amp upgrade ideas?

[fortytha12gauge]

i have 2 polk mm2124dvc.i have a 460x1at 4 ohm kenwood amp. i want to upgrade any suggestions on a amp?

[heXtant]

depends on how much you're willing to spend, but you definatley want a nice amp or two for those subs, they are nice models. the amp you have now, the kenwood kac-7202 (2 channel) is a nice amp. it isnt powerful enough to power both but it can definatley handle one. maybe just buy another one of those kenwoods.. but if you find that you dont like kenwood amps, you could go with a polk momo carbon c300.2 (2 channel) amp. its priced about the same as your kenwood and gives 450x1. i have 3 of them and i love em. :). polk, as you know, makes high quality products. if you dont like your kenwood, the c300.2 is a great option. you can check it out here on the polk site or on cardomain. (free shipping through cardomain)
http://www.cardomain.com/item/POLC3002

[neomagus00]

find an amp that does 800W x 1 Channel @ 1 Ohm or 800W x 1Ch @ 4Ohms... sites to look at are www.acaraudio.com, www.cardomain.com, www.onlinecarstereo.com...

[MacLeod]

Here ya go. (http://www.cardomain.com/item/ORI47435) A $700 amp for $250.

Its an Orion stereo amp thatll easily make 800 watts x1 at 4 ohms mono. Take your subs and wire them together in series and then bridge them in parallel with the amp and youve got a 4 ohm mono load and a clean 400 watts to each sub.

[Meeks32]

Just noticed something that stood out, but most amps that I looked at on that site have horrible s/n ratios. MTX, Orion, alot of the JBL's. Polks were good and Phoenix gold's, im guessing it wouldnt be that bad for sub use but alot of the ones I looked at were 2 channel & JBL's $4,599 3000gti has a s/n ratio of 60!

[neomagus00]

s/n for subs is nearly irrelevant... and that amp also lists damping factor as 6.4, which is clearly very wrong... i'm thinking that they're using different units or something...

[PoweredByDodge]

s/n for subs irrelevant? i'm going to pretend you didn't say that.

www.mitekfactoryoutlet.com
www.cardomain.com/shop (look at hifonics)
www.ikesound.com (all kinds of buyout stuff).

[neomagus00]

you really think you can hear the difference between 80 and 95 s/n in a sub?

[MacLeod]

A good rule of thumb when looking at amps is to completely ignore all specs except for RMS power output and price. Virtualy all amps these days, especially major brands, will have specs good enough that you wont be able to hear the difference. Yeah Brand X may have .0004% THD and Brand Y amp may have .0002% but its irrelevant because you cant hear anything below 1% anyway.

All you should worry about is if an amp will make its rated power cleanly and all the amps youve listed will.

[fortytha12gauge]

would 2 polk c300.2 one for each sub be to much for the sub bridged

[PoweredByDodge]

agh! i will never agree with that statement - never. "ignore everything but rms power output" --- i'd rather fall over dead.

... neo - as far as 80 vs 95... that's not the end of the world. I didn't know how drastic you were talking. I've seen some class D's with s/n ratios of 50 ... yup, i said fifty.

[PoweredByDodge]

no it would not be too much... but keep in mind the polk c500.1 will put out about 600 watts and push both those subs with ease.

[neomagus00]

... neo - as far as 80 vs 95... that's not the end of the world. I didn't know how drastic you were talking. I've seen some class D's with s/n ratios of 50 ... yup, i said fifty.
okay, i'll agree with that one...

[PolkThug]

no it would not be too much... but keep in mind the polk c500.1 will put out about 600 watts and push both those subs with ease.

For a 4ohm load from the two DVC's the Polk300 > Polk500.

[fortytha12gauge]

i dont quit get the last post but how bout directed audio

[PoweredByDodge]

about about not DEI (Viper, Directed Audio, new Orion, etc etc).

i've got no love for their product whatsoever. their tech people are f****** idiots. i had spent about 30 minutes on hold waiting to talk with one of their "senior technical advisors" or some shit title like that --- i was after two of their 1100 watt Orion amps --- wanted the skinny on them. the guy was dumber than a box of rocks, couldn't do anything but read verbatim what was on the back of the box, and i had to explain to him many things including the difference between THD and THD+N. when i said something along the lines of "are you sure that slew rate is 5 v / us, that seems awefully low?" -- he replies with, "no, the slew rate is the rate of slew, it doesn't have anything to do with time... its how much slewing occurs". I just about shit my pants on the spot --- it was a very laughable conversation. The whole time all i wanted to do was compare it to the mtx 81000d... so that i could decide if i wanted 2 81000d's or two orion 1100 (forget the model number) sub amps.

in complete contrast to that... you call up a company like Polk Audio or my personal favorite amp people - Mtx - and what you get is a dude (or chick) on the other end of the line that either a) knows their shit, or b) will put you on hold for 2 minutes until they get you somebody who knows their shit. I have never been bullshitted by Polk or Mtx, and while I may disagree with both on various occasions, it's over nitpicky stuff - how something performs, how something should be hooked up, etc.... not over the quality of service or willingness to offer sound technical advice to the best of their ability.

So for what it's worth, don't buy shit from DEI, you're just supporting a bastard company that doesn't know their ass from a hole in the ground -- and who raped and pillaged Orion and Precision Power, buying up two previously AWESOME audio companies and making them into DEI cloned scrap. Orion HCCA was once a juggernaut in car audio. The name struck fear into the hearts of men, so to speak. Thanks to DEI, that's no longer true by a long shot.

[MacLeod]

Well I still like PPI and Orion amps. I dont think DEI has screwed them up. a/d/s however....

[PoweredByDodge]

they're a common benchmark for us, so i'll use them... Mtx and Fosgate... good - not "that cut above" but good... Orion and PPI prior to DEI was a distinct cut above Mtx and Fosgate. Now they're on par with / beneath them.

That's a hell of a downgrade. They're not junk - don't get me wrong - they're not Legacy or anything... but they're not what they once were. And most of the DEI stuff uses common topology. Same designs and parts, different cases. You may be buying a viper or an orion or directed or whatever, and they're all the same boards in different cosmetics. go figure. they're just whoring a name in front of you. Orion is dead as a doornail. It is nothing more than a logo on a Directed or Viper amp. I wouldn't be surprised of PPI is the same damn thing.

[MacLeod]

I guess the moral of the story is that virtually no brand imporves when its bought out by a larger one.

Xtant is probably the exception tho. I think the current Xtant line is just as good as it was before Mitek took them over and I still hold out hope for MB Quart. Even tho theyre now owned by Maxxsonics.
http://www.clicksmilies.com/s0105/traurig/sad-smiley-043.gif

[audiobliss]

http://www.clicksmilies.com/s0105/traurig/sad-smiley-043.gif

x2...

[brettw22]

CA newbie question: what is s/n?

[neomagus00]

sound-to-noise ratio... a 95 dB S/N means that for every 95 dB of signal, the amp adds 1 dB of noise to it...

the first bit i'm sure of, the second bit i'm fairly confident but not positive...

[PoweredByDodge]

i believe xtant has always been a mitek brand. they have been for the last 7 years at least. i tried to find any information to the contrary online and couldn't. did you hear something different?

neo - thats a good assessment of s/n ratio. compare the original signal information to the output signal information with induced noise. the former over (the lattter minus the former) gives you a ratio...

if you have a 95 db rated s/n ratio, then the 'floor' of the noise is 95 db below that of the audio.

[brettw22]

so the higher the s/n number, the better essentially.

[audiobliss]

Indeed. And it's not a CA term. Surprised you weren't familiar with it. :p

But in all seriousness, I wasn't sure of what it stood for, exactly.

PBD - According to what you said it would be (input signal level)/(induced noise-input signal level). Is that right?

[MacLeod]

i believe xtant has always been a mitek brand. they have been for the last 7 years at least. i tried to find any information to the contrary online and couldn't. did you hear something different?



After all this time you guys still dont trust me. ;)

I dont know exactly when they bought em out but I know they did. Xtant used to be their own entity once upon a time and then Mitek took em over.

I tried to find something on the internet as well but couldnt. Ill look a little more and let ya know.

[MacLeod]

Xtant was formed in 1994 and was bought up by Mitek in 1996.

Proof. (http://www.xtant.com/html/XtantDriven.pdf)

So http://www.clicksmilies.com/s0105/sauer/angry-smiley-019.gif

[PoweredByDodge]

ooooo .... damn, you're a thorough bastard aren't you?

You know i just realized something - we'd make really good mitek salesmen.

[MacLeod]

Aint that the truth. We pimp MTX gear almost as much as we pimp Polk!

But Im lovin' my Crossfires more and more. They had a shootout between a Crossfire and an Interfire amp in this months CA&E and the Crossfire crushed the Interfire. Not only did it exceed its rated power by over 150 watts but it did so at .1% THD and 79% effeciency!

[PoweredByDodge]

79 % efficiency out of class AB? that's intense. surprising, and intense.

i finally figured out why class D and T amps are often called "digital amps", when they obviously are the furthest thing from digital. maybe i'll post on it - maybe i'll just smoke some more kools. it's an interesting concept though, lashing it back and forth. it makes complete sense. Tripath semiconductor just built an integrated chip... does about 9 watt rms into 2 channels... its the size of a postage stamp... class T... frequency response up into the MEGA hertz range -- and people are raving over it - damn thing only costs about 19 bucks in its most basic form --- have it custom made in a nice cherry cabinet with good quality parts (like a good volume knob, rca jacks in back, speaker binding posts and shit -- same chip though) and you're looking at as much as 500 -1,000 bucks... for 18 watts total rms. hah... i'll take it at 19 bucks.

search google - "Tripath class T"

[MacLeod]

Nah, thats a Class D amp. The Crossfire VR600D. The VR600 is the A/B model.