Impious

Where/Why is the JL 12W6v2 starting to "come apart"?

That's because they don't actually try to help you, they just need to make it look like they're trying to help you. As long as it looks like they're trying, they look like the good guys.

It's VERY LOUD in Florida Is that why they all require 64 mids and 18 tweeters per door in their systems?

You are going to need to give more details about your present wiring scheme, what headunit you have, and what flip down monitor you have.

My guess is he copy-n-pasted his post from DIYMA onto SSA and it copied the hyperlinking as well. DIYMA has this fucking retarded dictionary thing that hyperlinks any word found in it's dictionary. It's annoying as shit. I edited out the hyperlinking.

You could also build a "pod" that's not sealed in the rear to give yourself a little more mounting depth but still fire into the door for more airspace.

I dislike SMD as much as the next guy, but if this audio thing ever falls through he should be at the top of the recruitment list for most Fortune 500 companies. The guy is a marketing genius. Armed with nothing more than youtube videos & online forum promotion, and despite his obvious lack of understanding of the basic principles of both acoustics and electronics, he was able to turn his name into a fairly prominent brand with nothing more than mediocre builds and primarily ignorant logic in the process and design of the system. That takes some real marketing talent to pull off. Companies would kill to be able to build a brand out of absolutely nothing (by "nothing" I mean no real skill, talent or knowledge) the way he has.

Actually running them isobarically requires 1/4 the power and IIRC 1/2 the enclosure size to achieve the same output. Is not the idea being the iso to use the second driver for control to make a smaller enclosure work? I've never seen an instance where efficiency is increased, especially to the point where you need 1/4 the power. You've decreased enclosure size, and added a driver, so if anything, efficiency is increased and more power is needed. With the drivers wired inversely they act upon each other through coupling. One sub pushes the other, reducing the power to reach full excursion. I expected roughly 1/2 the power, but someone somewhere explained how they amplify each other, making the required power 3/8-1/4 the required power. You decrease the enclosure size because you are doubling the motor strength by coupling them isobarically System efficiency for isobaric loading is 3db less than that of a single driver in twice the enclosure volume (i.e. same alignment). So not sure why you think required input power decreases, when actually the necessary power input to reach the same SPL level compared to a single driver in the same alignment doubles. The ONLY advantage is 1/2 the enclosure volume. Since everything is a set of compromises, the trade-off is less efficiency and the requirement of 2x the power input to reach the same SPL.

You are correct, middle of the door is a terrible location. My two suggestions would be: 1) Kickpanels (my favorite, if room allows & you can fit proper airspace) 2) Cut some metal, rework the door panel and mount them here: If you want to go the "easy way out" you could always try to build some mounting rings to give yourself more mounting depth of the panel allows, but I don't really like the factory mounting locations anyways so I would cut some metal or go for kickpanels.

There will be dozens of amps that would be more than satisfactory for you. Go somewhere like Sonicelectronix.com or woofersetc.com, sort their mono & 2-channel amplifiers by price & start scrolling to see if there's anything else that trips your trigger. I would avoid things like Boss, Pyle, etc.

Why would you want to run at .5ohm daily?

Optimus was a low end brand sold through Radio Shack. Like I said though.....just look around & find an amp rated either 100-125w x 2 @ 4ohm or a mono amp ~250w @ 2ohm and you're good to go. That Kicker is at the upper end of your price range, looks like it's around $150 shipped on most sites. Should be not too difficult to find one that's still reasonably decent for a little less $$ but nothing wrong with the Kicker either....they build reliable products.

Both. You want to apply the CLD to both the outer & inner door skins/panels. Typically Don recommends 5-6 CLD tiles on the outer door skin (half of those on the top portion of the outer door panel above the brace and the other half on the bottom portion of the outer door skin below the brace). Then typically another 1-3 CLD tiles on the inner door panel (based on how much surface area there is, etc) applied to the most resonant areas of the panel. The purpose of the CLD isn't to block noise, it's to reduce resonance & vibrations. The MLV is to reduce road noise.

I honestly haven't read most of the posts in this thread, but optical as a means of signal transmission has been done plenty of times in car audio. Alpine H701, Sony CDX-90 & associated processor (this one going back to the mid 90's if not earlier), Pioneer ODR system (again, going back to the 90's), etc etc etc. I used the Alpine DVA-9860 via toslink connected to the H701 for several years in my car. Never had a single problem with either the cable or the unit. I would have to disagree with Nick, certainly any product is going to have it's issues but generally the H701 is a reliable, affordable (used) processor with a lot of tuning power. Sure you can find a lot of threads of people with issues on the forums, but given how many units are out there it's not surprising. The H700/701 was probably in production close to 10 years. If you get the non-glass cable & don't bend it at 90 degree angles the cable itself is not a problem. But as Sean said; it's one of many digital signal transfer methods and there really isn't going to be an audible benefit to any one over the others.

Also there's absolutely no reason at all four 8's would have more "punchy bass" than a single 15". As of right now out of the options you listed I see no reason not to go with the single 15" as long as you can fit a proper enclosure.

Single 15" has more cone area than two 10's (about 30% more cone area) & only a hair less than four 8's (though depending on the actual Sd of the 8's, the single 15" might end up having more cone area), however an SSD is going to have significantly more excursion capabilities than those Infinities so overall displacement would be significantly higher with the single 15", which means potential output would be the greatest with the single 15" out of those options. How much room do you actually have to allocate towards the enclosure?

Anything that does ~250w RMS @ 2ohm will be fine. Mono amp is perfectly fine, also a 2-channel amp would be acceptable as I'm sure it's going to be fairly easy to find an amp that does ~100w x 2 @ 4ohm. Do you plan to upgrade soon or is this system going to last you a while? Any particular price you are looking to spend? What amp do you have presently?

Higher preamp voltage doesn't give you more sound quality. The gain position has nothing to do with anything, as long as it's properly set & it doesn't cause audible noise (some amps can be noisy with an extremely high gain setting). The only significant benefit to higher preamp voltage is to improve the signal-to-noise ratio of the signal transmission. Which means if you have no audible noise, either from the amp due to gain position or from noise induced into the cable, with your current preamp voltage level.....then increasing preamp voltage is not going to have any audible benefit.

I thought they came out with a higher voltage input/output version? Not a lot higher, but ~2v RMS

My son also found my old collection of CD's....they are primarily all rap from my younger days. Not really my preference now-a-days, but I'll probably spend a few nostalgic days cycling through them in the car. I will admit though, I was pretty excited to pop Sir Mix A Lot "Posse on Broadway" in the car today Sure wish I had a system in there though

Was cleaning out the basement yesterday. It's amazing how when we moved we kept an entire room worth of boxes that were filled with just senseless shit, & even more amazing we've stored those boxes of useless shit in our basement for 9 years. On the bright side, I did find these: My old collection of audio magazines.....back when they were atleast half ways decent.

Depending on how high the Qts is on the "high Qts" driver, I'd suggest it's quite possible the "normal" Qts driver that you have is the better option if your plan is to stuff it into the smallest possible enclosure. It will help keep Qtc comparatively lower, which will improve transient response. You'll lose a little output compared to the high Qts option, but if your goal is to maintain a small enclosure I'd gladly trade off a little output for much better transient performance.

Holy fucksticks! How in the world do you find time to listen to 64,000 songs?

That's what she said.

How cheap is cheap? I'm not a Denon aficionado like some people, but I do believe the DCT-1 was the "highest end" head unit they offered. IIRC it was an upgraded version of the infamous Z1 headunit. If it also happens to be black, then it's even more rare. Denon was a high end brand...excellent products from both a design & build quality/construction stand point, highly sought after & highly valuable. I have a RF branded Denon HU that I run. If you can get it "cheap", I wouldn't hesitate to buy it.