flitcroft

1) Yes, this is a superb amp that should sound much better than the power from your headunit. Also note that your headunit will only put out about half of the RMS power (22 watts usually) that this amp will produce. With this amp yours ears should physically hurt before you hear a lot of distortion (although your speakers may go nuts first). At power levels like this you'll want Dynamat in your doors though. For now, try it without and stick to fairly normal volumes. Even top down at 80 mph I think you may be okay.

2) That should be fine. The Soundstream amps run fairly cool. (I swear my PPI amp must glow sometimes it gets so hot)

3) No worries. I'd assume you will wire the normal way and run at 4 ohms.

4) You will not tax the battery with this setup. I have at least 50% more power and my headlights don't dim even slightly at loud volumes with huge bass (and no capacitor). There is a thread on this somewhere. I think the car can handle around 1,000 watts RMS continuous, or something like that.

You're welcome. I'm glad you're interested in an amp in this class. It should never let you down.

ATF Kuk

well, considering that soundstream has been bought out by power acoustik a few years back, i would not recommend soundstream unless it was the old school reference. for the money spent on this amp, u can easily buy an eclipse amp, diamond audio t3, elemental designs. if u want to go sq and dont mind paying a bit more money, arc audio and TRU.

flitcroft

So you obviously haven't heard or touched a Soundstream amp recently then? They are some of the best you can buy, regardless of price. And obviously any company that makes a $3000 gold plated, platinum RCA jack, so-low-you-can't-measure-the-distortion amp makes only pure crap, right? Gimme a break.

Go pick up another reference amp and put it on a scale. Most are tin cans. My TR 700/2 weighs 28 lbs, runs cool to the touch with no fans, and has some of the best sound I've ever heard in any piece of audio amplification (home or car).

J Nick

Thank you for your help in this - I will let you know when I get it going - may be a couple of weeks.

ATF Kuk

actually, i have heard a soundstream amp recently, and my take on it is, "for the money, there is better." they are not bad, but the quality isnt as good as i thought it would be. i never said it was crap, dont put words in my mouth. wut do u mean by "best u can buy regardless of price". how are they best? can u prove to me they are better than let say... TRU Technology? there is no best when it comes to audio, its all opinion, keep in mind that there is bad, good, and high end. my opinion is that for less money, there is same or better quality. thats the simple side. if u want the technical side of it... weight of an amp doesnt mean shit, just cause they make $3000 RCA jacks it doesnt mean they make good amps, wuts the whole point of getting such "nice" equipment, when the install isnt going to be at its maximum potential, and ur opinion doesnt mean shit to me either, because by the way u replied, u sound like ur just another ignorant guy who doesnt know shit about audio.

give me ur background info about ur audio status and i might change my mind about the ignorant part. from the way u replied, i think ur an ignorant fool.

wut kind of distortion are u talking about, in the cable or total harmonic distortion?

one more thing, dont get ur panties in a bunch just because i gave my opinion.

flitcroft

My response was only aimed at the sophmoric, ill-informed reply:

Honda makes lawnmowers. Does that mean the S2000 sucks too? Your point about why not to buy something because of who receives the profits from the corporation made completely no sense and had nothing to do with the quality of the product that is the discussion of this thread. My point about weight and price was only to denote that Soundstream makes gear of the utmost quality.

IMO, they're not near this level in terms of SQ. I have auditioned all but the diamond audio amps. The Eclipse amps were decent, but they seemed to suffer a bit when you don't run balanced cables. I have the Eclipse CD 8053 balanced line head unit and did consider Eclipse amps, but ultimately decided against them, mostly since Elcipse is available only by rediculously inflated installer prices.

Agreed. Would I pay this kind of money for a listening environment with a noise floor any more noisy than a bank vault buried in a bomb shelter? Probably not. Are they "better"? Almost certainly. IMO, you can't get any noticeable gains in a real world install in this car than an amp that is SQ-based in the range of the first amps mentioned.

ATF Kuk

this analogy is incorrect in the form that we are talking about amps period. power acoustik makes amps and soundstream makes amp. now, if i had said that soundstream is made by fahrenheit(car multimedia company of power acoustik) then ur analogy would be valid.

well, i never said anything about who recieves money in the first place, all i said was the parent company sucks and i didnt explain myself. i figured that i did not have to because of power acoustiks' reputation. sooo i guess i should now.

i am authorized to sell a lot of products, including eclipse, diamond, ARC, FOCAL and TRU, just to name a few. i sometimes sell soundstream only to customers that are really set on it and wont change there mind. i used to be an authorized soundstream dealer before they sold the company to power acoustik, but after the change i felt the product decreased in quality and dropped the line. although i can still get their products from my rep.

last year, i sold about 5 amps from soundstream and 3 of them came back for repairs. cant remember from the years before, but i rememeber that they werent so great either.

if u look at some of their dealers, u will see that FRY's electronics is their biggest dealer. if u go to ur nearest FRY's, they have a lot of refurbished soundstream shit. go figure.

so through my experiences, after power acoustik took over, the quality dropped. i dont know about their new stuff being able to do under a 1 ohm configuration, but i rememeber when their reference amps can drop to a 1/4 ohm configuration and still run cool. the days of the cheater amps.

i thought we were talking about quality not sq. but since were on the topic of sq, sq can be achieved through installation not just from an amp. i have seen many setups with great equipment fall short on sq because of the install.
ever heard of the richard clark challenge. if not, basically he is saying that he can take a generic amp, compare to a very expensive high end amp and u wouldnt be able to tell the difference in amplification. if u can prove that it is better, he will give u $10,000. the only difference in amps as far as the sound that is produced, is the processing. that is wut makes some amps sound better. u should know that processing can be manipulated to sound different or better with the right equipment, so sq can be achieved with more than an amp. most high end amps are already processed to sound natural and so forth so some people like to buy them because its less of a hassle and least expensive.

when the judges in IASCA or UASCi rate a system, do they do it while the car is started and driving on a road? come on, most national champions have old cars that dont have much stock sound deadning. but i do understand wut u r saying, a car is to be driven and when its being driven, its not sq friendly. ur right, but i enjoy it no matter, and if u think about it. the road noise is going to be there no matter wut, but u have a choice, pure sq system with road noise or regular system with road noise. i would still choose pure sq because of the enhanced imaging, staging, dynamic range and the overall enjoyment of having a "real" nice system.

i dont understand wut u mean.

well, when i do get my s2k, i plan to do a pure sq system, i currently have an integra type r with a semi sq system, i never got to finish it because i decided to get an s2k at the end of the year and i did not want to waste anymore time finishing it. i currently have rockford fosgate RFX-8250ti for headunit, custom made RCA's, (2) ARC Audio 2100cxl, FOCAL 130k, FOCAL 165k2p, im using the midbass from the 165 to complete a full 3way stage up front, custom kick panels, diamond audio D5 600.1 powering an image dynamics IDmax 12", custom box 2.2 cuft tuned to 26hz.

i plan to move some of this stuff into my s2k and change a few things also. like sub, sub amp, add some eqs, possibly new stereo and try a few things out. i noticed u live in the los angeles area. maybe if u need some help or would like to demo my s2k when im done, let me know. maybe we can meet up.