX1200.1 $450

You would be very happy with this combo. The kind of happy that makes all the hair on your face tingle.

Brian

 

I have never heard of that brand subwoofer where would I look to get them for a decent price.

 

http://www.acoustic-visions.com/Brahmaseries.htm

ask around and you will hear nothing but good things about adire. And you will only be able to fit one brahma 12 in your hatch, but you only need one.

Brian

 

Things to check when looking at amplifiers :

THD - Total Harmonic Distortion. This basically means the amount of noise an amplifier has to make to produce it's power output. Try to get as low a figure as possible. Anything below 1% is pretty good.

Frequency response. Try to get as wide a frequency response as possible. The human ear can hear from about 200Hz up to 22KHz, by the way.

Signal to Noise Ratio. This is a measure of how efficient your amp is in delivering the signals it receives from the head unit, rather than the noise it makes to produce that delivery. Measured in dB, aim for 80.

 

well speaking of watts and amps, kinda off topic, but will two sony 760 watt explodes, literally explode, be too much for a 2000 taurus alternator? i am asking cuz i want to put my system in there before the camaro gets running.

 

Sorry, I completely disagree. 1% THD at 2khz is so bad you'd be lucky to recognize the song being played. 1% at 20hz is completely inaudable. Even the POS amps rate their product at some ridiculously low THD number. Any moron that can bias a fet can build an amplifier that has super low THD. The THD of a properly biased FET won't go up until it saturates.

Frequency response. Again, even the ultra cheap crap is flat from 20-20khz. It's not hard to design an amp to have that frequency response. Even the headphone amp in a $20 walkman is going to have a flat response.

Signal to noise ratio. Once again, super low even on cheap amps.

Those specifications will make a crap amp look just as good as a good one. What matters with amps is primarily the LEGITIMATE power output, which is a spec that you can't easily get from most brands. The good stuff is under-rated, and the crap is horribly over rated. Some amps come with a birth certificate, and those can help you determine what you're getting. My Kicker and Rockford amps all put out substantially more than they are rated at, and the testing procedures from those companies are legit. If that birth certificate says it can put out 800 watts, it means it can do it non stop.

 

Of course, I did mean all of these things coupled with a decent price tag! I don't know what brands are good and which ones are not in the US, but the pointers above were not meant to show the difference between a good amp and a cheap amp, they are simply a guideline to look at while browsing the QUALITY amps available.

Besides, I've never bought a cheap amp before

 

Ok I found the Brahma 12's for $369 but I cant find the Kicker KX1200 amp for no cheaper than $800. I looked at SoundDomain.com and Crutchfield.

 

screw the kicker, you can pick yourself up a JBL1200 for less than $300. It's rated at 1200W at 2- ohms, it'll do it night and day and can even go above that.

http://www.ikesound.com/Prod_Details.asp?Prod_Id=209

some people don't like the way they look, but when you turn the volume up, people aren't gonna care, and neither will you.

- Andy

 

so Jim85IROC, what do you recommend for an amp then?

 

The KX1200.1 sells around $400 on ebay.

 

Generally a Class D sub amp is the best bang for hte buck. I haven't been around any of the brand new amps, but I'm not too impressed with most of what I have seen. A lot of people seem to like those JBL class D amps. Adire is supposed to have a new class D amp out that will be a good match for the Bahma.

 

IMO the best way to find out how good of quality an amp is made is to do searches on some of the bigger car stereo boards and see what problems people have had with the amp/amps you are looking at. No matter how good or "perfect" the amp someone will have had a problem with that amp or possibly another product from that company or line for you to compare to.

Another good thing to look at is customer service. companies I have dealt with lately (Kicker, Adire audio, Elemental designs) have great CS and will do more than the averge company to make sure your equipment is running good.