Best amp for entire system.

[Alien Mantis]

Is the price difference ever $15 more?

It has been my experience that a local shop can be TWICE as expensive.

Discounts over time? How much product am I going to have to buy, before I start getting a decent deal on stuff?

Local shops are there to make money.
They want to do big upgrades, and custom installs.
They are not in the business of moving large quantities of product, at competitive prices. Local shops can also haggle with you about a warranty issue, if you do not pay them to do the install. They can try to say it was not properly installed or configured, and that is why it failed.

REPUTABLE online retailers move large volumes, most of them do not do installs, so they automatically understand the customer will be doing the install, they never give you any crap about returns as long as you follow their return policy, shipping is usually the same or LESS than local sales tax, ( in many cases it's FREE ), local shops typically only stock a very limited product line, online retailers stock a HUGE variety, local shops screw you on the price of wire and cables, ( they seem to have a huge markup on that stuff, must be another trick they use to talk people into letting them do installs ), local shops demo stuff in their showroom to push people into the higher-end stuff where they have larger profit margins, etc... etc... etc.

I am not a fan of local car audio shops. I played the game, and I see how it works.
Since I do installs myself, I do not need their services.
I need quality audio gear at a price I can afford, with a guarantee.

I GET THAT FROM SONICELECTRONIX.COM