95Honda

Well, your amp could be messed up, or something goofy in the signal chain. I don't know what to tell you, you should be able to tell if your sub is recieving adequate power without a DMM or anything else... Just your eyes and ears... If you reall think it is your amp, park your car next to your buddy with the profile and run a speaker wire from his amp to your sub. That should narrow the problem down for you... It is really tough to help with all the different variables thta have been thrown out... Also, don't forget that the gain settings are pretty much meaningless from a comparison standpoint. Whenever you hear "gain set conservative" or "be careful with the gains" or "gains at 1/2" this is usually coming from someone who doesn't have a clue... The gain settings are 100% meaningless if the amps are fed by different headunits also, so don't get hung up on the different setttings between the Profile and Hifonics... As far as loading, just look at it as how the sound is coupling with the air space inside your cabin. A good example is when you are in a room in the house and you walk around and you notice the bass sounds really good in some areas and almost gone in others, these are room modes that have similar effects. If you are having goofy coupling issues and wierd cabin modes, your listening position in the truck may be acting like that part of the room where the bass just isn't sounding good. This is where placement and where your port exits can make a big difference. The ports on my 8" Tangband baox also fired out the side like yours, I had one port on each end though. They were also fairly close to the sides of the truck but worked pretty good. So I think your orientation should be good, but you just may have stumbled onto some wierd combo of port exit and driver placement that just doesn work... Still, it's a ported 15... Sucker should wang almost no matter what... Until you figure out if your amp is at fault, you got me man....

Unless you have a peak hold function on your meter getting readings while playing music is pretty useless, they can't respond and display fast enough to get you accurate readings. Even with a peak hold function this can still be a toss-up. I seriously doubt you have amp problems. It's a 15" sub that is ported, it should get loud as hell off a few hundred watts.... Something is goofy with your set-up in there, like mentioned above you may have loading/tuning issues. I'll say it again, that truck is a bitch. If it really begins to seem impossible to figure out, pull the box out and stick something in there smaller that you know works, doesn't matter what, maybe a 10 or a 12 abuddy has in a small box. Listen to it, move it side to side back there and see what it sounds like and the difference the position makes. The box and tuning just may be all wrong for that truck. Like I said before, I had to go with the 4 8s and deaden the crap out of that cab to get good bass...

I have ran RE XXX and an Adire Tumult and 1st gen (pre 94' with forced cooling) JBL GTI 18" subs (massive Xmax, small vent, high motor vent air velocity, super high with the JBL) with thier motors about 1-2" from the back enclosure wall with "0" negative effects. You will get a bunch of answers about this, most will just be "gut feeling" from people and not based on much more. Bottom line is, give it an inch or so and it will b fine...

If it goes from your sub to your door speakers (frequency range) then the phase control won't do anything to help with your bass output, all it will do is help you blend at your active crossover point (prevent a suckout). Honestly, since you only have one sub amp you are wasting time with an O-scope, dmm, test tones, etc.... If it isn't distorting, turn the gain up higher, if it distorts before your mids and highs turn the gain down a little. Everyone will try and convince you to keep on with this mental masturbation to set your gains right.... But it really is a big waste of time unless you are trying to gain match multiple amps, which you are not... Just take it easy and use your head, you'll know when you are clipping the crap out of your amp, especially when the sub is about 2 feet from your head.... That cab is a bitch to get to sound right. I had a Titanic 10" MKII, a DLS 10 and a 12" Kicker comp in there, I know how to build boxes and they just never sounded right. Until I went with the 4 Tangband 8s in a really flat alignment with 5 gallons of sound deadening in there, it never sounded right. That thing rang like a bell and just sounded god awfull... Seriously, it is a tough vehicle to work with... Just keep playing with it... It took me 4 tries, but it was worth it in the end...

For your best bang for the buck buy one of the MTM Partsexpress kits, you can't go wrong, and you can't screw it up for your first project. They have reall good instructions and also have tutorials to help you learn why things were designed the way they were. They are almost set up like an educational project, really. Honestly, if you think the Kenwoods sound better than anything KEF, you are are probably more interested in volume, in that case try and choose something with at least 7" or so woofers, you will be happier. If you try one of the smaller kits with say 5 or 6.5s, consider a sub, there are also decent kits on there for a few hundred bucks that would be really great as first projects. If you try and design it yourself, keep it simple. There is no reason to have more than a 2 way or a 3 way at most. When you pop off a grill of a speaker like a Kenwood, Sony, Pioneer etc and you see a bunch of tweeters and mids, it isn't to make better sound, it is so the guy popping the grill off of the speakers thinks he is getting more for the money... Also, most of the time you see 2 or more identical woofers (8+) inches, they are usually passive radiators and they aren't there for the benefits of a passive radiator, they are put there so when you pull off the grill you are like "wow, 2 12" woofers, sweet"..... Also, check out the Zaph Audio website. He has a bunch of no BS, solidly engineered speaker systems you can build for low cost.... His stuff would probably outperform just about anything you could buy under a few grand, except in the area of sheer output... But if you are only looking to get loud, that is a whole different ball game...

Parts Express sells a mesh type 2-piece grill. I have used them before, they are cheap. They don't allow much excursion though if you don't space them off the driver flange enough.. My RE 8's would occasionaly smack into them, I think they are geared more for PA speakers...

No problem.

You could get a decent, running condition, Ford K for under 1000 Euros. I'd just be wondering about electrical... The alt on those is about the size of an beer can.... Run 2 or 3 big ass batteries, burp once and rev the chit out of the car for 2-3 minutes before you burp again... LOL... I wouldn't worry about the car falling apart, I did a trunk wall in a POS Nissan Sentra with the same XXX18 you have and pushed 150 without too many issues. I just had to silicone the wing windows in the back shut because the latches wouldn't hold good enough... If something breaks, then just glue it or weld it back in place....

These aren't shields if they are not grounded, period. A shield will not introduce noise into a single ended, or especially balanced configuration if done properly, ever. Don't forget that with differential, balanced, that no part of the signal is referenced to or is traveling on the shielded ground. The signal is derived from the difference of voltage between the two signal carrying lines (180 degrees out of phase) and is never even introduced to ground or shield, that is why this topology has even more effective use of proper shielding. A non-grounded shield is allowed to resonate easier (no dampening) and acts like an antenna. It runs parrelel to the signal cables and therefore inductively couples it's energy to the signal wires. EMI can be an issue in a car, especially if you have modified the ignition system in any way. Often times magnitudes more than the home. Although, most good equipment is pretty immune to most of these problems. And most of our signal runs are short enough that they don't get a whole lot of EMI. This isn't car audio were are talking here, it's basic electonics... And yes, it is a marketing gimmic and is dishonest..

Yes, that would be a shielded cable. If it had 2 conductors in the center of the cable plus the braid, only one end of the braid would have to be attached to ground, that would be what is called an electrostatic shield. Your picture has plain coax, signal on the center wire with shield and signal ground on the outer braid. The benefit to using coax is that any noise picked up on the run of the cable will be returned to the equipment grounds instead of the audio sections. This usually will have lower noice than non-coax designs. But, simple twisted pair configs almost have just as good of noise reduction in a car, it is kind of a toss up. For the best of both worlds, you ideally want twister pair surrounded by a shield, basically microphone cable. You use the twisted pair for signal and signal ground and then also attach one end of the braided shield to the circuit (connector) ground, sometimes you get lower noise from grounding at the source end (Head Unit) or the load end (amplifier) best thing is to try cable in both directions and see what sounds better...... This gives you the benefit of the twisted pair noise rejection AND the shield rejecetion of the braid. This is how I build all my cables. Seriously, there is nothing that will sound, measure or work better for car audio interconnects than microphone cable. I use the 20 awg Dayton brand from Parts Express, I think it is abou 10-20 cents a foot.... Plus, you can also use it for truly balanced connections.

There may be a conductive braid on there, but it isn't shielded from anything but abrasion unless one, or both ends are connected to something (ground). Actually, that type of design can introduce more noise, as there is now more conductive surface area that is electrically isolated from anything, basically an antenna.... And that antenna runs right along side of the signal cables and induces all kinds of crap. A few things to know- 1- Many car audio "Sheilded" cables are not actually using a shield... 2- There is no such thing as a "Balanced" cable if it has an RCA connector on the end 3- If you are buying a signal cable from most car audio companies, you are paying mostly for looks...

No load = infinity ohms = Open circuit Full load = as little as 0 ohms = Short circuit I think you have this backwards... Short protection DOESN'T do anything for a no load connected condition. It is designed to shut the amplifier off when there is a short circuit across the output presenting a load close to 0 ohms to the amplifier. Most amplifiers DO NOT have circuit protection for no load or infinite ohms, this is because solid state amplifiers should have no trouble driving this load (or lack of load), unless they are defective. Some (poor) designs may oscillate if there is no load load connected because of output dampening, but I am 99.9% sure that is not your case, or any case with even the cheapest car audio amps. If you had your amplifier hooked up right it should have never smoke from no load connected, even if you were clipping the amp. Something was wrong with the amp or the install, double check again....

I wasn't refering to them failing, they will proabaly outlast your system...... I was refering to getting a brand new fresh battery any time you want.... And for free.....

Buy a pair of 1000CCA batteries at Walmart for the 1/2 the price of any "car audio battery". Take them back and exchange them as many times as you want (free if you save your receipt), you could throw a fresh set in for every competition if you really wanted to... Honestly, you'd never know the difference...

Honestly, you have 3000 watts and one sub. All types of things can be done to help you set it up correctly, but it still doesn't matter, you can still ruin just about any sub with that much power. Here is something people tend to forget about. You have the shop set everything up perfect, so you know exactly what volume level will be your max point etc. They use a CD or some other reference source. You feel all fine and good and you know your limits. Then someone gives you a burnt MP3 that is compressed all to hell and you play it and blows your sub because all the settings before never took something like this into account.... If you have it as loud as it was when the sub failed ever again, plan on it failing. So either you have to turn it down, or buy another sub and divide the power between the two. Just my 2 cents....

The only way you would damage the scope is to put to much voltage on the input, I think most scopes can handle the output voltage of an amp. An amp shouldn't immediately fail if it is driving an open or high impedance load... Here is what could have happened... Where you using a DC power supply to test the amp, or in car? If you were using a grounded DC supply and hooked the scope to the output of the amp, you may have inadvertantly grounded out the amp output (the clip or shield of the scope probe is tied to chassis ground) and most amps don't like that at all... In car it isn't a big deal because the vehicle ground will be isolated from the scope ground.

Seriously, they look like they were thrashed into place. I would just send the money for the softparts, FI would have to be crazy to pay for something like this...

Here is a test we did a few years back... Always surprises people... http://forum.carstereos.org/clipping-test-...41.html?t=47441 -Mike

LOL... Took 6 pages for me to get people on CSO to understand that you could clip (full power) just about ANY amplifier made at ANY gain setting... LOL... "But, But, it's at 1/2 gain so only putting out 1/2 power....." LOL!!!!!

LOL... Just looking at the rubber trim gaskets tells me what happened.. Good luck with this one!

If the tinsels snap, you are giving it too much power. Period. If you do a recone, plan on turning the volume down somewhere.... Or, plan on another re-cone. T-lines don't have a tuning frequency, BTW. Maybe this could be an issue?? Sure you don't just have a regular ported box you are playing below Fb?

I hear you. I'm going on my 11th year of active duty. Every single one of my mid east deployments have been extended. My 02' in Oman went from 90 to 190 days... Like 15 days before we were supposed to go home... And that was about 6 months after they ended that $100 a day for every day over 179... Remember that crap?? They'd go broke doing that now... LOL... Qatar was another good one, started out as a 120, turned into a 175... Just like a week short of short tour credit... Oh well... I have a really good job now, NATO at Ramstein... 2E173, Ground Radio since 97', BTW.. -Mike Edgar

I'll tell you what, that is some impressive packing from Mach 5. I really like the way the inside was put together, there is some time and $$ in that.... All that leaves me to say is DHL/UPS/FEDEX a-holes really suck... I have been shipping these types of drivers going on almost 10 years now and it never ceases to amaze me the damage that occurs.... And it really makes me angry when I hear all the excuses like "Do you know how many packages a day we have to move".... Blah Blah Blah... Bottom line is, they just don't gaive a crap about our stuff... LOL...

The only thing that will determain hom many of these ports you will need is what drivers you choose. If you are sticking a couple of 12s in there that don't have much displacement than a pair of 4" Areos would be fine. But I assume that this may be for an 18 or a few 15s because it will be 8 cubic feet... If that is the case, you may really need 4 4" Areos or a pair of 6" aeros... So, figure out what sub(s) you will be using, that will determain the amount of ports (port area) you will need, the box size doesn't have anything to do with it. Why doesn't everyone use Aeros? They are great until you need a port that is 40" long, then they aren't so great anymore and you end up building the port out of something more practical. But for short port lengths, say 18-20 inches or shorter, they work pretty damn good. I have used maybe 50 or so... Quick and easy....