Shopping for Car Amplifiers online? Bankstown Sound and Marine's range of Mono-block, 2-Channel, 4-Channel, 5-Channel, and 8-Channel amplifiers are sure to cover any project, budget or vehicle.

Which Class Amplifier is Best?

For a quick article on a website, this question has a very complex full answer. So, it's best to keep it simple and high-level. For a more in-depth conversation, feel free to Contact Us and have a chat with our Customer Team to learn more.

At the highest level, and easiest to understand, amplifier classes are as follows:

• Class A amplifiers are not very efficient but produce the highest audio quality. They're rare, very expensive and hardly used in car audio
• Class B amplifiers are a little more efficient but they're full of distortion. The sound quality is terrible
• Class AB amplifiers were the best of the bunch for quite some time. Okay efficiency and good sound quality. However, now, they don't compete with Class D
• Class D amplifiers although understandably are almost always confused as digital. They're not. They're strictly analogue circuits. They're able to provide better efficiency and sound quality due to Pulse Width Modulation, or PWM. Basically it punches more power through a wider signal. Class D amplifiers are now the go-to in car amplifiers as they're much smaller, lighter and run so much cooler than other classes.

DSP Amplifiers

Digital Sound Processing amplifiers go a little bit further than your average car amplifier. They perform like any other amplifier, taking input from your head unit, increasing the power in the signal and delivering more power to your speakers, but along the way, they add some secret special sauce to the signal increasing the fidelity performance; making your tunes sound better.

Some DSP's are able to connect up to 8-Channels and produce some true audiophile level results. These units are almost exclusively tuned via a connected laptop and specialist software. A little bit of overkill for your 2017 Toyota Corolla... unless you're entering Sound-Off competitions.

Mono-block Amplifiers

Almost exclusively used as subwoofer amplifiers, these units produce a whole bunch of power across one channel. These amplifiers are able to run at lower impedance resulting in higher nominal (WRMS) and high peak performance.

Multi-channel Amplifiers

Depending on what you're installing, you may need more channels. For instance, if you're installing new speakers and want them to be amplified, you'll be shopping for a 4-Channel amplifier; one channel for each speaker. If you're adding a subwoofer to your amped speaker system, a 5-Channel is for you.