Car Amplifiers Shopping Guide

An amplifier makes your music sound loud. That doesn’t mean that, it is a thing for loud listeners. Whether you run your system loud enough or run at soft levels, an amplifier will breathe life into your music. It improves the sound quality and makes your music detailed.

Few advantages of adding an amplifier:

• Better sound – An amplified signal generally become a clean power source and drives your speakers without much strain. It will unveil the real potential of your speakers. Due to size constraints, you in-dash amplifier or head unit’s built-in amp. can’t give out more power. An external amplifier can be designed without any compromises.
• Power for high-quality speakers – When you upgrade your factory fitted speakers, you normally select powerful speakers, that requires more power from the source which your head unit fails to supply. A suitable amplifier will push more power into your high-quality speakers and thus brings out the real potential of your speakers.
• Powering a Subwoofer – A subwoofer is often more power hungry. It can’t be efficiently powered directly from head unit. So, you need to add an amplifier to power your subwoofer.

What amplifier to buy?

An amplifier is chosen based on what kind of speakers you are going power.

• Full-range or component speaker systems – Use 2-channel amplifier if you want to power only front or only rear speakers. Use 4-channel amplifier if you want to power both front and rear. Note that, using a multi-channel amplifier supplies equal power output on all its channels. So, it is ideal if all your speakers are of equal power ratings.
• Subwoofers – For subwoofers, the ideal choice is a mono amplifier, as it is specially designed with low pass filters, exactly what your subwoofer needs. Mono amps. will generally have built-in bass boost circuitry, thus, gives more punch. You can select any amplifier class, but, class D amps are really a good choice – they draw less current they emitt less heat and are the best class in present amplifier designs. You can also use 2-channel amplifier in bridged mode. Multi-channel amplifiers are a good choice when you have two subwoofers. Instead of 2 mono subwoofers, that are often costly, you can use a 4-channel amplifier bridged into 2-channels that power each subwoofer.
• Mixed full-range+Subwoofer – Well, you can also buy 4, 5 or even 6-channel amplifier here. In the case of a 4-channel amp, use two channels to drive a pair of full-range speakers, and bridge the other 2 channels to power a sub. 5- or 6-channel amps give you even more options. You can also use a 2-channel amplifier with a tri-way crossover to power a set of speakers and a subwoofer.