Hi, I'm really new to this, so thanks in advance for helping me out. Let me start by saying that my goal is to have nice clean sound, not to win any sound competitions or wake any of the neighbors and to also spend as little as I have to.
I'm getting a JVC-AVX1 (20 watts x 4 RMS) and have 2 sets of Blaupunkt component speakers for the front and rear. I already have an old Pioneer tube (kind of like a bazooka tube) that I am thinking about adding at a later date to add a little bass. I also have two really old Pioneer amps (GM-800 [25 x 4 peak] and GM-x302 [35 x 2 at 4 ohms] but it says it's bridgeable, whatever that means).
Remembering my goals (clean sound, least cost): -Should I just use the amps that I have for my speakers? -Or should I use the head unit to power the front and rear speakers? I guess I was a little unsure since the head unit is rated at 20 watts x 4 (rms) and 50 x 4 (max) whether I will get better quality/volume using the amp or head unit. I also heard that some of the older amps were pretty underrated (put out more watts than advertised). -Also use the GM-x302 for my little bass tube?
That's difficult to say...here's my opinion: try both. See which amp sounds better for the front and rear, you don't have to go all the way and hook up everything but perhaps just one speaker and see what it sounds like.
Bridgeable means you can "bridge" two channels together to get almost double the power output of just a one of the channels. I would suggest you bridge the amp and see how the subwoofer tube sounds, though i'm not sure if it's going to be powerful enough.
Sorry if I was too vague, but I wasn't looking to see which one of the amps I had sounded better. I was actually looking to see whether my door speakers would sound better getting powered by the head unit or from the amplifier (since the HU puts out 20 watts peak/50 max and the amp puts out 25 watts peak/?? max).
I am starting to lean towards just using the amps since I already have them. If I hook up the 4 channel amp for the front and rear sets of speakers and that isn't loud enough, is it as easy as removing and replacing with a more powerful 4 channel amp? Figured I would have things already set up.
Oh, the HU has 3 sets of RCA's (front, rear, subwoofer). Which RCA's from the HU do I hook up to the 4 channel amp? And the HU sub rca's go to the subwoofer amp? THanks. -Nick