ok so what im getting here is a midranger such as alpine will be suitable enough for me? =P any model suggestions? ;-)
Alpine is a very good brand. They pack alot of power for a low price these days on their entry level amps. The PDX is definitly a different animal and not a cheap one.
Also the subwoofer and amplifier should compliment each other.
Mismatch one way, and you dont get the power out of the amp you paid for. Mismatch the other and your system will be unstable and you may even blow the sub or amplifier.
Be sure that you are buying the power you really need. For this try listening to some other friends cars and judge what you like and what it took to get their system there.
To run only a single 12" subwoofer of moderate stature, 300 watts rms is all you need. Note the RMS not peak power. Ignore peak power and look for the CEA2006 rating.
Also subwoofers can not be damaged from using to little power and it takes ALOT of extra power to kill a sub so long as its not a piece of crap. I have trippled the power into many a subwoofer and I have never blown a single one. Only one thing typicly kills a speaker or subwoofer and that is distortion! This often occurs when people want there system to play louder than there equipment physicly can. This results in alot of ineffeciencies, heat, and eventualy something give out. THis is cuased from turning the gain to high, raising the bass adjustment, using the preset sound functions in some radios (anything other than flat),or adding bass boost on the amplifier. All of it is distortion and is harmful.
I really like this little amp for the money:
http://www.crutchfield.com/App/Product/Item/Main.aspx?g=120&i=500MRPM450&tp=115
400 watts rms if you have a 2 ohm total subwoofer load or 220 watts if you have a 4 ohm load.
This way you can start modest adn bump it up a bit in the future.
Lastly, I am firm beleiver that so long as power is equal a person can not tell the difference between two amplifiers unless one is drasticly distorting the audio signal. If in spec, most amps are 20-20kHz +/- 1 db. No person on the planet can pick that out. Richard Clark has proved that many times over. Also in the sub-bass range are ability to hear distortion and detail is much lower than in the mid and high range frequencies so it is even less likely that you will hear a difference amp to amp.
Basicly, pay for rms power, and pay for quality dont worry about much else.
I see amplifiers in five levels as with most of car audio, but the below is for amplifiers only.
Worst, just garbage: Crako, alfine, kenfer, rockwood, soundstorm, audiovox, crunch, Boss
Real brands but still not that great: MA audio, Sony, Jensen, Profile, Blaupunk, Visonik, Bazooka, hifonics, audiobahn, dual, power acoustics
- This is most of the crap you find at best buy and on the net.
Middle of the road: Alpine, Kenwood, Rockford, pioneer, eclipse, JBL, kicker, MTX, Resonant Engineering, eD (when they actualy work)
Above average: Alot of the above brands transisition into this as they have several lines of amplifiers also you find things like JL audio, Polk, Focal starts here, and diamond audio. This is really a dying bread with big box retails and internet sites pushing millions of dollars of complete crap and misadvertising.
Great amps, but a little unrealistic and more of a status symbol then electronics: Audison, Focal, macintosh, Brax, Helix, Zapco