Amp Smarts:
Car owners use this for customization and enhancing one’s riding experience. For the music lovers, then you need to seriously invest on a stereo for your car to enjoy your favorite music while on the go.
Amplifiers are devices that take a teeny tiny audio signal from a pre-amp, some power from your battery, and pass it on as a big big audio signal to drive speakers.
The most important piece of advice I can give to you is to buy lots of power. To get the cleanest sound, it is absolutely essential to buy as much power as you can afford.
Here are some terms that you’ll need to know when evaluating car audio amplifiers.
Hence, you need to make comparisons before opting to buy a car stereo.
Watt: A watt is a measurment of power. Power is the ability to do work. In the case of amplifiers, the work is to move a speaker. When it comes to amplifiers, watts are described two ways:
This amp is capable of providing that power if all of those conditions are met at all times. Speakers’ impedences (measured in ohms, or Ω) change constantly while operating. Amps don’t necessarilly put out the same power all of the time either, for example when a bass track is playing versus a much quieter track.
In modern types, you can even use a flash drive to play your saved music file.
WHEN BUYING AN AMP, LOOK AT IT’S POWER RATING AS A MARKER FOR YOUR AMP’S CAPABILITY RATHER THAN WHAT IS LIKELY TO PUT OUT AT ALL TIMES.
However, I must also say that an amp’s RMS rating is the one piece of information to look for to determine an amp’s power.
MAX:
Right under an amp’s RMS rating, you’ll see an amp’s “MAX” rating. It is often double the RMS rating. Never pay attention to the max rating because it only shows what the amp is capable of in a laboratory setting. That kind of environment cannot be reproduced in the auto, and therefore the rating is misleading. An amp’s max rating is proably about 50% more than the RMS. Ok, and lastly, because this makes you look like a total jerk, never ever ever say your amp is a 1000 watt amp because it has a max 1000 watt sticker on it, and ESPECIALLY if you bought your amp at the swap meet.
A car stereo amplifier is one of the most basic accessories that you can use to increase functionality. As with stereos, you need to dedicate enough time to compare amplifiers available on the market.
Anyway, in summation, never buy an amp based on it’s MAX rating.
CEA Compliant Power: (CEA=Consumer Electronics Association) This spec (if your amplifier includes it) is a new rating. In the “bad old days”, amp manufacturers could pretty much claim whatever power output they wanted without specifying the testing methods. The CEA rating changes that. You can now fairly compare two amplifiers to each other because you know they were tested in the same manner. Make sense? No? OK, look at it this way: If an amp has a CEA compliant output power of 100 watts per channel, you know that the amp is essentially equal to another amp with the same CEA rating. HOWEVER, you cannot compare this amp to another amp that is rated at 100 watts/channel RMS.
I am a big fan of this rating. FINALLY, there is a uniform standard for amplifier power output ratings. If an amp doesn’t include this spec, then the manufacturer is probably trying to hide something.
Bridging: Many stereo and 4 channel amps allow you to “bridge”. This allows you to allocate more power to a single speaker, like a subwoofer for example. There’s nothing wrong with bridging, and is often used for subwoofers.
Crossover: Many amps have a simple crossover built in. High pass basically allows all of the higher frequencies to pass. This is handy if the amp is powering tweeters and mids. The low pass allows only the lower frequencies to be reproduced. This is handy if the amp is powering a subwoofer.
Bass Boost: Some amps have a circuit that when switched on gives a boost to your bass. It is not essential, and I usually don’t use it in my own system.
Frequency Response: This specification tells you what frequencies that the amp responds to. Higher frequencies are treble, lower frequencies are bass. The human ear can perceive from 20hz to 20,000hz (aka 20khz). Most amps will reproduce this frequency band with ease. Some will go above and beyond. Don’t worry about that because usually CDs don’t contain data out of that range, and even if they did, you wouldn’t hear it! Some people talk about harmonics, and I don’t know if it’s true or not. But whateva. Read about this debate elsewhere.
Channel: Amps have channels that basically tell you how many loads it is built to drive. Loads=speakers, so a two channel amp will power two speakers.
There are 4 major types of classes, and an occasional oddball. I don’t really know the technical differences between them, but it doesn’t matter. We’re just installing amps, not designing them!
A – Very good sound quality, very inefficient, uses boatloads of power, and wastes most of it in the form of heat.
B – Good sound quality, moderately efficient, uses a lot of power, wastes about half of it in the form of heat.
A/B – Combination of classes A and B. At higher volumes, uses the class B portion of the amp.
D – So-so sound quality (but reproduces bass very well), highly efficient, uses minimal power, wastes very little of it.
Other classes: Whatever. They exist. I don’t know if they sound better. Your ears are the best judge.
If you found that this paper was helpful you might also want to be researching about Stereo Wiring Colors as well as Stereo Wiring Color Codes.
