I have Polk component door speakers but have forgotten the exact power ratings. I think they are 'es650' and I remember 100W max recommended RMS. The current Polk speakers claim 100W RMS/ 300W peak.

I am considering an amp that claims 150W RMS and 200W peak. Is the 150W RMS going to blow up my speakers?

 

the output of the amp is variable, keep the gain down a little and it should be fine.

 

50% more power? Too high for me. True, if you keep the volume low you'll be okay but I personally would swap the amp. Which amp?

 

I was considering the Blaupunkt pa2150. I understand they quit making this line and I can't find the 100W version (pa2100) any more. If there are other small reasonably priced amps for under the seat, I would be interested in those too.

 

The amp is fine. You dont want a 100Watt amp when you Need 100 watts. take the 150 amp and back it down. It will run cooler, and last longer. YOu dont want an amp to be maxed the whole time.

 

There's no way you'd max out a 100 watt RMS amp to 100 watt RMS speakers. At that excursion you're ears would be ringing all day long and you'd be in for hearing damage. Simply, if your speakers take 100 watts RMS you won't be sending that much root mean square (~average) power to them. At that point, you'll be getting into the peak handling numbers and should be more concerned with those.

All this talk of 300 watts to 100 watts speakers is nonsense. With a good amp that has headroom it is not required. There is no asterisk here. A good amp should perform beautifully in the numbers listed by the manufacturer. Note that that is why I asked which amp you're using. Many lower priced amps do not live up to the numbers in the brochure.

That Blaupunkt is not the right amplifier. A class T amplifier is not ideal for front speakers. PM PJK3 or google this topic for more info on that. You really should stick to class A. Try this Soundstream Edge 360/2 for $95. It's 90 watts RMS x 2 channels at 4 ohms. Post here if you want more amp recommendations.

http://www.discountjungle.net/soxt362chxsa.html

 

To clarify about class T. You could do it and the concept makes sense but I've yet to hear a good one. The promise is to combine clean class A power with efficient class D power, however I don't think anyone has done it well yet. I'd be especially concerned with this amp because it is no longer produced. If it really met every claim originally made then why wouldn't the product line be expanding instead of being cancelled?

Also note that you need a $30 tri-way crossover for the amp. I'd skip this one.
http://www.crutchfield.com/S-5oC2495k5ym/c...asp?i=023PA2150

 

The Blaupunkt problem was reliability, which is a common problem with digital amps. I have one on my sub (a good application for digital) and it broke once already. I was surprised Blaupunkt fixed it under warrenty since they stopped making them.

But digital amps are making some headway. TI has a little 15W chip amp that runs at 250kHz and needs next to no output filtering. Now if they can do that for 150W we'll be in business. High-freq and high power is not easy.

Do you know what "a good amp with headroom" is? It's an amp that is under-rated. Or an amp with low-current capability that can make more power short-term than it can sustain in an RMS test. Voila, headroom.

They could have easily marketed the 200W "peak" amp as 100W RMS with "3dB of headroom".

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I'll admit I don't really know which amp companies are good and bad. I have found Sony and Profile amps (at least I have heard of them) that claim 100Wx2 RMS. Any thoughts?