Let me shed some light:

There is such a thing as "clean" and "dirty" power. A perfect case in point
would be to run your amplifier with a cheap battery charger as its B+
supply. You will hear a tremendous amount of "hum". In other words, it is
"dirty" power. At the other extreme, hook up a whole bunch ( maybe 10 ) of
automotive batteries in series. Tap the "GND" from the connection between
battery 5 and battery 6. Tap the amplifiers output rails (+/-) from the
the top and bottom posts. to do this, you must eliminate the SMPS section
and some other items. The Rectifying diodes and the bulk rail capacitors
to be exact. You now have "clean" Power for your 400W/ch RMS amplifier.

Many things can affect just how "clean" an amplfier is. Power supply
topology, filter capacitors, Inductors, ferrite beads, transformer type,
board layout, star grounding, trace capacitance, trace inductance, PCB
layers ( e.g. 1, 2, 4 ). Do all these things right, and you have a "clean"
power amplifier. Do any one or all these things wrong and you now have a
"dirty" power amplifier. There is even an extreme case where when the
output rails do not have enough bulk capacitance, the output feedback
circuit goes "open loop" for just a microsecond or so. In this time, the
output transistors modulate or "burst" at their peaks causing audible
distortion. Lots of cheap amplifiers will do this just before clipping at
full power.

Not all things are created equal. Power is one of them.

If you want a mechanical analog, how about a V-8 piston engine and a jet
turbine

John Andreen

Mark Zarella wrote:

When referring to amplifiers the favorite catch-phrase of audiophiles
seems to be "clean power". As an ignorant novice I would like to know
what is meant by "clean power" and how do I achieve it.

There's no such thing. Power is power. What's usually meant is low
distortion and noise. It's easily attainable simply by not driving your
amp
into clipping. That means use sufficient amplification for your needs.

Also, I once
heard something about voltage matching an amplifier with a head unit
but if I set my amp to 4v (same as the preouts on my head unit) I can
barely hear my subs. Do I need to add a bigger amp to get the benefit
of voltage matching? Will this theoretically provide "cleaner power"?

No. NEVER match your amplifier's gain setting to the nominal rating on
your
head unit. It doesn't work because a) the output voltage of the HU
doesn't always meet the nominal rating, especially when listening to
quieter passages; b) filtering out higher frequencies with the LPF reduces
voltage.
Go strictly by ear when setting gains. There's a tutorial at
installer.com's tech pages.