Amps?

I know nothing about amps, 2 channel and 4 channel whatever. Could someone "school" me on amps or give me a good site? I tried wikipedia and it was confusing as poo-poo. Also, what does spl stand for? I know sq is sound quality... I think.

SPL stands for Sound Pressure Level which alot of people compete in with extremely high dollar systems and they are in the 150+ decibel range usually with a bass test cd set on around 50 hertz. SQL stands for Sound Quality Level which alot of people compete in and you see alot of the guys on here going for that which means that the bass and treble are mixed together properly at high levels creating a nice sound instead of just bass pounding. As far as amps go there's only 3 things you need to know about them. 1 how many speakers will you be connecting to the amp (giving you the number of channels needed for that amp). 2 how much power can the connected speakers handle giving you a range to look at for the rms power of the amps. 3 name brands of amps that are extremely shitty and others that are top of line and the wide price range between the two. Best way to do it when you are planning a system out and have a few items picked out is get on here and ask the guys what they think of what you have picked out and any recommendations for products and alot of us will be happy to recommend products that are proven in the audio industry for whatever budget you have to work with.

So how many speakers including my subs could I easily hook up to a 2 channel amp. Does a 2 channel amp mean I can only hook up 2 speakers or 2 sets of speakers or what? Gyah, too much confusion.

2 speakers. Just think one speaker per channel. Unless you get into wiring in a series and paralell and other things like that. But I would say for now just think 1 speaker per channel.

this thread is nonsense so far.

You could conceiveably hook up 16 speakers to a 2 channel amp. I'm not saying you're ever going to want to do that, but it illustrates a point. There are too many ways to hook up an amp for someone to just explain it to you.

You need to learn the laws of impedance first, and then use your brain to figure out how to hook up amps second.

as far as web sites go... I dunno. I think audiobahn has a lot of useful information on their website.

At my job, we have three 2-channel crown amps, (only one is ever used, the others are backups), connected to about 1000 speakers.
Of course we use matching xfmr's, but anyway, Rick is right.
Rockford has a good wiring tutorial on it's site....