Impious

It depends on the mid's xover.....Alpine has listed on the site that the xover is "integrated" into the mid itself, you would need to be able to wire around the mid's xover in order to truly run active with them. But as long as it's possible to wire the mid without including the mid's passive xover then yes you could run them active.

I wouldn't, for the cost you would have into a cobbled together passive set you would be better off to go with something like those Alpine's that you can get off ebay for $160 shipped that are designed to work as a system. And I highly doubt any of those speakers would perform any better than the Alpine's. I'm not trying to sell you the Alpine's, but I also don't think what you have listed there is any better of an option.....it's more than likely a worse option.

I wouldn't worry about bi-amping thru a passive crossover, and I've never really been impressed w/ RF's speakers. That said, I've been interested in hearing the Alpine Type-R comps but haven't gotten around to seeking them out. They use Alpine's Linear Drive Motor, which from the cut-aways they've shown appears to be very similar to Adire's XBL^2 split-gap motor topology. Believe they also use some shorting rings in the motor as well. Could be interesting little speakers.

Pretty sure if you search around on caraudio.com Tracy from Kicker had even posted about that a couple times. Could be wrong, but I think I remember him saying that.

Very nice looking BL curve. T/S still looking the same as shown on Pg 3 ?

In my humble opinion you would probably have as much or more success with a driver like that in the HT/HA market as you would in car audio. Off of just a cursory observation of general habits, I think a lot of car audio SQ guys might shy away from a $600 SQ woofer that's 75lbs and nearly a foot deep (guessing the dimensions). HT guys might not care as much and there's a lot more offerings in that price range in that market, making the price less of a concern. Again, just my humble opinion.

I think you need to talk Mark & Aaron into starting a beer forum and setting you up as the first vendor on the new site

I want to see what that looks like, what do I google? JL Audio TW5, for example. There was that one short lived company about 5 years ago that had a 6" coil. Can't think of their name. EDIT: Actually it was Acoupower. Interestingly when I was googling to verify that was the company, I found this link in a thread on another forum. That guy was the owner of Acoupower. Guess that explains why the business went under.

Actually no I had no idea, I don't follow SPL or American Bass so I have no idea of their power ratings and/or model #'s. I used 1100 because of the model #. Either way the same process applies.

Easiest way for any amplifier would be to utilize basic Ohms Law and work backwards. First thing we need to find is the voltage the amplifier produces. The reason we need to do this is because in most (not all) modern amplifiers the voltage output the amplifier is able to supply will be the same regardless of the impedance of the load connected to the outputs (this is an assumption). With Ohms Law we can use the formula sqrt(Power * Resistance) = Voltage. So sqrt(1100*1) = 33.17V Now we can use that voltage to guesstimate what the power output would be at 4ohm with the formula Voltage^2/Resistance = Power. So 33.17^2/4 = 275w. So, in a perfect world, the 4ohm power would be 275w. Now you'll notice the end result is the same as just dividing the 1ohm power by 4, but I thought it was more beneficial to walk through the steps using Ohms Law as it can then be applied to any scenario. In general most amps will be rated to about double their power every time impedance is halved (see below) for basically the reason that (ideally) the voltage output will be the same at any impedance so as impedance is halved power output will double (which is easily enough verified with Ohms Law). A couple caveats to this: Obviously this isn't going to work on amplifiers that are intentionally designed to supply the same power into different loads, such as the JL RIPS amps (the Slash series) or the Alpine PDX amplifiers. Both of those amps (and similar designs) will intentionally adjust the rail voltage when connected to a different load, so the rail voltage (output voltage the amplifier is able to supply) won't be the same at different impedances. Second the world isn't perfect, neither are amplifiers. For starters there are some internal losses in amplifiers for various reasons and these losses become more significant as the power output increases (increases in current running through the amplifier increase heat and heat losses, components within the amplifier are running hotter, etc). On top of that, some amplifiers have a weaker power supply that isn't able to fully support the amp as the power output increases. For these reason, and some others, often times as impedance is halved the power output won't truly double. So the amplifier may actually be rated for 350-400w @ 4ohm, even though using the above process we guesstimated it should only be able to provide 275w. But even then the difference between 400w and 275w is only about 1.6db, so not really much if any of an audible difference so our rough guesstimate is "close enough". On the reverse if we know the amp is rated 400w @ 4ohm and we want to know the 1ohm power we can use the above process. sqrt(400*4) = 40V 40^2/1 = 1600w But again, due to the losses in the amp, the ability of the power supply to support 1600w, etc etc etc.....the amplifier might not truly be able to output or be rated for 1600w @ 1ohm, it might only be rated 1000-1200w.

Love your slogan Mike

Probably the best idea. I don't know the T/S parameters, but if IA doesn't recommend sealed enclosures then they are probably not going to perform optimally in sealed enclosures.....which means 1 ported would probably exceed the performance of a pair sealed.

Scott is really Batman, Nick is Robin. Gotham City has been calling for the identity and arrest of The Batman (and sidekick) because of Jokers parade of terror through the city, so next week Scott and Nick are finally going to reveal the truth to the world.

Yes. I take that back. I think I may have paid $8/each for my current RCA's, which for three would be $24, so just a hair more than those connectors. But my RCA's before these were $5 each I believe. RCA cables are not going to make an audible difference unless they are damaged. For the cost and quality, what is there to be unhappy about? Did you build your own amplifier? Your own speakers? Your own subwoofer? Your own headunit? Then what is different about RCA's? They are one of the least expensive and least important "components" in an audio system. Much greater attention and resources (both time and money) can be and should be directed elsewhere in the system. Those people would be correct. Those people would be incorrect. "Sound" different? No. You can purchase shielded 2-conductor cable. You answered your own question. The difference between the coaxial and your current cable is shielding. You have an extremely low noise floor and presently have no noise without shielding. So, will shielding make a difference in sound? Not if you don't presently have any noise issues. With the exception that it could actually cause more noise if it's improperly shielded. And if you have some time to kill, search the old carsound forums for the arguments between Richard Clark and others about the relative differences between UTP and shielded. RC (and others) arguing for UTP. Honestly I wouldn't bother. It's cables, not magic. Unless one of them is damaged the only difference you hear will be based on psychoacoustics. Any reasonably decent cable will have low enough RLC properties as to not audibly affect the sound. And that's not to say I'm against people testing or experimenting with equipment. Objective tests are great...meaningful and helpful. Subjective tests are iffy, especially a comparison that's not properly conducted. Psychoacoustics can run rampant and often times those types of tests can do more damage than good as people think they "learned" something that didn't actually happen because the test wasn't properly conducted.

Any particular reason you want to DIY your own? I don't really see the point myself.....one set of those connectors cost more than all of the RCA's in my car combined. Decent quality RCA's are cheap enough that I don't see the advantage in DIY'd cables. I'd be worried about the flexibility of a coaxial cable with a solid core conductor.

That is a different Ultra. Ultra Linear I believe is another Pyramid-esque brand.

Let me ask you this.. these components are rated for 100 rms. I was planning on a 100w x 4 amp.. bridging it would obviously go well over rated power.. I could set the gains appropriately but why?.. 100 per ch is unbridged.. am I missing something. Headroom Read the above. Personally I'm a huge fan of running way to much power. I'm running 600w per side to my passives, and have for a long time. Why not give yourself the most headroom capabilities you can?

Or you could get a 4-channel amp, bridge it to the passives and if you ever decide to run active just rerun speaker wires.

Clarification of terms: Bi-amping is not necessarily active. Bi-amping in general would mean essentially powering each speaker individually with it's own independent amplifier channel. In this case it simply means you are able to power the mid and tweeter independently (with separate amplifier channels) via the passive crossover, but it is still using the passive crossover. Active means you are using a preamp level electronic (non-passive) crossover, which necessitates powering each speaker independently. Active would still technically be "bi-amping", but bi-amping via a passive crossover is not the same thing as bi-amping via an active crossover. The terms bi-amping and active are not interchangeable. The benefit to passive bi-amping is rather negligible. About the most meaningful benefit would be the ability to better control the level matching between the tweeter and mid by having the ability to independently adjust the level of each amplifier via the gain. Aside from that, there isn't much. If my options where to use a 75w per channel 4-channel amplifier to passively bi-amp a comp set or bridge the amp for 350w per side, I would choose the later (assuming there wasn't an egregious difference in tweeter/mid level matching).

Sorry to hear it's ending at all Mike, much less ending how it is. SS offered great products and you supported them with nothing less than stellar customer service. The values your brought to the industry and your company are far too rare and will be missed. Good luck on your future endeavors.

I wouldn't consider a warmer dustcap bad. It might actually be beneficial as it may indicate that the driver is better utilizing the dustcap as a heatsink for the voice coil, transferring heat away from the coil. As Duran said, the only true way to know when it's bad is by actually measuring the voice coil temperature.

Just my opinion, but I think an MS8 for a first time active user would actually be counterproductive. It helps a lot to know what's happening and why, and you don't get that with an MS8. Knowing what's changing electronically in the DSP, what affect that has on the sound, and why it the sound changed the way it did IMO goes a long way towards helping someone setup and understand an active setup. With most things the MS8 does happening behind a curtain, you have to do a lot if guesstimation as to why something is happening and what needs to be done to fix it when you don't get the results you expected out of the MS8. If you don't have the experience behind you to be able to make those guesstimations, it might actually be harder to get a good sounding system out of an MS8 on your first go-round than it would be with a manual DSP where you can see and hear things change simultaneously.

Read that topic. Apparently unbeknownst to us, the DD-1 changed the car audio world. I unfortunately did Steve's nuts must touch the ground he's got so many people hanging from them. I'll give him credit though, he's done a hell of a job making his name into a brand, for really no good reason at all. If him and the Kardashians ever teamed up, they could take over the world......maybe even change the world so much that dividing by zero would be possible.