General Audio

I managed to become confused. How do you wire a cap to your amp??

This is my setup and i need advice to see if i need a capacitor or not. 2001 toyota avalon xl 2 Type r's 1222d Kicker zx1000 Kenwood double din headunit This is my first system and the people at the electronics store said that i need a cap but i cannot be sure. I dont know how to do the big three upgrade. My question: Do i need a capacitor and if i dont have one will my lights be dim? and Will the alternator and battery be able to handle the power without sacrificing the dimming of lights and other electrical problems? i think the alternator gives out 80 amps stock and with the car on it is between 13.5-14.5V thanks

I have a 97' s10 single cab in which i hope to install some subwoofers. I hope to fit the Fi car audios btl or bl series 10" woofers. Any help will be nice as i have no idea how to do so also what amps are best to use?

Any of your eastern or midwest USA guys ever notice any db difference in the freezing winter months? Id be interested to know any different readings Ive always noticed bass sounds much better during the summer months

battery @ rest before install after installing device w/ motor running added positive lead to battery tied down till i get some loom the device, till i permenantly mount it on the wall the collector battery battery @ rest after driving to work and back home

So I just got me a new ride, 99 Dodge Dakota extended cab, which means designing a new system and a little insight from the wonderful minds at the SSA forums. As stated, ride is a 99 Dodge Dakota extended cab with rear seats removed. Completely stock at the moment. Planned electrical would be Big 3 upgrade with 0 ga, stock battery up front and a Kinetik 2400 in the back. Wasn't planning on upgrading the alt at this point, but I realize it may be a necessary upgrade in the future. Already decided on equipment would be an Alpine digital media receiver and some Second Skin sound deadening, yeah not much but a start. I listen to hard rock, metal and some rap. Budget would be …

I have 10-8 inch and 6-10 inch PRV audio speakers. I have Taramps HD8000 2ohm running all 16 speakers. My question is will I get better performance from all 16 speakers if I separate the 8's and 10's to different amps? It does get reasonable but in my opinion I have heard smaller systems get louder with less power.

Im new to SSA forum, but not car audio. we did this on smd forum... now Im going to do it here to get to know all the michigan people. name: from: car: system: <- my info, plus my sig

I have ideas about what I am going with but I want to see what others would do in my situation. I want to get as loud as possible in a setup with one battery under the hood. Here is the catch. The battery has already been decided. It is a XS Power D3400. Stock alt. Lets just look at the subwoofer setup. I am keeping my stock mids and highs for now. Also I would like to keep as much cargo space as I can in my small SUV. I will even throw this out there. For the sub box I have about 5 cubes of space I can work with. So basically I am looking for a sub/amp combination that would work with my electrical.

What shall I start with........how about the old setup? My RE Subs have treated me well........ but what does the future hold? Kicker....DD......RE?!?!

ok let me first start off by telling you my equipment. I have a sundown 3000d, 4 skar 12s , 2 deka intimidators, redtop under hood, stinger capacitor good for 10,000 watts , my alternator is one i found on ebay im sure it does more amps than the stock one but probaly not much , i would like to say getting a new alternator is out of the question reasons are i have a 2002 intrepid 2.7L and noone really makes a alternator for this car they want me to use brackets in stuff i dont really trust that and plus the alternator isnt in a place i could check the bolts all the time. right now the car runs at idle 14.1 volts and i check the capacitor voltage by the amps it goes to most…

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I finally have most of my equipment in and now that I'm actually pushing some power this is a question that I can't seem to find a straight answer by searching the net. Is it safe to turn the volume up past the gain limits you've set when listening to music that's recorded at lower volumes? I find that when listening to a lot of music, especially older music, the volume seems to be half of what is recorded these days. Is this part of the "head room" that I've heard everyone speak of? This may be a stupid question to some but after my experience with that POS Hifonics amp I want to make sure that I'm not just building heat rather than pushing power. I will say that this AQ…

Well I finally got my car all cleaned up. I recently bought a 1995 Nissan 240sx SE, last thursday. Enough my pictures, the car was professionally buffed at work(I work for Toyota) and my buddy still has to do the inside. It cost me 50$ through work for a basic detail, and then I paided him $25 plus 3 days of lunch. So basically I'm paying about 85-95$ for a 500+ detail job. He spent 5hours buffing, polishing, and waxing the outside today, and is going to do the inside tomorrow at work. Heres the pictures... I'm very excited about this car. BEfore anyone says... why didnt you do it yourself, well for one, this was professionally done by out TOC detail division at work. TOC…

Ok so I bought 2 IDW 15's after reading the spec sheet and it saying I needed 1.5-2cu ft sealed... After asking about it I hear IB and giant boxes are what it needs from squeak over on CA.com.. After searching the net it seams most people did IB installs with the IDWs... so does anyone here have experience with non-IB installs on IDW's... The only two thought I have are seal off the entire cargo area with plexiglass (ummm I'd rather sell the IDW's) or make a box the size of the entire cargo area level up to the seat backs... I could swing this, I'll measure it tonight to see how much space this would give each IDW...

So i just bought 2 Stinger voltage meters for my XS batteries to keep tabs on the volts and i am hoping to mount them on the side of the dash in my ford ranger. i dont have the tools or skills yet to do a whole fiberglass mold so i will be using a dremel to cut out 2 square holes to flush mount the 2 meters. the system i am getting will be hitting at least 140db so i need to figure out what adhesive (or whatever else i can use) to keep the meters stuck to the inside of the dash panel without having to use fillers. anybody got any advice how to keep these things in place?

hi i recently bought a 96 jeep cherokee and i am planning on putting a system in it... just got to start of with the components... ok i have a 4 door jeep with a rear pillar with 2 5.25 and im just planning on leaving the rear pillar alone anf just getting components fro the 4 doors and amplify it.... Im looking at 2 sets of these 1 set for the front doors and the 2nd set for the rear.... Rockford Fosgate T152S Component Speakers - Car Speakers at Onlinecarstereo.com im really confused on the amp those.... ive read alot of forums saying use a 2 channel amp and ive read forums that say use a 4 channel amp.... i dont really know which 1 to use... well heres the amps im lo…

Who makes a decent volt meter that isn't a $100+ dollars.(No SMD) I'm gonna order one soon, and just looking for opinions on who makes a decent meter. What are you guys using, and has anyone used the stinger meter are they decent? Or the 99 cent ones on eBay are they even worth the trouble to hook up?

Let me introduce myself first, hi my name is Matt lol. This is going to be a long one, so let me apologize in advance. I started car audio when I was 16 and started teaching myself stuff through Car Audio mag and Crutchfield lol. My first "system" consisted of a Panasonic deck, some kenwood 4x6's in the front, a Profile Baja sub amp, and a Pyle 8" cut into the bottom of a 5 gallon water jug in my prized 79 BMW 320i...Sad huh? I ended up going with four 10" Hollywood Sound Lab Excursions and a US Amps Exterminator 100 I think, dB dragged once and got a best of 124.8 lol. Anyways, I got a job at Circuit City as an installer at 17, learned a lot. Worked for Circuit for about…

I'll use REW on my laptop. My question is can I use the omni directional microphone that came with my Kicker keysmart amp that is used to auto tweak it's built in DSP? My second question. I've never used REW before. Any tips/suggestions for the best settings/methods to measure my car's accoustics? Also should I turn off my Keysmart amp's DSP features first or will it matter? I just want a graph to see where the peaks and dips are in my frequency response. Final question. Can I measure for cancellation issues using REW?

Well, i was trying to talk to the 'new guy' at my local audio shop. And we started talking about what we had, and i was telling him i was trying to sell my Type X's to get a Fi Q. Supsrisingly he has actually heard of Fi, but he was very closed minded towards them. ANYWAYS, he ended up telling me he had four Type R's 12" in a ported box, in an Impala like mine! So, i went out to get a demo. Pretty loud i guess, but he was trying to tell me he has hit 154db. Considering that his box looked fairly small for 4 12's i doubted it. I guess im just rattled that people like that can get a job but when i apply i dont even get an interview. >.>

Hey guys I have a 96 Cherokee Sport, I also have a Warden motor laying around that I want to build into a musical daily ground pounder. Im thinking ill just go with and OEM IA recone and I have an saz3000 to power it. Im just wondering if people have other single woofer set ups like this in Jeeps? What size are you using? Im leaning towards single 15" Any pics or vids out there or advice would be great! Thanks

This first part is how having the correct crossover makes a world of difference in how a subwoofer setup sounds. When I first set up my amp for my new sub I put the crossover on 80 hz because I had heard that was the general concensus for a decent starting position. I left it there for a few years and I figured everything was good. Then I think one day last year I got bored and just played around with my front stage, seeing if I would want a 3 way setup or something. Sometime during that I turned my crossover up to 100 hz on my sub and forgot about it. A year passed and I hadn't really noticed it until lately I played some Crystal Method and I was like man, my sub su…

Ok i got 3 subs sitting in my man cave 15s im in the process of building my enclosure now but im trying to decide how to power them they are dual 4 ohm subs should i get a big amp thats half ohm stable and wire them to .66 ohms or strap 2 smaller amps i need a total of 3000rms any suggestiins will be great

I'm looking to go with a 6th order bandpass for the rebuild in my car, so I'm looking at designs on youtube, this BEAST has caught my eye: Anyone got any sort of info on this??