Best car power amps you have tried?

Any specific power amps you have tried in your build that are pretty solid?

I have a pair of crown d-75 there a class a a/b amp from the late 70s. used you can get them for 150$ each.

Ah I should have specified, these are some test posts for the Car Audio category, my bad

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Still have it. Probably biased because of it. Kicker kx2500.1

Made over rated power and lasted me years at above 150db. Daily driven spl car.

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Oh for sound quality gear I am currently running zapco amps. They have networking built in so you can connect a few then tune via software. The software is a bit poo but the amps are very clean.

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Adcom 4404 was the best I had ever used.
ADS PH 15.2 was nice also, I had several Zapco Studio series that were great.
My first really good amp was an Xtant 3150c

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It’s been a long while, I used The Orion HCCA series on several builds, pushed the hell out of them in 2 and 1 ohm loads.
My personal favorites were the HiFonics series VII amps for brute power, I would cram Boltar and Zues amps into systems and then run ADS brick amps into all the mids and highs.

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I really liked the hcca subs, pretty sweet

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Yep, the HCCA subs were and still are great, I have used JL audio, Orion, Redline, Cerwin-Vega, and others, Ugh I 'm starting to forget stuff, It’s been many years. Last year I started looking up car stereo manufacturers and was pleasantly surprised to see so many quality new players on the scene along with many old war dogs still going strong. I wish ADS were still around though, their amps were some of my favorites. Very versatile and never managed to blow one up or have one let me down :muscle:

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I use to have a Alpine MRD-F752 V12 5 channel Class T amp, used it to run 4 Alpine speakers and a 12" sub, was a great amp.

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Best car amps I had were the Zapco competition Z series if I remember they were white.

DLS Reference series was nice, AB class pleasure and power.

So here are the amps I have tried and have experience with:

JL RD400/4 - 4 Channel Class D amp 70W per channel RMS @ 4ohms ~ $329 USD
JL RD500/1 - Monoblock Class D 500W RMS @ 2ohms ~ $329 USD
Focal FDP 4.600 - 4 Channel Class D amp 150w per channel RMS @ 4 ohms ~$800-1000 USD
Mosconi Pro 4|10 - 4 Channel Class A/B Amp 120w per channel RMS @ 4 ohms ~ $1200 MSRP

Every single one of these amps is great. Some are just more expensive. They all do what they say and have some premium features that make them easier to install. I have found that getting a DSP makes more of a difference to your system then the amps do.

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I really enjoyed my PPI PC650 & PPI PC2150 amps way back in the day.

Another favorite was JL audio slash series.

  1. EM-Phaser EA2350 - insane control even in 1ohm stereo. Dual power supply and dual 60AMPS fuses required at least one big battery and a good alternator.
  2. STEG K series with selectable cut off external filters. The best sounding amps I have ever heard. Also the regulated power supply of these amps helped them to produce the amount of power rated without depending so much to voltage drop. Total stable even in 1ohm.
  3. DLS amps reference line was pretty sweet sounding and very reliable. But the old black models. DLS and generally the car audio scene is not like it was before 10 years.
  4. Old school Kicker, Rockford Fosqate and Soundstream.

But if I would pick one it will be definitely the Steg K series. I miss those amps. I think they are still making them.

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Those were THE amps. Couldn’t afford one back then, just listened to competitions and I remember one monoblock of the series driving a wall of 2 Digital Designs subwoofers 9515 series, maybe was reaching like 0.5ohm resistance, so much drive and current, so good amps…

Adcom 4404 and 4702 were just amazing.
Arc Audio SE with team modifications

Not much going on in car audio, looks like I have to post something :slight_smile:

Most impressive amp to me is the mosconi/gladen Pico 2ch. I’m using it to power my 10’ closed sub and it’s quite impressive how that tiny thing drives my sub

Back in the day for SQ it was the Precision Power Art series, Xtant, Zapco, Mac, Phoenix Gold and, some of the Soundstream amps (Nelson Pass designed). For SPL there was a ton of high power / high current stuff. Nowadays…I have no idea.

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