I installed car stereos for years, many many years ago.
1. No one can tell you what "sounds" good. Every ear is different. You have to decide that yourself.
2. Installation is 95% of what makes good sound. A thousand dollar speaker mounted incorrectly will not perform as well as a fifty dollar one mounted correctly.
3. The reason most speakers distort and blow is because of UNDER POWER. A 50 watt speaker powered by a 25 watt amp will blow sooner than it would if it was powered by 150 watt amp. (clipping) The bigger amp has more muscle to control the speaker at the same volume level, resulting in longer speaker life.
Installation makes all the difference.

 

get what you pay for.. nuff said. the crappy walmart amps do work. I personally would just get a good one, your stereo is something you have to live with for a long time... that's like buying a $hitty mattress to sleep on.

 

well, im not plannin on spendin alot on my system.....wish i would have known about needin an amp....so a 2 ch amp is for 2 speakers only and 4ch for 4, correct? what specs would i need to look for in an amp?


also, would i be better off taking my tube apart and building a box for it for under the seat?

 

When you try and drive a speaker with insufficient power, the amp starts clipping. (as he said) this causes a DC current situation. the speaker cannot turn DC current into sound so it is instead turned into heat... blowing the speaker whenever enough is generated.

its easy to hear when your speakers are in a bad situation. if that's the case, turn them down. you can power a speaker that wants 100 watts with a 10 watt amp if you want to forever, just keep the volume right under the point where it begins to sound unclear/crackaly

 

so i can run these and be safe until i get an amp?

 

A decent amp really isn't a whole ton of money man. You don't have to buy like top of the line or anything.
I like to buy quality because it usually lasts a lot longer. And it's just better lol.

 

I also disagree with whoever said don't go with kicker. without talking about high end stuff like Fi, JL, etc i would go with kicker over just about everything. Ive kinda been skimming this cause i have to go but dakota i dont know how much you care about qualitity but i would just ditch the bazooka crap do start off with instead of building a box for them. I have a regular cab and i have two kicker 12" comp VTs powered by a 750w kicker amp.( When walmart amps say 2000watts that doesnt mean anything, a quality 750w amp outdoes it easily) In a sealed shallow mount box. I could show you pictures if you want. Go with polk door speakers in my opinion. i have my door speakers amped with another kicker amp. pioneer headunit. dakota, you mentioned your subs sound like they are picking up everything, your crossover is too high idk if someone already said that. ontop of that if you do everything right and the installation is correct you should NOT be using any bass boost. bass boost=welcome to the rice community. Bass boost only raises the frequency range in like the 40hz range. You shouldnt need it if everythings properly set up. maybe just a tad if you didnt match your subs/box correctly. Your gain on the amp does an even adjustment across the frequency band.

 

what do you mean by crossover is too high?.....i have so many dif settings like hertz, frequency, q factor......also whats the dif between normal and reverse phase on my sub?

 

they do reverse phase whenever people mount the subs backwards so you can see the magnate. that so your countering having it backwards.. the main frequency settings in the head unit effect everything. you want a crossover so that the tweeter in your components will not be trying to play noises that it physically can't. as i said up there, if a speaker try's to play a noise it can't that energy is turned into heat, which can damage your speaker.

on the same note, you wouldn't want to send high frequency sound to your sub, cuz it just can't move that fast

One more thing, a little serrate about "reverse phase" you can do the same exact thing by reversing your speaker wires... so don't go out of your way to pay for that option

 

so to run the speaks that im gettin, what specs do i need to look for in an amp?.....also as for my tube, there are diff aettings on my hu for sub like hetrz and watt, what should they be at? and there is no crossover on it