id like to say that higher end legacy amps kik ars no matter what anyone says , ive had pretty much at least one amp form every major company out ther, if u know how to wire ur shiz and how to properly use equilizers and cross overs , legacy will smoke aanything by far, remember , for all u rice rocket audio installers wanna be, its not all about wattage or by how far ur stupid subs can be heard , its all about how good it sound, and for all of you that do not know this by now, jl and alpine are from the past , yes ofcourse the still make good overpriced stuff, but guess what the best speakers u can buy right now are, visonik, ma audio orpremier, and ocasionally rockford fosgate. all this said i look foward to replys...peace
jesus, the problem with judging an amp/sub by ear is that, depending on your senses, it can be obscured. An amp that only produced 60Hz would sound great with 60Hz bass song. That same amp pushed to produce 30Hz would start to distort and clip. To test any electronic audio equipments, you need to apply proper setup and environment. If not, you will not get accurate results. So as for your Legacy challenge, it can be made to show it's weaknesses. Human ears can be fooled, but a good scope will expose any hidden flaws lurking under the cover. You can have all the equalizers and crossover you want, but it will not help poor quality amp. You may be able to amplify certain frequencies, but accuracy is another story.
Since Isaac took care of the SQ aspect, I will go into reliabality, and marketing.
First off lets look at the failure rate of a high end amp like JL or Xtant. Can we say slim to none. Yes installers do make mistakes, and yes any amp can come with a factory defualt. The fact is legacy, rockwood, and many of the other (flee market brands) have a very high failure rate....
Second, why would an amp manufactor give you a wattage rating that can only be acheived in a lab, under conditiones that will never be reached in a car. Because if people really knew how much power their 1600 watt legacy amp really put out, they wouldn't have bothered with in the first place.