I used to work in car stereo, and we would always joke that there were two ratings on an amp. The RMS rating (actual power) and the ILS rating (If Lightning Strikes). In other words, a manufacturer can say thier amp puts out whatever they want, such as the 400W EQ mentioned earlier. Bottom line, if you get a quality product from a quality retailer, the actual RMS output will be in the neighborhood of what the amp is advertised at. As a reference point, 3dB is about the smallest change in sound the human ear can detect, and in order to make your stereo 3dB louder, you need to double the power to your speakers. In other words, if you have a 100W amp and you switch to a 200W amp, your system will be just a tiny bit louder. So the difference between 150W and 232W is really not that big of a deal. Buy what you like!

Matt

 

But sometimes it confuses the hell out of me. But I must say that amps are definately overrated on what they put out. Brands like MTX and all those other best buy or circuit city carried brands.
I have a hifonics Zues amp, supposedly at 2 ohms it puts out 110watts X4 channels. I have 2 channels bridged into one 10" sub (220watts) It probably is not really pushing 220 watts, but it sounds pretty good, and it pushes enough. Go with quality, and try to understand as much as you can of what Bman says. Thats what I try to do. Complicated stuff tho.

But a beefed up stereo is a must if music is a must!

 

I'm with neck4752, b-man knows his stuff. I owe some of my great new sounds to his advice. You do have to watch what you buy as there is a lot of junk out there. What was good 10, heck 5 years ago may be junk now. Lots of the audio companies are just spin-offs and subsdaries of other names. Like I was told MTX owns Xtant and Coustic. I'm thinking Hifonics is not really Hifonics that they are owned by someone else. Doesn't make any of them bad amps, I'm just saying you really gotta know your **** or that's what you will get.

 

It kinda makes me mad sometimes when you hear kids talk. They go out and get a punch 200s amp and on the front it says 900 watts max. So they think they got a 900 watt amp. It gotta be about marketing that all these is to it. The older Rockford Fosgate amps are much better than the new ones. My punch 360 a2 is rated at 550 watts rms. That how under rated it was. It came with a certificate in the box. Plus the amp would run 2 ohm stable in bridged mode and it wasn't advertised 2 ohm stable in bridged mode. I ran it 2 years like that without it ever going into protect mode under the seat of my old truck. You try to hook a 2 ohm load on a new Punch 350s and it will go into protect mode after a few minutes.