98FoRmULa_BiRd

currently in my ride I have a

PRECISION POWER PC450 which powers my front/rear speakers. I Had a Rockford sub on it in the past and it was great having everything connected to 1 amp, It looked clean, but one of the channels on the PPI amp ended up burning out on me. The other channels are still fine and I still use this amp to power up my speakers and it sounds great. Old school amp but its got power and never clips out. Since the amp's channel blew, I needed something to get me by for the short while so I purchased a cheap amp for 40 bucks from a friend. A Nitro Bmw 482 1200 watt amp and it worked fine for a while. My Rockford's voice coil on the sub eventually burned out after a few years of use and I decided to do a little shopping.

I purchased myself a 10" Boston Acoustic G3 sub and placed it in my sub thump stealth enclosure. Now I still have the Nitro amp in the car along with the PPI amp. My question is should I junk the nitro amp and go with something more powerful and reliable, even though it still works? I don't want to do any harm to the G3's and wanna make sure they are getting all the juice they need to dance.

According to the Nitro Specs on a 2ohm load I can get 175x2 bridged making a 350rms load and the sub needs approx 375 rms so it seems like a pretty good match. Although I wanna save money I still want a good bass in my ride and especially no clipping. Will the nitro amp have what it takes? People are always saying how bad nitro amps are although In my case it served its purpose for the $40 I paid for it. Its rated 1200 watts but we all know its not putting out that kinda power. Although its a cheap bass option will it do the trick for me and can I use those funds for other mods instead or if not what mono amp would you suggest for my setup within a reasonable price range? Thanks in advance

johnnyko12

If the sub is 375rms keep the amp, the sub doesnt need any more juice. Power is power and 375 watts from another company isn't going to be louder than 375 from another. Don't get a bigger amp to feed it more juice, you'll start frying coils

dragonrage

No need for more power on that sub, and if the amp turns out to be unreliable, you can replace it when it goes. It "probably" won't take the sub with it if it's only 350w, but it's a possibility.

V8ImpSS

less is more goes completely out the window with car audio. the rule of thumb I use for extreme SQ installs is to have double the RMS of the driver in question. many think this is bad and will fry the speaker, but thats simply incorrect. amp's RMS wattage ratings are found by taking the amp and pushing it as hard as you can before >1% THD (total harmonic distortion) is reached, this is standardized throughout the industry by CEA-2006 compliance to keep everything apples to apples. so for example, with your setup having a 500w rms amp pushing a 375w rms rated sub would allow the amp to be set at a gain level that would lead to lower distortion and in a way less power. this lets the amps run cooler and more dependablly.

If it were me I'd find a nice 500w RMS amp, I like the alpine MRX series for budget minded, and that sub will bump clean and hard for years to come. but if the amp you've got now is cutting it for you then just leave it and make sure the gains are set correctly to eliminate distortion which is what kills your speakers, not power! power is your friend!

If you wanted a single amp to run your whole system i'd reccomend the latest Alpine PDX 5 channel, its as tiny as is gets and gives 100x4 + 500x1...don't get the 1st gen PDX-5! if you just wanted a mono the MRX-M50 is the most you'd need to spend on quality unless your real **** with this stuff like me and have to have an amp that reaches RMS at .004% THD, in which case look into Audison they're the ****