kickass audio

Do you happen to hear anything like a sudden pop when your radio stops playing the music and comes back? I had this the other day with my system and i have a dc audio 5.0k and a 175.4 amp. My amps and i believe yours does too have a protection circuit to stop playing dc power over 4v on the speaker wires. This will prevent you from "popping" the speaker from a sudden surge of power going through the system. I had mine go into protect on accident when i connected the power to my 3sixty.2 and the amps were still powered on (stupid me forgot to shut the radio off). Well i plugged my 3sixty.2 into the power and all i heard was a very loud pop from the sub and door speakers kicking on from that surge of power and my amps all went into protect. I thought for sure i fried all my speakers but i turned the radio off and back on and i was back up and running and none of my speakers died. Anyways, id see if you happen to have any dc output on your rca's at all because there is a protection called dc offset in which if you output a dc signal, your amp will cut the power and go into protect. Now this protection will not work with clipping because there is still a sine wave its just lopped off severely. With dc offset, the sine wave is a pure line which is DC, not AC like sound works at and is very bad for your amp to run in a mode like this. Id also check your ground wire on your radio just to make sure its getting a decent connection, you can never be too sure about grounding things. Also try to look at your voltage on your remote wires with your new kenwood deck. See if when the amps start to cut out if the voltage drops below around 12v, if it does then you need to get a relay because your amps are drawing more power than the headunit can put out for the remote turn on lead. Also to check into more detail about your speakers cutting out at a certain volume on your radio, take a DMM and set it to ACV and test the rca's to see if it shows voltage when you turn the radio up past a certain level. If there is always voltage the headunit is in good shape.

Sometimes if you have multiple amps it can draw a ton of current but a normal remote output will be fine for about 4-5 amps dependent on their current draw it takes to kick the amps internal relays on. I didnt clamp my remote wire because i really dont care what power it draws to turn on my amps and sound processor but it is running off 18 gauge wire with no problem. It is pure copper wire too. I had at one point 5 devices which needed to kick on when i powered my radio up. My 2 sub amps, my mids+high amp, my sound processor, and my radio bypass. It would handle all those turning on at once with just one remote wire off my radio. Sometimes like superjay said you do have to run a relay but luckily i have not run into that problem yet but if it does come up, they are super easy to fix and you can get a pre-wired mini spdt relay for like $10 and just wire it up and be done with it. Either way the gauge wire doesnt make a huge difference, i personally wouldnt go any smaller than 18 gauge to help in case you happen to get an amp like superjay where it draws a lot of current to turn it on. You can always use speaker wire for the turn on. Im using 12ga speaker wire for my 3sixty.2's power and ground wires (overkill i know it but hey i had a crap ton of it sitting around). Also you can go to home depot or if you know a buddy or shop around online and get 14-12 gauge speaker wire in 100 foot rolls for like $15. As long as the wire is ofc (personal preference really, theres not a whole hell of a lot of current draw for just a remote wire in most cases) and has a decently thick jacket to protect the wire from shorting out im more than happy.

For your wiring that could work but this is what id do. I would get a spare wire just incase something goes horribly wrong but get a very low heat soldering gun (either a cordless or a very small handheld soldering gun from radioshack will do. id get it like 15-20 watts max) and then i would get some lead free solder for a pure connection. Then i would cut the wires off the 2 some odd foot long cable that goes between your motherboard and monitor. I would cut the cable in the middle if you can BUT do not cut all the wires at once or you will instantly screw yourself. I would cut off the outer shrink wrap if it has any for the wires and then i would cut each wire one at a time, decide how long your cable needs to be extended and then solder the wire one at a time. I would keep a pattern when you do this, for example do the entire top row from one side to the other or do one wire at the top and the other wire at the bottom to keep them in a consecutive pair to help minimize the problem of running the wrong wires together or crossing something. If you lived near me and i didnt have so much crap to do with college id be more than willing to help you out with this task because i have all the tools you can imagine and a few times i had to solder the wires together because the morons at hp have such thin wires that the damn things kept snapping. The hardest part is to not and fracture the wires that are stock on the lcd harness and to get the wire so hot you melt half the sheeting on the wire.

Thank you everyone for your replies on this. The more that are related to this the better it will help me. For the electrical draw im in no means concerned for it. My electrical is absolutely overkill in my truck. I have 4 xs power d3100's and a s3400 along with a 270 amp mechman alt. The only time i get voltage drop is if i go full tilt at idle and dont rev up my engine to about 1300-1500 to keep it up to the demand from my 5.0kw. Im really just thinking mac mini because it seems a hell of a lot easier to mod since the newer ones im looking at getting have 9 wires you need to cut, 4 of them are +12v, 4 of them are -12v, and another one is just useless. So getting the mac to run off the power from my truck would be easy but i want a power regulator to help keep the power constant and not have any peaks and valleys are what im watching out for because i do have some moments where that happens. Plus the mac mini is a hell of a lot smaller than most mini pc's ive seen. Even the one meade has on his cart in the shop is fairly big compared to the mac mini. Im just wondering how the mac mini works in the truck for daily use and not overheat because ive been told by several mac owners that the mac mini sucks at cooling. Ive thought about getting an external sound card but either way i dont think it will help get my voltage up high enough. I DO NOT, i repeat DO NOT want or need to use any voltage boost/line drivers for raising the power from the mac mini to a signal my 3sixty.2 can interpret. The big reason i am not doing that is because i have never found one that actually works well and plus my 3sixty.2 is already a line driver to begin with. I just have to see if it will accept an input as low as the heaphone port will put out for voltage levels. I wouldnt really have much desire for a external card since my 3sixty.2 has a ton of control to my entire system. I am still going to try and mess with my laptop in my truck to see how the output is on my 3sixty and everything and if its practical to do and what not.

Yea that wouldnt be too bad. Im kinda doing a knock off of what meade did to his tahoe with the mac mini but im gonna try to find a way to cut out the headunit from the entire system and use just the mac mini and the 3sixty.2 so that should be fun if its even at all possible with how low the output voltage is on headphones. Im not sure where i found it but a co-worker showed me a link a few months ago where you could get a normal display to become touch screen by applying an adhesive surface to the monitor. You plug it into the usb of your computer in which you want to make it touch screen, calibrate the screens touch points, and then you will have a fully functional touch screen. If i can find that link or get him to send it to me ill let you know for sure because you could just use a normal screen for your laptop and put the touchscreen part on top of the lcd panel and go from there. You would still have the p.i.t.a. job of extending the wires but just be slow and make sure you shrink wrap the wires to prevent from a short or broken wire.

Alright, so before i get started im sure someone will start saying im copying steve and all that but i really am not for how im approaching this. What i am going to do for myself this fall is going to be purchasing a mac mini (either a new one or older one, im getting it as a refurb from apple for a hell of a lot cheaper and still under warranty and all that good stuff). Im going to be running the mac mini in my room under the mac os so i can play around with it and know as much as i know about windows with a mac os too. Anyways heres my little dilemma. I really REALLY want to get rid of my headunit (Alpine IVA-W205) and just use the mac mini for ALL the controls in my truck. I never use the radio, maybe once a year will i play a cd and the last time i played one was when i had my truck metered. I dont watch dvd's in my truck either. The big thing i can instantly take advantage of with the mac mini would be first of all a bigger screen in my dash (not too sure on the size just yet, ill get some help and ideas from you all on this), be able to play the movies i download and all my music on the mac, have everything controlled through the mac mini, basically everything through that as if it was a headunit. Now some things i have been thinking in depth about is how i can connect this to my system if i wanted to rip out the headunit. I was thinking to just install the mac mini either under my center console or behind the dash since theres a ton of room behind there for me to put the mac mini. Then i was thinking about how to connect it to my amps and since i have a 3sixty.2, i thought about using a headphone to rca cable that would connect to the 3sixty.2's AUX input. Now the problem... Im not sure if the mac mini is any exception but with both my dell laptops i have, when i try to scope out the outputs to see where it clips at and everything, i cannot get the sine wave to show enough, it is basically two lines with a small overlap on them with my TPI-440 scope. I tried to press the t.base and then go fast/slow with no success of expanding or zooming into the sine wave any better. Does anyone know any other method to try and scope the output from my mac mini to know how high i can set the volume on it before it starts to clip? Im pretty sure steves dd-1 wont work on this since the voltage isnt that high off a headphone output so i dont think the dd-1 will show the signal at all when i put the leads on the rca end. Also, i was thinking about easy ways to get the touch screen on my dash. I dont want to do anything insane like steve has done with his 'hoe and chickens hoopty because im not that complex of a guy and am not really showing it off but i do want a pretty clean look to it. What i was thinking to do was to get another center piece of my dashboard that pops off for me to remove the radio, a/c controls, cigarette lighters, rear wiper switch, and my 4x4 switch so i can modify that to make the touch screen fit and be able to swap back to stock when i sell the truck. Can someone tell me how big or small of a touch screen would be good for controlling a mac mini like steve can do? I do plan to use a keyboard/mouse with it but having the ability to skip that and just use the screen would be boss for me. If anyone can help me with this please reply to this topic and let me know, i appreciate everyones help on all the stupid things i get myself into.

sorry i just got the chance to try and find stuff on your laptop. I didnt find any pin out diagrams online about your monitor to know if the monitors will be plug and play. It may work, it may not work. Only way to tell would be to take the new monitor and plug it into your laptop and fire it up to see if it shows images normally. If it doesnt then the pinout is different. Usually the monitors dont have too many color pins, most are grounds but like i said before the wires are super thin so you will need a lot of patience, a steady hand, and some tiny wire to solder onto the connections when you extend the monitor.

Ill have to look that up for you. I have never seen a Toshiba display port before so ill check if it has the same pinout. For extending the monitor of the laptop to the dash that's gonna be a pain in the butt just to tell you because with most laptops I rip apart to fix, the display cables share a lot of the same color and they are super tiny so u can fracture and burn the cable. It is not by any means a simple splice, extend, connect job to do what u want.

Im sure you will, mine has got to be a problem with the enclosure but idgaf. It still slams to all hell and i keep ripping those tack welds off the bracing for my roof and snap random pieces in my doors, dash, and console.

It is all the way down and my lowpass is all the way up. For my crossover settings on my 3sixty (since all my xover settings are through that), it is set to 28-80Hz with a 24db crossover slope. I tried to turn the infrasonic filter off completely and it doesnt change a single thing. Im honestly not worried. Like i said before and ill keep saying, im not too worried about the low power output for the lower freqs because it still rips my truck apart and shakes the hell out of you in the process. lol. If i could get the power up it would rock but its not a real urgency for me. My urgent need is to get the roof deadened but that wont happen till next summer. Im getting myself a mac mini to get a feel for apple and figure out how to use it all for 3 years before i mod my truck to put it all in there and then ill get some more mids and highs.

Ray, It still sounds like he has everything good. The amp is rated at 2100w per channel at 2 ohms, and 3400 at 1 ohm. The amps ratings off the site are for 14.4v too, and according to his post, he dropped to 12v.

The reason they call it a 12k is because if you were to bridge both channels, it would be over 12000 watts of power This amp is a 2 channel amplifier, not a full blown monoblock. The speaker outputs have a left and right channel. Cody clamped them one channel at a time and came up with the same results. So he came up with a lot more power than the amp is rated for with his voltage and imp rise.

OP: there are plenty of things you can do to finish your box. Since you have mdf i personally think it would look like garbage if you were to stain the wood and then varnish it. MDF is just a pile of sawdust glued together so if you stained it and then varnished it, to me it would look like a soggy cardboard box. You can do what newls1 showed but it does take a lot of bondo, sanding, preperation, time and patience to do. Another thing you could try to do would be to get some finished wood in a thin sheet and glue that to the outsides of the box, then you can stain and varnish it at your own preference. Now for what id say to do which isnt all that hard to do and was a lot cheaper and easier for me was to carpet the enclosure. I went to lowes and bought a roll of indoor/outdoor carpeting that had a very minimal amount of ribbing on the carpet pattern and was about 1/8 thick so its was really heavy duty which i liked. I then got a tub of indoor/outdoor carpet glue and some small fine tooth spreaders to apply the glue. I first wiped the box down with a damp cloth, let it air dry, centered the box on the roll of carpet and then applied the glue on the entire box's sides and stapled/stretched it down to make it flat. Now for some this can be a little tedious because you have to line everything up right on the dot, stretch the carpet as you go along to keep it wrinkle/bubble free, and take a nail gun every so often to hold down the seams/edges well. Since my dad installed carpeting for years i had all the tools and tricks of the trade on my side but it is really not as hard as it seems to do. Just start halfway on one side, work your way around the box and then finish that side on the first half finished side. When you come to the seams you need to overlap the carpeting, take a very sharp knife and press down hard to cut both pieces of carpeting and then you apply the glue and nail it together. If i can do a box wrap you can too man.

your reply was so epic i had to put it in my signature. lmfao!!! if that was the case i guess the electrical comapnies can let all their wires just sit in a large body of water and have people swim in it right? Now to the op: soldering the wires together like nate showed is the best. It makes them easier to bend around things, cleaner look, plus it seems stronger from my testing where if you wire them straight its even harder to pull apart. I didnt solder the wires for my h/u at all but i did another way around it since i have a crap load of room behind my radio in the dash. What i did was strip the wires back about 3/8 of a inch, twist the wires together, and then i took a wing nut for wires and put one on each wire i connected together. I have a solid connection and i tried to rip the wires apart and its not moving. I also tested the continuity of each wire and it is at a solid 0.00 ohms.

Yea its your neutral safety switch. One thing you can do to test it would be to take the car and put it in park and try to turn the engine over. If it doesnt turn then your switch could be bad. If it does turn over then it is working at this point. To continue testing the neutral safety switch, put the car in every gear except for neutral, do neutral last. Your car should not attempt to start in any other gear except neutral or park. Now please note, when you are doing this be prepared to step on the brake to stop the car if it starts to move, also engage your parking or emergency brake too during the test. If your car fails to start in any other gears except for park AND neutral then your safety switch is fine. If your car starts in gears other than park and neutral then the switch has hit the bucket and needs to be replaced. Also, if this ever happens again to you and you cannot start the engine in park, heres how you can usually start the car as a failover. Take the car, engage the parking brake, turn the key to On/Run (do not set it to start), press your brake and shift the vehicle into neutral, then turn the key to start. your engine should kick over.

Ray: yea thats why im thinking its my enclosure or something, not the amps or electrical. My electrical is totally overkill for my system but it works perfectly for me. This is my first all out build so i still have quite a bit to learn about the box building and whatnot but hey, im learning about it all slow enough.

Who wants to see some guts????

For the lack of power i think its just my enclosure doing it. For my old amps i got from Ray, i clamped 2794.5w at 1.38 ohms for a 30Hz burp. The amp is supposed to do 4kw at 1 ohms strapped so it had a good amount of loss. I really cant say its my amp or enclosure because ill be damned if im going to junk my enclosure just to try and play around with it. Either way if you sit in my truck when im burping you would swear its putting out more power than it clamped at.

Yea i wont mess with that because my truck is drive by wire. Meaning i have no throttle cable to pull or adjust, its all done electronically. The last time i played with my butterfly on my throttle body i made the damn engine misfire and threw a check engine code.

Start voltage: 14.6v at the very beginning of the burps, then 14.5v after the alt got warm. ending voltage: 13.7v after a 5 second burst per frequency. There wouldnt have been any voltage drop if i was revving my engine up but it was sitting at idle which is barely 500 rpm's so i cant say crap about the voltage falling down that low. If i could sucker someone to sit in the truck when i burp it, i would rev it up to 1800 and clamp it, im sure id get even more power out of it at a full 14.5v.

Youre welcome man. I have all DC amps in my 'voy and i love it. The sq from them is amazing. Also just to put it in here to make everyone aware, the 5.0k does click when you turn it on. This is 100% normal as there are two big relays inside it that engage when the remote wire is applied voltage so dont be alarmed if you have this happen, it is perfectly normal. I will try to upload guts pics of the amp on here in a sec too but it may not work well since im mobile.

If someone is in the market for a DC Audio 5.0k amplifier then look here for the results i got out of my 5.0k. I am running just one of these amps up to my single AA SMD 18" dual 1 ohm sub in a 5.5 cubic foot box tuned to 30Hz. The test was made with my sub wired in parallel to achieve a nominal impedance of .5 ohms and the battery voltage was 13.7v. The clamp results are as follows: 30Hz tone: 1454.583 watts at 1.41 ohms 35Hz tone: 2525.54 watts at 1.63 ohms 40Hz tone: 4061.64 watts at 1.37 ohms 45Hz tone: 5291.84 watts at .976 ohms 50Hz tone: 5161.32 watts at .971 ohms 55Hz tone: 5215.0 watts at .939 ohms 60Hz tone: 4778.4 watts at .912 ohms Average impedance rise and wattage from 30-60Hz: 4096.76 watts at 1.173 ohms Overall i am really satisfied with my DC 5.0k even though the low end tones have less power than my old amp (two Massive Audio DB8000's strapped at .5 ohms nominal) but the higher notes have a lot more power and the clarity of my 5.0k is amazing. With my DB8000's the clarity was alright but the bass was really punchy, with the 5.0k the bass seems to have a slower run off and a more even tone. Plus with this amp, it doesnt get warm at all when my engine is running, if i bump the amp at around half volume with the truck off for a total of 3 hours (i sit in the parking lot at class until my next night class starts) only one half of the amp is warm but its not enough to burn you like my old DB8000's.

That looks like your battery itself is fine just the casing is overheating. Is this part of your battery near your engine or your radiator? I dont think your battery is ready to explode, just was overheated from the engine or any other nearby component that is really hot and caused the case to give way. Id see if you can possibly get a steel case for around the side and possibly part of the top to protect it from heat. Maybe if you really want to be overkill make a protective case and put some second skin or something on it to try and fend the heat from going through the metal onto the battery. Just if you do make a case make sure you have a good amount of room around your terminals to protect against a short.

I hope you guys dont think this is a post dump but heres what i had to say about my future vision hid's. I know its a long story but i have a great experience with them in my envoy: I placed an order on August 14th for the purchase of 880 fog lamps; 9005 high beams, and a 42mm bi-xenon projector kit. I am very pleased in all the great customer service that everyone at FutureVision has provided me both before and after the sale. Prior to the sale I was well educated by everyone at FutureVision of the tasks I would need to perform on my truck, how to make everything work, what i would need to get, and what would be best recommended. I had sent numerous emails back and forth before I have made the final decision to purchase HID's from FutureVision just to make sure I could install HID's in my truck and do it the correct way. After speaking with several workers at FutureVision, I was advised that the 880, 9005, and 42mm projector kits would be perfect for my truck. I purchased those three model lights for my 2004 GMC Envoy with a 4300k bulb color and all the lights except for my high beam would run off a 35w ballast. For my high beams I asked the guys at FutureVision which would be best for far distance and brightness and was advised that for as rare as I would use the high beam that the 55w would be best because it would shine brighter and not really decrease the bulb life since it wont be used a lot in my truck. I placed the order on August 14th of 2011 and I received the order on August 23rd 2011. For me living in the United States and on the opposite part of North America from where FutureVision is located I can truly say that 7 business days for my order to arrive is extremely fast. I was expecting to wait for over 2 weeks but it never happened. When the package arrived I decided to take everything out and look at it all before I was going to start the install process. The kits included all the hardware and diagrams you would ever need. The pictures on the install diagrams are big and easy to read. Everything for the install was included. The mounting brackets for bolting down the ballasts, the ballasts, the bulbs, the adapter wires, and even two sided tape to mount the ballasts to any flat surface. Just seeing all the accessories that came with it, I was already pleased and then looking at the quality of the bulbs and ballasts made me really feel confident in my purchase. When I installed them in my truck with the low beams being retro-fitted and the high and fog lamps just being plug and play I can happily say that I am extremely satisfied in my purchase. The lights are extremely bright and have a fast turn on and warm up time. Whenever I drive with my High beams on, it is like broad day light for how bright they are and they shine for 5 blocks down the road so this is a great benefit from my old stock Halogen bulbs. Another great benefit I have gained from my HID install is that even if I were to drive around with just the fog lamps it would shine over 15 feet in front of my truck. My stock Halogen bulbs wouldn't shine more than 6 feet from the fog light. I also noticed that everything on the road is a lot easier to identify. Street signs are extremely easy to read at night, license plates light up, and the best part is that the reflective tape on police cars will shine back even at very far distances to alert you of what lies ahead. After I had them installed for over 3 weeks I had ran into a small problem with one of my hid bulbs. Sometimes my one fog lamp would illuminate on first start, other times I would have to shut the fogs off and back on and it would ignite. I spoke with Bruno from FutureVision through an email and he advised me what the problem could be with the ballast or even possibly the relay or bulb. I had decided to check over the entire system for that one bulb that was having trouble igniting in the cool weather. I swapped several ballasts around with that same bulb to no prevail that the light would still turn on and off intermittently. I then swapped the bulb to the other side of my truck and it followed over to that side as well to prove it was the bulb. I then checked my relays and they were fully functional and operating at peak performance. So once I found out that the bulb may have a problem I emailed Bruno back and he had sent me out a replacement 880 fog light along with one relay for the trucks projector since the one relay would make a buzzing noise when I unlocked the truck no matter what side I placed it on. All in all I am definitely happy to say that I am really glad I purchased my HID's through FutureVision.com. Even though after a few weeks I did run into two very small problems, the guys at FutureVision, in particular Bruno went above and beyond in helping me resolve the problem. I was guided throughout the entire purchase and install process and learned a lot of great things from the guys at FutureVision. Yes you may think to yourself that the prices are higher than the other companies out there but as the website states "you simply get what you pay for. In our case you get even more!!". This quote is very accurate because I myself have truly gotten even more from FutureVision. They had given me a discount for purchasing all my lights at once, friendly and knowledgeable customer service, and above all an excellent product that I can happily say is great to have installed in my truck. I will definitely be purchasing my future HID's from FutureVisionHID.com because of the great success I have had with their quality products and employees. I will recommend anyone and everyone I know to buy FutureVision to get a high quality product. Thank You to everyone at FutureVisionHID for providing me such above and beyond customer service and one excellent product for my vehicle. I truly appreciate all of the assistance you have all given me with this purchase and for building such a high quality HID light application. _______________ now to continue this, i received the replacement bulb and relay for my hid's which were defective and they work perfect for me now so i have a 100% glitch free lighting system. Future vision is a lot more expensive than other companies but tbh i am glad i paid up for their product because the quality is amazing. Plus if you are good, you can do what i did and get all the lights you need and ask for a discount. Thats what i did. For your lights, i very highly and strongly recommend you get projectors. I use projectors for my low beams and just them. My fog lamps dont have any projectors on them since i couldnt get the damn things out of my bumper but i had my dad drive the truck around and i drove my moms car and my dads truck and the fog lamps are down so low and dont bounce light upward so i didnt really need projectors, nor is the light scattered. What i did was get new headlight lens' from rockauto.com for my envoy. I then went to my co-workers house who had a heat gun, heated up the one headlight i couldnt just pry apart and then i removed the lens. Then i took my dads dremel and cut out the opening from the light socket to fit the projectors back piece in. Then i put it all together, used 100% pure silicone (clear) and let it sit for 2 whole days then installed them. They work great, have no leaks or condensation, and shine really far and are extremely bright. Retrofitting isnt as hard as it seems, honestly the hardest part i ran into was getting my one headlight apart. The one new headlight came apart without any heat, the other one i had to heat so hot that it was starting to melt the plastic in some spots then it came apart. Other than that, just be patient, observe what you are doing, and take your time and it will turn out great.

I believe verizon killed their unlimited data for basic phone web and email usage because there were so many people like me who were stealing it for other use (tethering). With 10g i would use that up like its nothing so i need my unlimited plan or id go over it but i got my first smart phone about 5 years ago and i am grand-fathered into their plan with unlimited data as long as i keep the contract going with verizon. If you can at least get unlimited web for it you will be just fine. There is no need to get their wifi tethering package which has a very low cap for data usage on it and trust me when i say you will exceed it like its nothing especially if you stream media through it, download crap with it, etc.