Okay, i'll respond to my own thread...
this article
Anatomy of the Power Amplifier - Special Features - Car Audio Magazine
tells me that there is no issue with feeding only 12V to the amp. This is because the amps have their own internal DC-DC voltage upconverters. This is what allows you to get 1500W over a 4ohm speaker with only a 12V output. (1500W over 4ohms requires 77V, so it is stepped up internally to just above that). In order to feed that sort of power for any meaningful amount of time, you'd definately want a big bank of parallel batteries... no freebies here. It would sure make prototyping easier with only one batter, though
someone tell me i'm stupid or i'm going to have to keep researching this.