2x 400watt max SPLX subs - amp?

max is well the max wattage you "can" put to a sub and RMS is the root mean squared or the nomial amount of power you can put to a sub. the RMS is usually how you determine what amp to put with what sub.

with those subs i would put maybe a 150wrms to each of them. so maybe a jbl 300.1? or the 150.1 even im not sure because i cant find the subs anywhere on the net. so i cant tell for sure the Rms rating on them. if somebody knows it off hand plz share!

Big Dave, keep asking the questions, you'll eventually gain the knowledge you need, I've seen some pretty good replies as well. Peak power vs rms power can be explained rather simply. Your car has a speedometer, even though it says 150mph as your top speed the speed limit on your highway might be 70 (I'm Canadian, give me a break eh. We canucks have metric everything and the #1 hockey team an hour away). Anyways, if you are lucky enough not to get caught at 150mph in the 70 zone, eventually you must do the speed limit again. This is much like peak vs rms watts. A natural byproduct of producing power is heat, this is what kills speakers, not distortion or way too much power etc, these are all root causes but not the killer. Your speaker is designed to handle musical bursts of power (much like you hitting someone), like your punch, the energy is there and then it is gone (a peak). If you keep hitting this guy as hard as you can, the same thing is going to happen to him as will happen to your speaker. The voice coil in the speaker is not designed to handle the constant dissipation of the excessive heat buildup. What the speaker is designed for is to safely dissipate the heat build up under normal listening conditions (the rms rating). Can your speaker handle these short bursts of power, well most speakers can but only for a limited period of time. A better built speaker that has addressed this problem will obviousely hang in there alot longer. I hope this helps to explain the rms vs peak issue to you.

Now for Sony and why not. Sony does have some good points, they are a very large company, but can you imagine gm biulding your house? In this industry there are 3 basic categories of companies, the bottom feeders (insert brand name here), the mid fi (Alpine, Clarion, Kenwood, Panasonic, Pioneer & Premier, Sony, Jvc and more) and the high end guys (Eclipse, Xtant, Mb Quart, Grundig, Focal ...) All of these companies have a marketing division, the addage of you get what you pay for generally comes true. This does not mean that you must buy only from the high end guys, just do lots of research. The majority of the products purchased is in the mid fi area, this area is driven solely by price, this is why we see Clarion of Driftwood cd players for $120.00 cdn. The marketing dept says if you build it to look like this and sell at this pricepoint, you will sell lots of them. Most but not all the mid fi guys cater  to this philosophy. For the guys that argue this point look at how the price of cd players have fallen. Some manufacturers put exaggerated claims on their equipment in order to increase sale, this I totally do not agree with as it is totally misleading and preys on the uneducated and uninformed consumer. The more you learn and become an educated and informed consumer, the more you will learn about some of these companies. At the end of the day for companies like the mid-fi guys, in order to hit the price points they need to remain competitive in their market, the cuts they make are not to their bank account or paychecks, but to the value of the equipment - price - sound quality - capabilites - performace - warranty. In order to hit the price point you must make these cuts. The high end guys go exactly the opposite way, they do not build something to hit a price point, this is why a bottom of the line Eclipse cd player sells for $399.00 cdn and is also why it sounds bettter than any other cd player. Bells and whistles in a cd player can be good if you choose to ring and blow them, unfortunately they have nothing to do with the quality of the cd player. This same addage applies to amps, subs and speakers. The mid-fi guys do have some good stuff again but generally speaking the high end guys will always win, the question is do you have the $ to spend on their products. Bmw makes some really nice cars but I don't see them making a car to compete with the Chevy Cavalier, nor do I expect them to, high end vs mid end, the same as hi-fi vs mid-fi. Lets hear your thoughts on this.