ncc74656

I am going over my system and trying to fix things up for more quality at higher volumes. at present i have a 2 way setup bi amped with an alpint 1" silk tweet and a 10" crachendo. so here is what im thinking right now: im looking at hertz speakers as we sell them at my new job and they sound amazing. so i can pick up a 2 way hertz (either 5.25" or 6.25") and get a new 2 channel amp for them. then i can run my 10" crachendos as mid bass speakers with high/low pass filters on my present amp. does this sound like it might be a good way to build a 3way setup with what i already have or would buying a already built 3 way (6.5, 3.5, tweet) from hertz work out better do you think? I was thinking of picking up a rockford P400X2 to power the new hertz speakers. im not sure if i need a 3 way as ive never had one before but i think that it would help in my setup and i wouldnt mind using the 10's that i already have.

you can find those prices everywhere online, just trying to give context and full information with trying to figure out what the best route is. they are only prices after all

my manager has gone into that stuff a bit and generally tries to pull me back into a smaller install before digging into such things. we shall see what my next setup turns out to be

the profit margins are where most things are at so the point that shops need to sell basic things is a very solid one. We do not get people in the shop that want to drop loads of cash, i have a hard time even trying to sell a 30.00 door kit of dynomat let alone custom anything. most of our sales right now are remote starts but spring time is when more steros come into play. We sell CCA cable, sony amps, renegade subs, kenwood decks, .5 farad caps, 1/2" mdf prefab 80hz tuned boxes. However we also have OFC cable, 2500.1 rockfords, JLW7's, saws and tools to build 3/4" MDF boxes, fabrication supervisors who move between stores to setup installs, ect. We sell these focals: http://www.amazon.com/Focal-Power-6-5-Inch-Component-Speaker/dp/B001Q9EKZA bottom line is we have the capability of installing some killer setups but not at the store im primary at and not as a primary busniess model. we charge 95 an hour for such work.

i want to build fiberglass boxes in my doors for my PWX 10's. what are the specs of box cubic for sealed? i was thinking 1/4" fiber should be enough for these guys, what do you think?

ive been going over the install side of things over the past few days. to date ive done gps installs, wire runs, learned how to terminate wires all over again, and various soldering tecniques. also got a good list of tools that make everything soooo much easier. ive been learning how sound deadening, inner space with in doors and lids, and general speaker stats play into installs. had a guy come in with a JL amp and sub today that i installed, we turned it on and discovered his sealed box was ported... at every seam. it was an all in one from ebay and the box appeared to be from bestbuy when they had those boxes shipped as peices of wood held together with carpet that you had to fold and glue together for the customers. this paticular box had no glue... so we had a discussion on the ported boxes that we sold and the vast majority of boxes that our stores sell (made by a box distro) are tuned between 40-85hz. my manager laid out on paper all teh box specs and formulas that showed what hte box was tuned at. it was the first time i had seen that done outside of a comp program like torres. come spring ill be spending a bit more time at another store that is larger and has fabrication bays to learn fiberglassing and mouting/rack construction. i have seen a few installs that our shops did come in for diags and they look amazing. most common issue is the customer running maxed gains and damaging the subs, ive seen quite a few where the cone was seperated from the surround. some of our installers silicone the gain and bass boost knobs so they can tell if the customer screwed with them. edit: we have some 1300.00 focals that we actually sell... they are a 2 way component set and ive seen a set sell in just the past few weeks that ive been there. I honestly can not hear a 1,000.00 difference between the hertz and focal but i most certianly can hear a 70.00 difference from the rockfords to the hertz.

well i suppose we never clarified in the conversation exactly where that money was going. i took it as [they spent thousands making sure the entire speaker system they are selling works with in certian specs]. in that context perhaps it makes more sence but ill have a more indepth conversation with im tomorrow. edit: i would like to learn how to create, measure, and build from those design graphs. second edit: what brand in your eyes is the pinical of mid-high range car audio speakers? working at this shop i am hearing of brands that i have never heard of before and the sheer amount of variety is a bit much to take in.

it would not surprise me if it cost more than 10K to R and D a set of speakers, there xover points, ect. given the amount of complexity you have iterated lays with in the proper setup of a 3 way speaker platform it seems quite logical to me that thousands might be spent designing everything to function together properly. ?

my manager said to me "hertz spent tens of thousands of dollars designing the cross overs to work within there setup. you should use them rather than try to throw somthing together". that does make sence to me and maybe all passives are bad but ive only had 1 passive set so far so i do want to try these to see if they are a step above alpine. worst case i have the KX3 and dual amps to split the set later on anyway.

second question that just poped into my head... if its more output i end up needing to balance hte sub i could simply add 2 sets of 6.5's with out any aditional tuning required? so run 4 6.5's, 2 tweets, and run the passive Xovers to start.

im not sure i can change the xovers on those passive xovers. i would have to kepe my BI amp setup and im not sure iw ant to start there. id like to see how the hertz factory xovers respond on my setup before i start changing it, if for no other reason than to get a base line for testing. im a good couple months from being able to finish this setup idea as i need to spend a few days in the shop pulling crap appart and running new OFC wire. after that i need to get my doors rebuilt to hold tehse new speakers and angle them towards the occupants. pluson top of that i need a new amp and im not sure if i can use vendor acomidations this early or if i will need to wait. would it be a bad idea to run a 500-800W amp on my SP4 just for the time being?

60 is vendor price for our shop. as for the speakers everything i have read and have been told says that hertz are very high level speakers so i would expect they do not skimp out asmuch as you say. as for component being shit i know that is not true, having the tweeter seperate from the bass driver is better than having a tweeter positioned in the center of the cone. our retail price is around 190.00 for the component speaker set i am refrencing in this post. as for the cross over i know that i saw a HUGE improvment when i went active over passive but im not sure how much of that was alpine going cheap or the general speakers just being crap. i intend to try out the 2 way hertz set and see how they sound in my installation and take it from there.

ill check out the 2 way, maybe install it for a while to see how i like it before i buy. i also need a new sub amp and need to rework all my wiring so there are plenty of things to do first. i had alpine type R component sets and they were very lack luster. the tweets would distort at nearly every volume level and the mids were never loud enough. they were very hollow and non existant. I went to a active xover and bi amp setup and that helped imeserably with the tweets but did not fix the mids so that was when i bought hte 10's. I have servere reservations going to ANY passive xover system

you know what, i wanted to do 3 way in part because i already have these 10's and i wanted to put them to use. another reason is all of my home audio speakers are 3 or 4 way and they sound AMAZING!!! so i wanted that same sound in my truck. I do not have any 3 way systems on display at work but we do have them, i will see if i can grab a set to compare so i can get an idea first hand of what they sound like.

my current amp is a bit old and having strange issues. also its a HUGE amp for a pair of hertz so i wouldnt mind going down a bit. I was looking at the frequency sweep that i think you posted a while back on teh 10's and if i am reading it correctly then it only has a usable lower range of 45-125 and then higher frequencies past 2K. but im not totally sure how to read this as there is no DB sweep but only ohms and frequency. maybe its just the wrong infromation for what im trying to determine. I would like to go 3way as i want a challange and truly do not want to do "easy". I will have the help of my coworkers and boss who have done audio install for many years and my manager is a MECP master cert who has 50 years on me easily. still i need to do teh ground work and attempt to understand more about what im getitng into. my thought with the 10 was maybe it could work as a low range mid bass, my sub is tuned at 29hz. my goal is to have a high quality system with high db. this is what i was given by another member for the PWX 10's:

im gearing up to rebuild my system. im looking at hertz 2 ways to add to this 10 or just throwing it out. now let me know if im reading this correctly: does that graph mean that the only real usable frequencies from this driver are from 45-125hz before it drops off a cliff? if that is so then i dont think i could effectivly use this as even a mid-bass speaker. having said this would it be conceavable that i could simply build a small ported enclosure to tune these guys into a mid bass range and then add a 5.25" for the mid range and a new tweeter? seeing as i already have the 10's if i can use them to fill mid bass then great but if not then... screw it.

im ready for the zombie apocalipse. ::

im looking for somthing different, i want to see what a bd class amp sounds like, and i want the option of straping for more power down the road. im recently starting work at an audio shop and would like to start swaping out products in my truck to get a better handle on various manufactuers first hand. aside from that i believe that many of my parts have been subjected to improper operating conditions and would like to "start fresh" so to speak as i study for my MECP tests and learn better ways for install.

so i was talking to the manager about focals today and it seems they were once this "we will never sell out and always provide the best speakers ever" company, but they stoped that a couple years ago and while they still sell 1500.00 speakers they also sell there speakers at muffler clinics and we really never sell them to anyone. guess thats why i never herad of them before.

what is going on here? i had a ZX1500.1 for 5 and a half years with zero issues on stock electric between 3 different vehicles. My ZX2500.1 died earlier this year after only about 4 months of use, i sent it off to kicker for repair and got it back, not long after i lost my sub and had to buy a new one. this amp as is has been used less than a month and a half. i was bumping at close to max volume day before yesterday, i arrive at my destination with time to spare so i sit in the truck with the engine off for about 45 min doing paper work with the stereo on at 1/4 volume. i had to run into the store so i shut off the truck accessories and go in, i come back out and turn the radio on again but no sub. i think the sub may have died or a cable came loose. so today i pull the amp and bring it in. the power light comes on, the protect light stays off. no signal output is produced what so ever. i have not opened it yet to check it out but it has got to be the amp at this point. zero bass boost on amp, zero deck EQ, loudness, or bass boost. gains at 1/2 up on amp with remote bass volume knobb in use. the remote volume knob is used at 1/3-1/2 level. the truck has zero gauge power/ground, a 280A mech man, and 4 group 31 batteries. 250A fuse on kicker did not blow, sub and amp were never more than warm to the touch. lowest voltage the amp ever saw was 12.2 while engine off and 13.6-14.2 while running. im about to pull it apart but WTF am i missing here? should i just go buy a squared audio amp and be done with it? im at my whits end with this system and its failures. edit: just pulled it apart and i have one resistor and a mosfet up in smoke (from what i can tell). someone please give me data on these parts, the resistor im sure i can find but where can i buy a mosfet? i want to solder this tomorrow and fix it rather than shipping it out. secondly; WHY IS THIS HAPPENING?!?!?! what do i have FU**ED up that is causing this 2500 to blow up?

ok, got it.

I am looking for some real world tests done on the 3 types of batteries that show current draws to voltage drops, charge rates, how they funciton and how they differ from one another in a more technical way than "one is wet and one is dry" i seem to recall reading some where that AGM could deliever greater power in a shorter time than a standard lead acid but i cant find anything confirming or deneying this on google. thanks.

i had read that AGM's needed to be charged with a dedicated system and should be charged over night when you park your car. optimas claim to run just fine off the vehicle alternator and i have read peoples claims that they used AGM's for years on factory alt systems with no issues. im just not sure what is manufacture hype, marketing bull, and real facts about the system. i searched google and youtube and found some information but not everything i was after.

yes im going to be installing car electronics. currently working through remote starts as its that time of year. its 4 weeks of off hands watching, 2 weeks of master tech supervised installs and then i go take my MECP test. pending that pass i will be then starting semi supervised installs of remote starts up to X number of devices. then its on to the next round of certifications. its generally a longer time but being a bit short handed we are trying to push me though everything faster. we sell all the basic brands (rockford, pioneer, alpine, kicker, JL, ect) and also have some of the "higher end" brands such as focal. i had never heard of them before but im told they are pretty good. the stores also do custom fiber glassing and box building which i will be learning in the summer. to a point i suppose there is a limit to how high end of a product you can sell retail. at the hopkins stores its a higher end neighborhood and people have more money so you can have higher end stuff but around here its just the people with there pants down who want to drop a couple bills on some basic systems to make a boom boom. that said ive seen some of the work that other stores have done and it looks pretty mint... custom boxes in the trunk with custom fiber glassed door panels, JL audio subs/speakers and amps all laid out in a very neat looking display. im currently working with a master MCEP tech who had a good 40 years on me, it is in this environment i hope to learn more and fill in my gaps in knowledge. edit: wtf happened with the formatting?

it wasnt user error on all of the subs. there round subs had ok sound quality but the sqare ones were just shit. Fi subs easily have better audio quality and frequency responce