Personally, not at all. The AQ amps will do their rated power if not more. Plus, they have a clip indicator LED on the bass knob that tells you when your sending a clipped signal to the woofer. My friend has a DCON 12 hooked up to an audiopipe 1000w amp... there are a lot of audiopipe amps on ebay for really cheap... would one of those be a good choice or is the AQ amp better? AQ is better but I have an audiopipe AP 1500 and it does what I need it to. Yea i think i am stuck between the AP1500 and the AQ1200... but the AQ is about $100 more... is there any reason why I should get the AQ?