Re: Suggest an amp
Sound quality amps, and SPL competion amps are two different beasts.
I don't like american bass, but MMATTS makes nice stuff. I do not belive SPL competion material is what this guy is looking for.
Also, there are NO amps that make 300 watts at 4 ohms, and jump up to 600 watts at 2 ohms. This is impossible, beacuse that would mean the amp is 100% efficent, and there are NO amp's in the world that are 100%. NONE. If any one tries to claim this of an amp, they're talking out their ass. If you see any amps to claim this sort of rating, you'll know they're full of shit.
Here is what you're looking for in a good component amp.
High Signal to noise ratio (S/N ratio) anything over 95 db is considered pretty good, anything over 105 db great. I personaly run a PG ti amp that boasts a S/N ratio of 115 db. This helps keep the noise floor low in your system (ie the hiss sound you hear in the background when theres a quite spot in the muisic).
Low Total Harmonic Distortion (THD). The lower this number the better. anything under say .05 is the norm for a good amp. I've seen crap sub amps post ratings of 2.0 % thats 40 times more distoriton. You'll want to keep this as low as possible, and add as few componets to the audio path as you can, every one thats active usualy adds some amount of distortion.
An RMS rating of at least what your speakers are rated for, if not more. people seem to think that if they have a 500 watt sub, and run it off a 200 watt amp the sub will never blow. This is total bs, beacuse I see more subs fried this way than all others combined. Most people turn their gains up way to high, trying to get too much power out of an amp, and smoke the sub from clipping the hell out of the signal.
You'll want good 12, 18, or 24 db/octave crossovers beacuse this lets you filter the low low bass from your midrange so it can handle more power. The higher the number, the steeper the slope of the cross over. This lets you filter out all the low bass, with out messing with your mid bass at all.
JL makes some really really good amps these days. Expensive, but good. I've never heard bad about them other than the cost. All of the brands I listed above, have been used in show winning SQ cars. In car audio, you'll find that once you pass a certain price point there is little differnce in all the good brands, and it comes down to the smaller features, and which ones are the most asteticly pleasing to you. I personly LOVE my PG titanium 400.2. Everything about it is tits except for one gripe. The Fan is on 100% of the time, and with the car off and seats folded down sometimes I could hear the fan on a really quite song.
Just noticed that JL's 300/2 woudl be perfect for your setup. 150wrms per channel (rated, actual will be higher).
