okay so i have 2 12" 4 ohm subs im looking to hook up. havent bought an amp yet. i was wondering what i should go with. the rms on these is 175 each i think. so should i go with a mono amp or 2 channel amp. im looking at a rockford fosgate r500-1 prime mono amp. its rms power rating is 4 ohms: 320 watts x 1 channel and 2 ohms: 500 watts x 1 channel. would this be good enough? or should i go with a higher watt amp or a 2 channel amp? definitley confused. thanks for any answers

 

It depends on what your doing with your subs. Are you connecting both subs to the mono amp? or are you getting two mono amps? If your going with a higher quality amp I would go with a 2 channel amp that has the RMS to power your subs, it's easier to wire and sounds good.

 

And you don't want to go over your RMS on your amps. If you go too high on it then you give way too much power to your subs and when you turn them up they can blow. You want to get right around the right RMS.

 

Going slightly over-spec on the amplifier relative to your subs is not a bad thing. You are way better off asking less of a larger amp than you are asking the max or more from a smaller amp. Distortion kills drivers. I would go with the 500rms amp if it were my choice. Just don't crank the bass / sub preout and then go turn the gain all the way up. If you don't have an ear for unhappy woofers, perhaps you have a friend that knows what to listen to for that. Then tune appropriately.

Nothing worse than a clipping amp.

 

what kind of sub are you running? I got 2 rockford P3 12's being run my a rockford T-1500bdcp amp and it sounds amazing.