Amp Suggestions

[darkeagle03]

Hey guys, I recently bought a 92 lude si 4ws to use as a DD and am loving the car. The speakers in the car were blown, so I'm putting together a cheap system that I can enjoy listening to on my way to and from work, baseball games, etc.

I have most of the stuff picked out, but am wondering what amp you guys would suggest that I get to power my sub. I recently bought an 8" MB Quart RWE202. Its a DVC 2ohm that I will wire up as a 4ohm load. It is rated at 150W RMS. My goals are SQ and cheapness, I don't care about volume and I'm not an audiophile, obviously. I'm looking for something in the $100-120 range that will put out between 150 and 250W RMS at 4ohm.

Any suggestions?

[darkeagle03]

Well, I wound up going with a HiFonics ZXI 6006 (Zeus) amp to power my sub, I can't wait for it and the rest of my order to get here so I can install it

[darkeagle03]

So what do you guys think? Was it a good purchase ($130 shipped)? Will it work well for my needs?

[91Si4WS]

that will be plenty to power that one sub, HiFonics amps are normally under rated, and they're good amps, and 130 shipped is a good price too. Maxxsounds is the only company i get amps from now because not too many people around here have them, (maxxsounds produces, HiFonics, Autotek, Crunch and MBQuart) i have a Autotek running my Earthquakes and it hitting at 144Dbs, but when i change up i want to get either a RE XXX, or the Kicker Solo X and ill probally run it with the HiFonics XXV Goliath

[darkeagle03]

Yeah, part of the reason that I got it is that if the sub doesn't have quite the volume that I'm looking for I can always add another and this amp will still drive it. I also read that its produced by the same company that makes the MB Quarts sub that I have so I figured that they might play well together :)

[darkeagle03]

BTW, I have another amp question.... I think that i need to get an amp for my regular speakers (22W RMS from the head just isn't gonna cut it, lol). Again, I'm trying to get decent quality and keep the price down. Now my problem is that the rear speakers are rated 60W RMS and the front are 110 (components). Would it be best to overpower the rear, underpower the front or split the difference? Or do I have to get 2 seperate amps to pull this off? (I'm hoping not due to $ reasons)

[91Si4WS]

my suggestion there would be just to buy another head unit, if you stock head unit only puts out 22w to each chanel then it must be way outdated because most of them now at least have a 50x4 internal amp in them. but by running seperate amps to your highs you get a much cleaner sound, i have my componets running off the head unit right now but i have 2 alpine Duo B circuts that im going to run the 6.5s off of and then im going to add in 4 1" dome tweeters and run those off the head unit, but i still have to get an equalizer and all before i can do that, but i have so much bass in my car that it distorts the high when it hits so thats why im doing all that so i can have a clean, clear sound while shaking everybody within a 2 block radius of my car

[darkeagle03]

Actually, your headunit probably doesn't put out as much power as you think. Yes, mine is rated as 50Wx4 (Kenwood KDC-MP228), but if you look closely, that's maximum power, which is pretty much meaningless. What you need to look for is the RMS (continuous) power. My headunit, just like most aftermarket head units only puts out about 22Wx4 RMS.

I'm not looking for anything loud, I just want clean, clear, quality sound, which is why I only got an 8" sub.

Anyway, my real question was, is it better to over-power a speaker or under-power a speaker. And where is the cutoff in over/under powering where sound quality, or even speaker life starts getting compromised? Would sending 85W into a 60W speaker cause problems? Would 120? What about sending 60W into a 110W speaker? Again, I'm not looking for loud, I just want to make sure that I'm giving the speakers the right amount of power to do their thing without blowing them

[91Si4WS]

well underpowering a speaker isnt really going to hurt it unless your sending clipped signals, i wouldn't overpower one because then you my take away from the speaker life, you have to watch amps though because some of them are overrated and some of them are under rated, for example hifonics autotec are normally underrated and memphis too, i know my buddy has a memphis MCD1000 and its 1000w rated but we took it and got it bench tested and it pushes over 1100w RMS, then you have amps like sony xplodes that are normally overrated, their 1000w amp would be lucky to put out 700w RMS, best thing to do is join a car audio forum and just read about the different combos people have and how they sound, realmofexcursion.com is the one im a member of and everybody on there knows a good bit about what they're doing from full out comp to just enjoyable setups

[darkeagle03]

Thanks for the input :)

I've been searching around realm of excursion a bit too. I think that's where I saw a bunch of stuff about HiFonics. I think that I might just go with an 85Wx4 HiFonics for the regular speakers. I don't plan on jacking the sound up real loud, so I shouldn't have to worry about clipping the comps, and I don't think that 85 will do any real damage to the rears.

I actually have the rears installed right now with just my headunit, and I've noticed that I have to jack the volume up to between 25 and 30 out of 35 for what I would consider a normal listening volume. When I had it in my corolla with some cheap Sony speakers I usually kept it between 16 and 22...