Lower wattage vs. super high power setups

[nismos14 5,000+ posts]

How many times in your lives have you installed a system off of "low power" amplifiers and it's sounded extremely nice, then you up it to a much higher powered system and everything goes to ****? I've noticed a lot of times in the past when I've installed some more basic equipment that the results have been better than installing "higher end" stuff. Sometimes keeping it simple does effectively make the system easier to setup and make it sound nice without much of anything else needed.

Now there are definitely some products that are far and away better and more power does work in a lot of cases, but sometimes keeping it simple just sounds so good and almost makes you wonder why we put so much time and effort into the higher powered crazy systems that many of us have.

All that being said, I still love my "crazy" system lol more than any simple setup. I am just amused by how nice some of the simpler setups sound.

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[Why So Cereal? 5,000+ posts]

Same boat. I'm actually simplifying mine again in hopes that I can actually leave it alone this time and spend time and money in other hobbies of mine.

 

[Bettr n' Revrse 5,000+ posts]

I think sometimes it's cuz we have really high expectations for nicer setups and when it's something we don't think much about it surprises you a little more with the final results...

 

[nismos14 5,000+ posts]

^ that's probably true.

It's like my wifes car, simple setup, 3-way up front, avic-z110bt, 8's in the rear deck, sony xm3546 powering it, and it sounds pretty nice!

I definitely like listening to my car a lot better though.

 

[kramer_212 10+ year member]

I guess mines not crazy, but as far as sq goes still the best I ever had....IMO.

 

[jirehn 10+ year member]

I think this is more good.Having a low power and the delivery of the sound is more great.

 

[nismos14 5,000+ posts]

//content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/eek.gif.771b7a90cf45cabdc554ff1121c21c4a.gif//content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/up2something.gif.dd110ecf3ae4b76050d87598f2f8de7c.gif

I think this is more good.Having a low power and the delivery of the sound is more great.

 

[Sleeklsc 5,000+ posts]

I've had smaller, less complex systems that have sounded just as good as bigger, more complex systems. As I get older the more I like to simplify things. I'm overdoing it on the whole duece 18's in the backseat, but it isn't a perma setup. It was the only way i'd ever beable to hear them. //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/smile.gif.1ebc41e1811405b213edfc4622c41e27.gif Prob bang em' for a couple month's or the whole summer, who know's. At this rate they won't even be going in for another 2 month's.

 

[skylineTT 10+ year member]

To me, it is kind of similar to how you can easily achieve a decent db number but it takes a lot to increase that number 5db. We can get decend sq out of most equipment if we install correctly but it takes a lot (money or equipment or effort) to get a slightly better result. We spend a lot of money to achieve sound excellence but you can buy inexpensive crap and still make it bearable.

 

[nismos14 5,000+ posts]

^ that makes sense.

 

[THATpurpleKUSH 5,000+ posts]

If you know what you are doing, you shouldn't be having this problem imo.

 

[nismos14 5,000+ posts]

I don't think that's always true. I do agree that more work is necessary to make certain things work or sound to their full potential, my setup definitely didn't take that much more work and sounds better to me than my wifes car, but sometimes it takes a good amount of work on more complex systems to get them to their full potential.

 

[Kazimir 10+ year member]

Out of curiosity what constitutes high power? Over 1k watts...5k... I think a lot of the time people go for too loud. The louder a setup goes the more a single part starts to shine while the others falter. If you pump too much base into a system, you start to lose the highs and vice versa. Its all a balancing act and non-permanent hearing lose levels tend to balance the system and minor EQ flaws aren't as apparent.

There is also the consideration of the environment. A car will never be as quite as a properly built stand alone house. So some detail will always be lost. If that detail coincides with the frequency of you engine or tires or whatever, neither car will produce it properly.

 

[nismos14 5,000+ posts]

werI think I should have reworded it from simple to complex, rather than lower wattage vs higher power.

 

[stevew007 10+ year member]

sounds like my blazer i just bought.I wanted to do a pretty high power setup with a couple of 15's.so i went out and bought a SD3500 started to search for a 100.4 and so on blah blah had the batts ready .well i sold the sundown in about 2 weeks and bought an older belle and a couple of sa-10's. make it look nice and sound descent is what i want I dont see the use in 8k amps destroying my blazer and having 3k lbs extra in the back then have to put air bags in the rear just to keep it off the bumpstops