So I tweaked and toiled for a good week, even emailing FOCAL for some help…BTW, they didn’t answer ///y282845/emoticons/ I finally got it ‘acceptable’, and have been listening for a few days now. I couldn’t remember where my old x-over point was set as the amps I had are now in new hands, from Hawaii to North Carolina! The problem was that I couldn’t seem to get the 1.800 in line! It has quite an array of adjustments, for a mono sub amp. The bass was as I remembered it with my old NINe.1, just better! So…what did this accomplish? A LOT! I did a test run and, ummm, wow. I JUST went out ( as in just now!), curious about something…I cut a new wire, 4 ga, and installed the fresh cable. So the frayed end was too large to fit the amp fitting. Will fit the amp? It turns out that once the wire was old, it was opened up a bit from being pressed into the old amp. On initial install, I had to use an 8 ga. The certificate it came with said more like 430.1 watts.Īfter install, I got the iPod out and plugged it into the iDA-X001. The 1.800 rated a few hundred watts under what I was used to, even though I never used all 1000 watts! But the call to FOCAL/ORCA, and the info I got on the “actual” power was enough to make me feel better ( benched at 1100+ watts). I was a BIT worried about the sub amp power. You all read the initial review…opened box, installed amps, etc… SQ was my main goal, and I felt the FOCAL product best would allow me to achieve that. Not sure what the ‘last straw’ was…but I went back to the original amp that I had considered. Sundown, Mmats, JL Audio, ARC, Memphis, DLS, Audison, Rainbow, etc…settling on the FOCAL amp line was a hard choice…I had to give up some things, to get others. I spent some time looking over a lot of amps. Now…blah blah blah…I’ve used a lot of stuff over the years, but, to be honest, nothing this “high end”. Let me first say that YES, DEFINETELY, there is a difference in car audio amplifiers! And anyone who says there isn’t? Well, buy the cheap stuff and hope for the best!