Ok, I did a few things this morning. First was, I corrected my RCA's, the sub output, was NOT going to the sub input of the AQ !!! This is what was REALLY causing the scratching noise, well that combined with too large of an enclosure. Well, I did that, then I installed the Zed to give it a listen and wow. I really can't explain how amazing it sounded. for 600 watts, there was a good bit of output. but compared to 1200, I simply took it out. But man oh man, like, never mind, I'm not even going to attempt to explain how well it sounded with the Zed lol. I will be installing a amp rack this weekend, so that will be the next update so stay tuned!