minitruck_freq said:
my ca18's are getting less than 20 watts. ive said it before and im gonna say it again......u do not need 100+ watts on your front stage. a quality 50 x 4 amp is more than adequate. for those of u that dont beleive it....u have never heard clean power.
Well, I agreed with you up to a point. Yes it will drive it fine and sound great doing it. I will say this also again, if you want to play it loud and stay clean doing it you need power, clean power. Believe me, I have listen to and built a lot of cars with small amount of power and they was some of the best sounding cars around. but 90% of them could not match the pure dynamics of the cars with more power on hand, that was at the same level of build quality.
Now to get to that real world/live music reference level you ethier need power and a drive that can handle it or high efficiency driver with clean power. You can only turn up the dail and get a higher volume, staying clean while doing it until your amp runs out of reserve power. And if your amp gives up (clip) before your speakers reach their limits your in trouble. Also with the extra power on hand it allows you the run your amp gains at a lower level, helping to keep the system as noise free as possible. That also means your amp runs cooler also.
Don't get me wrong I'm not saying you have to over power your speaker by 50% or anything. I'm just saying not have enough is just as bad as have to much in most cases. As the old saying goes, It better to have and not need it, than to not have it and need. If you have the power you can always control it, but you can't go fishing in the desert.
Mark
