Looking to put in a new stereo.

[Big Ben]

I still want to know what I'm looking for in an amp and in a crossover, or two, or three or however many of these things I actually $%@$ing need.

edit: ok, so let's try asking this another way. When your amp of crossover refers to a 'channel' is it refering to a speaker? like 4 channels = 4 speakers? 2 channels = 2 speakers?

 

[black beauty]

when an amp has four channels that means that you can run one channel to each subwoofer. so a 800W amp has four channles. each channel will have 200W if its a four channel amp. follow so far? all you do is take the total watts generated by the amp and divide it by the channels to find how many watts each channel recieves. now when you 'bridge' an amp the process is a little different. take for instance, my kicker amp is a 2 channel but i have three subwoofers. my amp pushes 700W total. since its a 2 channel each channel gets 350W a piece. so i bridged my amp so all three subs are getting all of the 700W. so basically it was taking a 2 channel amp and making it to a 1 channel for more power. if you have a question on how to bridge feel free to ask on oyur next post

 

[Big Ben]

when an amp has four channels that means that you can run one channel to each subwoofer. so a 800W amp has four channles. each channel will have 200W if its a four channel amp. follow so far? all you do is take the total watts generated by the amp and divide it by the channels to find how many watts each channel recieves. now when you 'bridge' an amp the process is a little different. take for instance, my kicker amp is a 2 channel but i have three subwoofers. my amp pushes 700W total. since its a 2 channel each channel gets 350W a piece. so i bridged my amp so all three subs are getting all of the 700W. so basically it was taking a 2 channel amp and making it to a 1 channel for more power. if you have a question on how to bridge feel free to ask on oyur next post

Ok, it's not the total wattage that's a problem, it's the amount of ohms n stuff. How many speakers can I hook up to ONE channel without frying my amp or speakers.

 

[black beauty]

that will depend on your subs. each sub is rated for so many watts. some are around 300W while a good brand like soundstream(my prefernce) will have 800W for one subwoofer. when you do get an amp read the manual to find out how much each channel of your amp will handle. i wouldnt go anymore than three at the very most. two is usually the magic number for one channel. im using three on my bridged channel because they dont put out many watts of power. they were free so i dont care for them. but in any case they dont put out many watts so im not afraid of them frying my amp.