What Amp Should I Get?

[charha01]

Hi... newbie so please take pity on me. I'm thinking of swapping out my factory amp since I've replaced my factory head unit with a Pioneer double DIN unit and it's not playing well with my factory amp. The system I started with was a Becker head unit that uses the MOST system (fiber optic) to connect to the factory amp and then out to 6 Bose speakers and a "subwoofers" in the back (actually a bandpass configuration) that are one ohm each. This is the factory setup for my 2003 Porsche. I'm not that up on sound equipment, so I don't know how many channels I would need on the amp to power the speaker setup I have. Any guidance would be appreciated including make/model of amp. Thanks

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[SteelKiller 10+ year member]

If you want the most honest answer.....you're going to need to do all new speakers as well as that amp. I highly doubt(Im not an expert) that there is an amp that is 1ohm stable for that many speakers in stereo mode. The best bet and probably easiest would be to figure out what size speakers are in the car and start from there. When you say its not playing well what exactly do you mean? Bad sound quality? Not enough volume? Please elaborate!!

 

[charha01]

If you want the most honest answer.....you're going to need to do all new speakers as well as that amp. I highly doubt(Im not an expert) that there is an amp that is 1ohm stable for that many speakers in stereo mode. The best bet and probably easiest would be to figure out what size speakers are in the car and start from there. When you say its not playing well what exactly do you mean? Bad sound quality? Not enough volume? Please elaborate!!

Thanks for the response. The "not playing well" refers to a few things. 1. When the system powers up I hear a loud "screech" noise for about 4 seconds. 2. Due to the fiber optic connection, I have no fader controls since I had to use a fiber optic adapter that connects through the RCA jacks on the head unit to the amp. 3. I get a lot of electrical noise on the system which sounds like it's coming from the alternator. I've read that this could be several things (bad ground, ground loop, power cables too close to RCA cables), but everything I've tried has had no impact on this.

One thought I've had is just to eliminate the amp and just hook up the speakers directly to the head unit. This would bypass the fiber optic/RCA connection and the HU seems to have enough power so there might not be a need for the amp. As it is now, I can only tune the volume up to about 5 on the HU before it gets too loud for my old ears. Has anyone done that with Bose speakers? Do they need the amp to function properly?