LoudBurp

If I may chime in... I know I am still technically a forum "noob" but I do know about 1/4 wave. I am a Radio Frequency Technician in the Air Force and this is one of the many things we have to learn about. Next time I am home I will look for my training books that explain everything, and try to post stuff that is relivent to the car audio world, but for now I will let you know some of the stuff I know that would be somewhat easy to explain. 1/4 wave is actually 1/4 of the waveformat to be examined. When talking about your car radio, your antenna is ~1/4 wavelenth of the radio station frequency your listening to (it is known as a marconni antenna). Its not perfect, because there is more than one station that your radio can tune to. So, they come up with the average frequency of the entire bandwidth, figure out how long one wavelenth of the average frequency is, and divide it by 4. There are also many other types of antennas too, such as half-wave dipoles, full-wave and even 2 wave. All of these propogate differently. When dealing with fractional waves, you have to understand that they are always in refrence to the original format (it sounds weird but I will touch that in a bit). When some thing is 1/4 wave it could be said that it is 90 degrees (1 full wave lenth = 360 degrees). This also relates to your phase. From my understanding the perfect box, is one that has an infinate baffle and infinate volume. This makes the sound waves from the front of the woofer not interact with the sound waves from the back. (they are 180 degrees out of phase(they cancel each other out)) This would allow for the waves off the front to move through space uninterupted. BUT, as we all know this is completely impossible. SO, the sealed box was conceaved. Now, when you start to add a port you kick it up a notch. Tuning the port to 1/4 wavelenth, actually takes the sound wave and slows it by 90 degrees. So at this frequency you have now brought a canceling wave into one that now complements the one from the front of the woofer. Which is why you see better gains, and why you see that "peak" frequency. Now some might argue that it has to do with the speakers resonant frequency, the vehicals frequency..... It does! What I just described was with a theoretical woofer that is perfect in every way. When you put woofers in a car you have so many reflected waves and resonance it is just crazy. This is why you can see differences with seats up, down, forward, back.... everything matters. Now with what was said by people before me, you can find the "perfect" position for everything by finding 1/4 wavelenth of your desired frequency and tune towards it. So, I hope I helped in answering some questions you may or may not have had and I hope it was easy to follow. I know I am not a professional builder, but this information is just stuff I learned about. Hope you get the answers your looking for, and if you need clarification on anything I said, send me a PM and I will try to get you the best answers that I can.

So any word yet on when gear will be back up? I need a new hat to wear out here in Hawaii for the next couple years.

Thanks

Looking for a Sundown 1500 or another amp that is pretty close too it. If you could also include in the price a shipping quote to Hickam AFB, HI 96853 that would be great. post or pm me any offers you may have.

You should only need 8 terminals. 4 for the positive and 2 on each ground wire. But it is always good to have extra. How did you like the wire? Meets up to AWG and flexible and such? I bought the cadence wire from audio savings as well. It is good wire, as long as the jacket is a frosted color. See, they put different wire in their kits vs. when you buy specific lengths. Their shiny jacket has a smaller thread count, where as their frosted jacket has alot better wire/jacket ratio. The stuff off the spool is frosted. The only complaint I have about it though, is that I believe it is CCA. When you cut it, it is a silver color istead of being all copper color. Other than that the wire has great flexibility. I have used this wire on many different occasions because of its price and, overall it is excellent wire. Just stay away from their amp kits, because like I said before they use a different quality wire in them.

I like the technical aspect of it. Everything from voltage drops, to building the box to specific dimensions. The craftsmanship that you can put into everything. I could go on for days on why this drives me. Its an addiction.

First things first, I would recommend doing the Big 3. It will help your electrical and it is relitivly cheap. Please look at the tutorial thead before asking how to do it.... 1 run of 1/0 should be fine because it can handle up to 300A of current running through it. The batteries are only going to help the voltage drop, but with 1000rms it shouldn't pull all that hard anyway. (realitivly speaking) Other than that make sure your grounds are SOLID and your electrical system will barly know its back there. Best of Luck and Cheers Edit: link for the Big 3 Tutorial.... http://www.stevemeadedesigns.com/board/topic/13280-how-to-do-the-big-3-tutorial/

I have the new Pioneer 4200 with the one USB in the front. Ya, kinda makes it look like a cheap Dual, but it is still another solid product from Pioneer. I plug my 16Gig flash drive into it and I have music for DAYS. I have all my music organized into Genre-Artist-Album then it drops out the songs. When running and Ipod, it some time shoots and ERROR-19, which is failure to read info, but it still plays the music.(this is why I use the flashdrive) Also its nice to carry around multiple flashdrives. I have a 2Gig flashdrive of just music that pounds. So all in all the unit works great for me.

Best advise I can give you, is shop around. I am currently building a system and I think I have spent around $500 on equipment that retails at over $1200. I found things on Craigslist, amazon, Audiosavings, Parts-Express.... There are so many sites to choose from. Then I would recommending building your own box. There are a number of topics about it not only on this forum, but many other forums. Look at how they build, why they did what they did, and what was the result of it. You can experiment with ported boxes vs. TL boxes as well. Double Alts, HO alts, Big 3, cone area, port volume, box tuning........ You will probably have more research time on it then actual hands on, but in the end it will be worth it. Best of Luck and Cheers

I was wondering if there was anybody on Oahu that has TL. I am building a system in my truck (nothing too big so don't get to excited) and I was looking to get it metered. I am putting a 12" Interfire PRO-V12, with a 1.8 cube box tuned to 34.1 Hz. Running a stupid Planet Audio AC3000.1 (its cheap and temporary), all 1/0 plus big 3. This is all squeezed behind my drivers seat in my single cab Dodge Ram, that way I still have the functionality of a single cab pickup. So if any body lives on Oahu, and wouldn't mind allowing me to hit their mic, it would be greatly appreciated.

I was wondering if any body knew how to figure out the port frequncy vs. port length, in other words how to tune a box without punching in what you want your box to be tuned at into a computer and it telling you how to build the box. You see, I am kind of new at this and I don't have enough to to out and buy termpack right now and I think it would benefit me to know this. I can build a pretty mean box now but I want to take the guess work out of it. So, if anybody has anywords of advice it would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!