Well the time has finally come which I can begin spending money on my car again. I've decided to replace the crappy 2 channel amp I have powering my 6.5" Alpine Type R components with a 4 channel to power the components as well as the Alpine Type R 6x9's in the sail panels.

My question is this: how many watts over the RMS power can you go without potential hazard to the speakers. I realize the RMS rating is the rating which is recommended for optimal performance from the manufacturer. The amp I was thinking about going with would give each of these speakers 100 watts RMS. The components are rated at 70 watts RMS while the 6x9's are 55 watts RMS.

I've heard of guys running components rated at 50 watts RMS with over 100 watts RMS. Is this crazy, or typical? I've always played things pretty safe with wattages but now I'm wondering if I'm too critical.

 

you can run almost as high as you want.. of course your not gonna use a 3000watt amp for your 50 or 75 watt compnents.. but as long as you keep the gain turned down it will be fine

 

even if your gain was turned down and u had a 3000 watt amp hooked up to 50 watt components, something is wrong with you. lol.

 

lool.. i know that was just saying... it doesnt hurt to have more power..

 

There's no harm in having extra power available, but often there's no benefit either. In most conventional cases that have the component speakers running 80hz and up, a 50 watt amp will be sufficient to keep up with almost any reasonable amount of bass.

 

But then again, you could just get some higher rated speakers too.

 

That does you no good unless you're currently having problems keeping up with the bass. Any competent pair of components powered by a 50 watt amp should keep up to a normal pair of 10s or 12s.

If you buy a pair of speakers with greater excursion capabilities and greater power handling, then with more power you may get more output unless the greater excursion capabilities came at the expense of sensitivity. Making something louder involves a lot more variables than amp output and speaker power handling.