I have personally owned 16 Sundown amplifiers (8 1500s, 6 3000s. and 2 100.2s), and I have installed/played with tons Audiopipe 1500s, 1800s, and 3ks. I even owned an Audiopipe 3k.
They are both good amps. Obviously if I was going for a world record, Id rather have a Zenon amp in my truck that I can put serious voltage into and wire down to a crazy low ohm load to squeeze out every ounce of power. But in a real world setting, just listening to music in the average music car, with a 14-15v electrical system, a realistic ohm load (2ohm on the AP3k and 1ohm on the other AP amps), the AP is a great amp for a great price. If youre trying to gain a few tenths by running your amp at 18.8v, wiring it to a .25 nominal load, and burping it on minimal battery power, obviously the Sundown is going to win hands down. No contest there. Thats like saying a Mustang GT will beat a Focus in a drag race. Everyone knows that. But if you run the Sundown at a realistic ohm load (1ohm, maybe .7) and run a realistic voltage into it (a standard 12v electrical system around 13.5-14.4v), the Audiopipe is going to put out more power.
Everyone says the AP does "dirty" power. If the radio/amp settings arent right, yeah, any amp will do dirty power. And maybe the THD is a little higher than the Sundown, Im not sure. But it cant be too dirty, because I was running an AP3k @ 1.4ohm to a pair of Ascendant Audio Chaos 18s (rated at 800w rms) and they took the power with no fuss. If it was dirty power, almost double RMS would never have worked and I would have just been frying speakers left and right. That wasnt the case, everything was just fine. And it had to be doing at least some sort of respectable power... I was at 150db @ 37hz no wall with a single AP 3k on 2 batteries, not dropping below 13.3v. So it also seemed quite efficient. It stayed cooler than any sub amp I have EVER ran as well.
So my advice would be listen to what people say who have actually owned/used these amplifiers first hand. The majority of people on these forums are so "enlightened" that they will say whatever... Whether its "Kicker is garbage!", "All car audio shops ****!", etc. They sound like they are part of the in-crowd. It may sound cooler to go to a meet and tell someone you run an active front stage with a DIY component set, with a custom built frankenstien subwoofer with a linear motor system, underhung quad voice coils boasting ultra low inductance and superior xmax, xmech, and a lower Fs then the other guy at the show, with quad sewn in tinsel leads, running in a 6th order quasi isobaric tapered voigt line transmission wave guide powered by a Zed built amplifier an old school PPI Art series amplifier on your active front stage, all powered by a high output alternator with an XS Power D3100 and a VCM. (Did I miss any forum boners there?)
But lets be honest. The guy with 12 Kicker CVR 12s on 2 Audiopipe 3ks with tractor batteries and a bunch of pro audio speakers doesnt care, because he has a crowd around his car watching him do nasty hairtricks. Hes actually loud, minus all the stupid technical jargon ******** that doesnt mean anything to anyone, except someone just as infatuated with all that stupid holier than thou ******** as yourself.
/rant.
