I've recenty installed some new speakers and a newer headunit and I'm pretty sure I'm maxing out the headunit's power. I'd like to purchase a new amp that I can use to maximize my speakers with.

Details:

Speakers:

2 - Alpine 6 1/2" 200 watt peak, 40 watt RMS
2 - Rockford Fosgate 4" 80 watt peak, 40 watt RMS

Headunit:

Pioneer - max power 45 watts x 4

I don't know what any of this even means, but it looks important. I can give more info, though. I know nothing about car audio, I suck at it, pretty much.

Would I want to buy a 200x2 watt amp if I wanted to just amplify my Alpines? Any recommendations on what to do?

Thanks

 

Car audio is such a pain, but you are in luck, I know lots about it. RMS power rating is FAR more important than peak power. Your pioneer at 45 watts max is probably putting out 22 RMS. If you were to buy an amp for the full range speakers you would notice a much punchier, clearer low to mid range sound. If you wanted to buy an amp for just the alpines you should look for something in the 40 RMS x 2 range. Make sure the power rating is RMS. Then you have to look at the voltage for the rated power, many competition amps will rate their amps a 12.5 volt rating so you can run them in competitions and claim to have less power than an amp rated at 14.4 volts. So you could have two amps, both rated at 40 x 2 but not even be close to the same. I am a big fan of the older model MTX amps, if you can find a working 275x on ebay it should be fairly cheap and be everything you need and more. I am also in Michigan if you haven't taken care of this yet, I will be happy to help hook everything up, I actually kinda enjoy it, been doing it in my own cars for 9 years now.

 

Or another option is to get a 4 channel amp with a built in x-over as you do not want to run too much bass to the 4" speakers and only need to run 1 power wire (8 gauge should work for a small amp) . this should give a good sound instead of using deck power for 1 set of speakers.

 

even though he's underpowering the 4" speakers, i can't see the benefit in using an amp for them. His Pioneer headunit will allow him to set his HP filter to either 50Hz or 80Hz to keep the distortion minimal. I know on my 5 1/4 pineer components, they require a 125Hz HP filter when running the recommended 50watts RMS. 6 1/2's can handle slightly more bass which is why i suggested a lower crossover point. from what i can remember, you want to filter the signal before it is amplified by using the head unit or a seperate crossover unit. long story short, run the 4" speakers off the headunit, get a 2 channel amp for the 6 1/2's, and set the headunit HPF to 50 or 80Hz.

 

fstrnyou, I wasn't aware that the deck had a x-over built in. Your suggestion would work as well. I was suggesting the 4 channel amp because there is a big difference in sound using deck power and amp power, even for a set of 4" speakers, specially when you want to turn it up, as the 6.5 speakers would be louder than the 4" up front using deck power. Then you would have to turn the gain down and try to balance it so there isn't to much rear fill. But either way can work, it's just up to wotnartd to decide what he wants to do.

 

I'm curious, you said that you installed the head unit and speakers. What exacly do you mean by "Maxing out"? Is it sounding distorted? You may just need to adjust the head unit like said above to pull the lower end out. It should have plenty of juice for the normal listener unless you want to burn money on a amp anyways.

 

Just my personal experience, but i've never noticed any better sound coming from very small speakers when they were amplified vs powered from the head unit. Highs have always come through crystal clear for me. And if the rear speakers are overpowering the fronts, don't mess with the gain on the amp. There's also a function on every head unit called "fade". USE IT. I try not to mess with any adjustments on the amp as far as crossovers and bass boost. you can adjust gain, but i always turned mine all the way up and used my head unit to fine tune the speakers levels.

 

Well, I guess you could see two different schools of thought. I'm not saying that your method would not work, but let me say this. I been installing car stereo for a while, and when I was taught on adjusting the "gain" on an amp, you want to turn the deck up to about 3/4 of full volume (bass and treble flat) and adjust your "gain" until the amp starts clipping (zapco amps have a clip light built in), or your speakers are starting to clip/distort and back-off a little. Having x-overs and bass boost, etc make things a little bit easier to adjust instead of buying external x-overs and pre-amps like back in the old days. If your "gain" is all the way up you might end up picking up engine noise. Im not saying that I'm an expert or this is not a "I'm right and your wrong" thing, but just my .02

 

^^ Your right on the spot. I played with a set of Hifonics 4''s Saturday assisted by a Blauplunt amp they sounded pretty good for being in a 91' Civic. Then Again they were Hifonic speakers Nuff' Said.