What amp should i get for 500watt speakers

mezo91

Estimable
Aug 24, 2015
6
0
4,510
Ok so i have my headunit 52 watt and rear speakers at 500 watt 90 watt rms. The sound gets really distorted at 37/50 and any lower than than it sounds low and not what i was expecting. So the question is what suitable amp should i get for them speakers. I don't plan to connect the front speakers to the amp.
 
Solution
To start, it sounds like you got a really uber cheap set of rear speakers. Sorry. There's different ways of saying wattage used by vendors. If you look at a sine wave, the line goes up to the top then back down, through zero then loops back up. The distance from the top of the loop to the bottom loop is called Peak-to-Peak. The very cheap manufacturers will use this number, just to make their stuff look big. So your speakers are probably 500w P-to-P. Unfortunately, you really don't use the lower half of the loop, anything under the zero, that's all negative polarity. You only use the top half, and the distance from top to zero is called Peak wattage. You'll find most vendors like Pioneer, JVC, Sony, Kenwood etc basically always use Peak...

dudio

Admirable
Model #'s of what you have now please.
My guess is your amp isn't putting out decent power, but I also suspect your speakers can't handle much better of an amp based on the fact their Peak/RMS claim is kinda whacky.
 

mezo91

Estimable
Aug 24, 2015
6
0
4,510


I don't have an amp. I'm asking if i should get an amp or not. The head unit is sony sony cdx gt690ui and rear speakers sony xs-n6950. The front are stock as their size are too small.
 

dudio

Admirable
Model numbers definitely help.. you have a car deck and nothing to do with Home Audio.
What happens when you fade back to the Sony speakers, and not the stock front (what car is this btw?) ?
What is your source that you are playing into it?
 

Karadjgne

Distinguished
Herald
To start, it sounds like you got a really uber cheap set of rear speakers. Sorry. There's different ways of saying wattage used by vendors. If you look at a sine wave, the line goes up to the top then back down, through zero then loops back up. The distance from the top of the loop to the bottom loop is called Peak-to-Peak. The very cheap manufacturers will use this number, just to make their stuff look big. So your speakers are probably 500w P-to-P. Unfortunately, you really don't use the lower half of the loop, anything under the zero, that's all negative polarity. You only use the top half, and the distance from top to zero is called Peak wattage. You'll find most vendors like Pioneer, JVC, Sony, Kenwood etc basically always use Peak power ratings, which would put your speakers realistically at 250w. Then there's RMS which is the value of usable amplitude, or in sound terms, the maximum you can go up that line before distortion happens. In your speaker, being cheaply manufactured, that'll probably be around 90w RMS.

All that said, you'll need to shop for the right amp. If you go with a cheap amp, like Pyramid or a no-name-you-ever-heard-of, you be looking at @1000w, which would be 500w per channel, same as your speakers. If you go with a known, decent brand like Pioneer or Kenwood, you'll be looking at a 500w (250x2). If you have the money for the really good stuff like PPI or Olympus, MEI or Nakamichi, Denon or even Rockford Fosgate etc, you'll want to be looking at 200w (100x2)
 
Solution