Quote:
Originally Posted by Xtant77
If anyone has ever been to a Metallica concert and can acheive sound quality close to that,then your in audiophile heaven.This extremely difficult in a vehicle without extinsive sound deadening and high quality equipment with the right installer.I wasn't impressed with a recent install to say the least.I let him install one amp and it looked like Sanford and son had done the job.Long story short,I never let another installer touch my vehicles.Xtant is hard to install if you've never done one but with some studying,anyone can do this.If anyone knows of a better amp,i'd like to hear one.Not saying their isn't one but I haven't heard it yet.
Alpine 9886 H.U.
Alpine component 6 1/2 S-series
Tsunami 40 farad hybrid cap
225amp delco alt.
Xtant 604x amp (mids&tweets)
Xtant 1001dx (3-10 subs)
miles of wiring and sound deadening
Blood,sweat,tears,and alot of dough!
Result:Audiophile heaven and pissed off neighbors.
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Xtant was pretty popular as an amp when I competed in IASCA in the late 90's, certainly had a unique and classy look. However, and you seemed to express this intelligently, there's a lot of amps out there and so many applications the word "best" is always hard to apply. When they came out, the Soundstream DaVinci was really over the top feature wise, but not everyone could use one- or even have the juice to power one.
I'd offer the best amp would be the one you could buy today, put it in every vehicle you owned for the rest of your life, and it was always hella loud and never broke. This means it would have to have extreme flexibility. And just be one amp, because many cars can't do 2-3 without killing alternators.
I have the one. a/d/s p840. It was in my Vette when I competed and it's in my Honda Passport today, 14 years after I bought it. Of course even a/d/s did better than that, but the $850 I paid was about the upper limit.
It now runs at 120 x 4, with a blower under the seat it doesn't even get warm. Plenty loud and 100% tightly regulated which was crucial for SQ competition when I ran horns.
other good brands I have owned:
PPI Zapco (I had the "system" 3 pc amps. 2 in the Vette. real POS for reliability but nothing else had the output in the form factor)
Phoenix Gold
DEI's early stuff- because I was sponsored and it was a deal!
(however their comp 15's STILL rock my passport 11 years later, all original, along with their processor EQ)