Good amp/low price

Systems

I just bought two polk mm2104 10" subs. I saw a rockford-fosgate amp that was in my price range but I'm not sure it's a good choice. What minimun ratings should I look for in an amp. The subs are going in a stealth box for a dodge ram quad cab.

neomagus00

since it's easiest to wire these two subs in parallel, yielding a two-ohm load, and they each handle 300 watts, so you need an amp that will put out 600W@2Ohmsx1Ch... or, since a 2Ohm-bridged stable amp is a rarity, one that does 300W@4Ohmsx2Ch is good too

MacLeod

It depends on your price range. You can get anywhere from a Precision Power to a Profile. Myself, I like Crossfire and MTX. They are both competition level amps but usually can be had for under $300 if you do a little looking.

If $500+ is your range, look to Orion and JL Audio.

A word of warning though. Those subs are rated at 300 watts and Polk Audio apparantly rate their speakers right at the point of death so you dont want to go over 300 rms. Also, most competiton level amps like Crossfire, MTX, Xtant and PPI SEVERELY underrate their amps. For instance, my Crossfire 50x4 is probably putting out 80x4. PPI are ridiculously underrated as well. So when looking for an amp from a competition level brand, a 200 watt amp will be more like 275 so rather than a 300x2 amp you could go with a 200x2 and be a lot closer to the 300 without going over and killing your subs.

Now this doesnt go for all amps. Planet Audio doesnt underrate theirs to my knowledge and neither does Alpine. So basically its a guessing game and its kind of BS but they do it so they can rate a 100x2 amp at 45x2 and enter the 90 watt class and have a leg up.

Systems

Thanks for the info. Atleast now I can make a more educated purchase.

neomagus00

on the ratings thing, i'd say just get an appropriately-rated amp, then properly adjust the gains... which you should do with all amps & speakers, but it's more vital with subs, cause of excursion issues

MacLeod

Agreed.

But also consider that most (except Polk) speaker makers rate their speakers conservatively as well. So if you have a speaker that is rated at 50 watts and you get an MTX that is rated at 50 but actually puts out 75, chances are your speaker will handle them with no problem.