Quote Originally Posted by sandm View Post
someone (david ) told me years ago when designing my first system that if you are not going to run 3 amps, to keep the towers independent of the sub from an amp standpoint. the theory was that you want to balance out the "power hungry" sides of the system to different amps. it made sense to me. I have always ran 3 amps so it was kind of a moot point other than it pushed me into that setup for the first boat and I followed to the second.

my .02...
And that is according to circumstance, but for the most part, it still holds true. In a typical system the subwoofer and tower speakers get driven the hardest and you want to do your best to distribute the load for better thermal performance. The power supply of an amplifier is usually the limiting factor when it comes to power, particularly when all channels are driven simultaniously. So you don't want to place an inordinant load or unbalanced load on one component. And part of it is that if I have a multi-channel amplifier sharing a single power supply, I don't like to run the lowest allowable impedance across the board. The set-up of the Supra OEM Kenwood Excelon systems made every configuration mistake possible and shut down often, although it wasn't bad equipment, just bad execution, and it was correctable.