What kind of amp should I get for my subs?

What kind of subs and amp should I get?

• I have a 2003 Toyota Rav 4 and I am a complete newbie. My friend has 2 10's and 2 12's and made his own box to hold them, or whatever. And he said that'd he'd help me set them up in my car and help me get them off ebay/craigslist, whatever. So basically I'm wondering what subs I should get, what amp and other things I would need. And also, whats the best place to buy these things. Thanks so much!!!

• Answer:

  when it comes to car audio nine times out of ten you get what you pay for- and you need to look for CEA-compliant brands which means that the amps have been tested and produce or exceed the advertised RMS wattage with minimum distortion and the subs can handle their advertised RMS wattage also (distortion is the main cause of speaker damage over time) here are the top CEA-compliant brands Alpine (highly recommend)Clarion Eclipse Infinity (highly recommend) JBL JL Audio (very good but over priced) Kenwood (don't like their subs) Kicker (the best in my opinion) MTX (highly recommend) Orion Pioneer Polk Audio (highly recommend) Rockford Fosgate (highly recommend) Sony (don't like their subs) unless you know what you are doing you are better off buying a box that matches your subs because the box is just as important as the subs (not trying to be negative but your friends setup doesn't sound so hot, you should never mix sub sizes because it causes sound cancellation) but this will help with that http://www.diysubwoofers.org/faq.htm and http://www.bcae1.com/spboxad2.htm don't buy from ebay unless the seller has a very good rating and i dont buy sounds from craigslist because they are used and could be on their way out (may only last a week or so), you are better off at http://sonicelectronix.com/ If you send too much power to your sub, you risk damaging it. The cone of the speaker and the mechanical parts that make it move may break under the stress. Surprisingly, too little power can also damage your subwoofer — in fact, it's actually more common than damage caused by overpowering. When the volume is turned up and the amp doesn't have enough power, the signal becomes distorted, or "clipped." This distorted signal can cause parts of the speaker to overheat, warp and melt. Not good! You don't have to match speaker and amp wattages exactly. An amp with a higher output than the speaker's rating won't necessarily damage the speaker — just turn the amp down a bit if you hear distortion from the sub and don't run the speaker at extremely loud volumes for lengthy periods. Likewise, you'll be OK with a lower powered amp if you keep the volume down and don't feed a distorted signal to the sub you will send the amp into clipping Clipping Clipping occurs when an amplifier is asked to deliver more current to a speaker than the amp is capable of doing. When an amplifier clips, it literally cuts off the tops and bottoms of the musical waveforms that it's trying to reproduce, thus the term. This introduces a huge amount of distortion into the output signal. Clipping can be heard as a crunching sound on musical peaks. that causes distorted sound which will damage your subs FIRST-- determine how much you are willing to spend and how loud you want it, then you can ask for some recommendations