kickass audio

sorry for all the posts but i stumbled upon another post about the same issue by you where you were wondering about the reverse gear signal wire going into your radios harness. You HAVE to use this with your backup camera or else the camera will never be engaged. Now for this you can tackle it one of 2 ways. 1.) Get a 2 way rocker switch at radioshack and hook it up to a 12v+ source that will stay energized all the time. Connect this to one of the connectors on the switch and the other connector will go to your headunits reverse gear wire. When you apply a +12v to this wire, it will engage the camera feature on your radio to show you where you are backing up into. 2.) Get a long run of wire (16-18 gauge) and extend the wire to the rear of your vehicle to where your wires are for your stop/backup lights. You will need to remove the light bulb that is illuminated when you kick the car into reverse and use a DMM to detect which wire is supplied with power when you are in reverse and which one is grounded when you are not in reverse. Once you locate which wire is switched, take the reverse gear signal wire and use a wire tap to connect it to the wire of the light bulb. I recommend you perform the first one as it will be a lot easier for you. Also, no offense but i think step 2 will be somewhat over your level of skill to perform.

That tube that is behind your dash near your h/u is just for integrity of your dashboard should you be involved in an accident. You COULD ground the wire to this but it would be a lot easier to do like i mentioned above and just take it to the floor panel or to a spot on your firewall.

What i would so is disregard the dimmer switch cables as you will NOT be able to use them with any aftermarket headunit. There arent any that i know of that are capable of using the stock dimming feature used in your dashboard controls. To ground your headunit, see if you can maybe cut off the half ring terminal that comes off your headunit itself and extend it. I would extend it to the floor and like a typical amp setup, drill a hole (MAKE SURE THERE ARE NO GAS LINES OR ANYTHING ON THE UNDERSIDE BEFORE YOU DRILL!!!) and then sand away any paint/primer from the surface and ground it there. Then to help protect against any rust/corrosion, i always give it a quick shot of spray paint on the surface over the screw hold after the ground is secured. I would do it just like this... 1.) Cut off the half ring terminal on the wiring harness that came with your aftermarket headunit 2.) Get the same gauge wire (possibly like 16 or 18 gauge) and make a run long enough for it to reach the floor board of your vehicle. 3.) Once you have the length of the extended ground wire figured out, twist both the newly cut wire and the ground coming off your headunit together and solder them together. Once they are soldered together, wrap the joint up with electrical tape tightly or shrink wrap if you have it. 4.) Now go under your dash and pull back the carpeting a little bit to expose the floor board panels. Find a flat surface that is clear of any wires, gas lines, brake lines, etc. and drill a small 1/8 hole into the metal. 5.) Get a ring terminal that will fit over the extended wire and cut and crimp the ring terminal on the wire tightly. 6.) Get a small stainless steel screw and washer to secure the ground in place. 7.) Sand away any paint and primer from the surface of which the ring terminal will sit onto and then screw the ring terminal into the pre-drilled hole you made previously 8.) Make sure this ground is secure and cannot be rocked side to side in any way and then put some paint over the surface and if you drilled on the bottom of the floor, i recommend using some putty of somekind to seal the hole from any water that may enter.. 9.) you just successfully grounded your headunit and it will function.

I have the t1652-s speakers and for the tweeters and mids i have them all on 14 gauge wire. The longest run in my envoy is around 15 feet. Its overkill for it and i know it but i got a damn good deal on all of it. Only two of my midrange woofers do not have 14 wired directly to them and they are in the rear doors. The reason i didnt do it to them is because GM put a damn molex connector on the b pillar where the door harness is and i cant get around it at all. What i did to get around it was to wire the 14ga wire i ran from my dc audio 175.4 amp to the stock wiring harness behind the radio in the dash. So pretty much i have a 17 some odd foot run of 14 gauge going into a 16 gauge cable run for my rear doors and it works great.

youre welcome bro. Its what i had and it drove me crazy until i figured out what was causing it.

you nailed it on the head jconn. I had the gain set lower on the 3sixty too and tried to set the volume within the 3sixty program to -8db and it still was too much power. And op, heres what i did to adjust the volume on my tweeters. Play a song with a decent amount of highs and turn up the deck to the max it can go before any distortion or clipping, then listen to just the tweeters (i muted my door speakers). If you hear any little bit of crackling noise (sounds almost like rice krispies when you put them in some milk) then you need to turn the volume down on the tweeter channels just a little until it goes away. Another good way to see if its just a little too much power for the tweeter is to listen to some voices because the crossover isnt going to kill all the freqs from 3khz and below. If the singer says something with a "s" listen to it closely. if it sounds like they have a slight lisp in their voice and you KNOW for a fact that they dont sound like that then its too high. I know it all sounds stupid but trust me, i did it and it works perfectly and i still have more than the 75w rms going to my tweeters and they are doing great.

I have a passive and active system for my t1652-s tweeters. After i blew one of them by having them connected just to the amp i decided it would be better to just put the crossover it came with on for safe measures. I have it set to bi amp (even tho im only running the two tweeters off the crossover) and i have my 3sixty.2 set at 3KHz at a 24db crossover point and it is set to highpass. I noticed that when i set it to bandpass of 3KHz - 23KHz it was cutting out my highs a TON so i would only do it as highpass on the 3sixty. I am running them on a dc audio 175.4 amp with 14 gauge wire for the speaker wires and have not had any problems since i ran the crossover to just the tweeters. The mids i just have set to bandpass at a 12db slope on 65Hz - 3KHz and have no problems. When i get my SMD installed in a few weeks i am going to raise the crossover on the mids to 80Hz and make it a 24db slope since i dont need bass going to them since the smd will take good care of that. Also, just because i wanted to, i set the dc audio amp on the tweeter channels to highpass at 300Hz (thats as high as it goes) just as a precaution. I have the amp wired so that channel 3+4 are for the mids while channel 1+2 are for the tweeters. If you get lost in any of this hit me up and i can tell you all the specifics that i did to make it work. Ive had it installed since the beginning of june and have only blown one tweeter but that was totally my fault since i didnt have the crossovers set right and im feeding the mids and highs a decent amount of power over what RF rates them at and dont have any issues.

it sounds 100% like what i had with my old car and my co-workers truck. It is usually associated with a bad ground or power connection. For both vehicles ive worked on, i just had to relocate the ground to a harder surface such as a strut tower bolt or the frame if you can get to it. If its not that then make sure you do not have any paint on the ground area. If THAT doesnt help then check all your positive wire connections. I would give a little tug on the connections and see if they are loose at all. for example, pull the ring terminal that comes off the battery, then pull both sides of the fuse block, then check the wire on your amp. Ive also seen it where you can have a single strand of wire is not shorting out such as your positive terminal touching the ground. Either way i will guarantee you that it is either high resistance in the power wire or a loose connection somewhere. Ive had this happen so many times so if you need any help with it hit me up and ill get back to you asap.

its a little less power than you are looking for on the subwoofer side, but i have a alpine mrv-f450 amp. http://www.crutchfield.com/p_500MRVF450/Alpine-MRV-F450.html?tp=115&tab=features_and_specs it does 50 watts on 4 channels at a 4 ohm load and 60 watts on 4 channels at 2 ohms. the subwoofer outputs 200 watts on the subwoofer at 4 ohms. This amp also has a custom paint job and is metallic red. Ill sell it for $450 shipped or if you have an offer let me know.

I agree 100% with Nates post. I fried one of my first amps by this. I kept taking the amp in and out to mess with it and one time, the positive came out of the terminal and touched the ground. It didnt spark but it shorted out the amp and even though it worked soon enough i killed the amp. My lesson i learned from it is to connect the wires to my amps FIRST, then hook them up to the battery. Oh well, live and learn. lol.

sounds like i have a vehicle made for theives to take and mess with. DAMN!!!!! what else do you think i can do?

Im not too sure about the eq you are looking at as well as your headunit voltage it outputs but ill tell you what i found with my 3sixty and radio setup: 1.) My headunit (Alpine IVA-W205) has 4 volt RMS RCA outputs for the sub, front, and rear channels 2.) When i set the eq on flat on my h/u and played the 1000Hz test tone, i could turn the volume all the way up to 3.97v before it started to clip/distort 3.) When i knew how far i could turn up the radio before it started distorting, i tuned the eq on my 3sixty to be completely flat and then i set the levels. After i set my levels on the 3sixty, i maxed out at a 5.25v RMS output from the 3sixty.2 for all the channel outputs. The 3sixty.2 is made to run at a max of 6v outputs RMS since its also a line driver along with a eq. I cannot get my 3sixty to get the 6v rms without having a badly clipped signal. Now with how my amp is setup, its just currently my dc audio 175.4 and the gains are set on the amp to be about 1/8 of a inch from being all the way down. The 175.4 is made for a max of 6v for RCA inputs and im feeding it 5.25v and its not distorted a single bit and it sounds great and performs great. Point is, even though your headunit puts out a high amount of voltage, as long as its not clipping, theres a slim to none chance you will actually get the voltage the manufacturer claims. In order for me to achieve the full 6v outputs from my 3sixty, i will have to turn the gains all the way up and this will in turn make a clipped sine-wave that is pretty much DC voltage since its so insanely flattened out at the top and bottom and the slopes are almost vertical. I dont see how you can kill a amp with a higher voltage going into the amps input as long as its not clipping or distorted at all.

I agree with skittles, i paid a good chunk of change for my 3sixty.2 but i LOVE how it sounds. Heres how i have my 3sixty setup: front channels: used for my mid bass/6.5" speakers in each door rear channels: used for my tweeters in the a-pillars sub channel: used a y-adapter to couple two rca's on the single rca input and is used for my woofer the outputs are the same deal. I dont have the center channel used at all but i may eventually. And as far as the bluetooth dying, i have yet to have this happen and i bought the unit used. Plus just as a side note, do NOT attempt to use the 3sixty software on a windows 7 machine. even with the compatibility mode that windows 7 and vista feature, you cannot run the program right. It will run for a few minutes then drop the damn connection from your processor. I tried everything to make it work and im a computer technician and i couldnt get it to stay connected longer than 10 minutes. I just have another laptop setup for all the electronics and diagnostics for my vehicles. Its running windows xp media center with service pack 3 32-bit. Its running on a dell inspiron 1521 laptop and the bluetooth module is internal and is a dell 355 bluetooth module.

Just my little 2 cents. I have a rockford fosgate 3sixty.2 running my entire system (so far just the mids and highs) and i have my crossover point on the 3sixty setup so that the mids are bandpass at 80Hz-3000Hz with a 24dB octave. Then my highs are set to highpass at 3000Hz on a 24dB octave. I have the unit running so that the front inputs will operate the mids and the rear inputs will operate the highs. Ive had this setup running with my dc audio 175.4 with 0 problems (other than me blowing a tweeter but thats totally my fault, i gave them a bit too much power the first week, hahaha) and my system sounds crystal clean and i have yet to use a RTA to ensure the automatic settings my 3sixty did for me are accurate but i like how it sounds now. If you can, id say save up some money and get yourself a 3sixty.2 or 3sixty.3 when it comes out. Or if you want to go the cheap way (havent tried it so i cant say anything about experience) you can get f-mods that you put on the rca inputs of your 175.4 that are lowpass. Get one thats lowpass around 4000Hz and then set your 175.4 to highpass at 80Hz. This would work but it wouldnt be all that accurate. Hope this helps!!

I tried to get mine working on my HTC Ozone phone i had and it was a epic fail. It would find my device and connect but i could never get the damn drivers working on the phone. Palm is your best bet if you want it to be handheld.

What i used to tune mine was to get my old laptop out and reimage it and set it up for windows xp 32 bit. I tried it with windows 7 32 and 64 bit and it worked but right in the middle of tuning, it would disconnect the connection i had with my 3sixty.2 and i would have to reconnect to it. Total pain in the ass. Right now i have a laptop i may put in my truck as a car-puter and it is just windows xp media center edition with sp3 installed. Its a dell inspiron 1521 notebook pc with a 15.4" screen. I have not had a single problem using it on xp, only like i said with windows 7. Even when i tried the compatibility mode within windows 7, it still disconnected my 3sixty. And if you need help with tuning it let me know, i used the tpi 440 plus oscope since i bought it a few months back online and used audacity to create test tones for it. Then i set the gains with a 1KHz test tone and set the subwoofer gains on the 3sixty with a 40Hz test tone. Also before you set the 3sixty, ensure you flatten out the eq completely on your HU and 3sixty. Once the gains were set i went into the 3sixty and selected a new file of creating a OEM setup, even though i have a aftermarket headunit installed. The OEM will automatically adjust the eq to try and flatten it out the best it can, aftermarket you have to do yourself. Then after that was said and done i did some fine tuning by ear and im going to stop by at a local shop and get on the termlab and use the RTA they have like meade did to tune it even further.

You know what i use to clean up headlights that doesnt cost half as much as the "deal" he gave you? Either get step 1 Meguiars paint cleaner and a clean rag or cloth and put some on the headlight and rub in a circle with a fair amount of pressure and it cleans the lens. It has a very small amount of sand in them to help rub off the dirt and stuff from your lens being fogged up. Or you can also use some rubbing compound (preferably the kind that is hard and you have to add some water to each time you use it) then i get a buffing pad and soak it with water and squeeze the water out of it until its damp then put the rubbing compound on it and rub in a circle again with little pressure as this can damage your lens. I had deeply damaged lenses on my headlights and fog lights were pitted from the previous owner taking the truck on stone roads. I took the rubbing compound on the lights and it got them back into a good condition, they still have deep nicks but they arent half as bad as when i got the truck. Just my 2 cents on what you can try next time.

Yea sounds like a pain in the ass, ill just deal with it. I thought it may be a easy way around it. The remote pages me and says the truck was started via the ignition but i wanted to make sure its not going to be easy to hotwire the truck and take off with it. And somewhat off topic from the viper 5901, i was thinking to getting some long lag bolts and bolting down my box through where the cargo tie down straps are in the rear of my truck. Then i was going to weld them to the frame of the truck. Do you think this will be strong enough to do or just bolt them down and thats it.

Alright, so i have had my viper 5901 installed in my 2004 GMC Envoy for nearly a year and i just found a security flaw that i dont like. If i take the key and insert it in the ignition while the system is armed, it will set off my alarm and page me on the remote however the truck will still run and i can drive it all around and not have any problems. Does anyone know if there is a way to make it so that when the alarm goes off to disable the entire ignition of the truck? I want to make it so that if the truck is armed that it will not turn the engine over with a key in the ignition. Also, i was thinking to getting a glass shatter sensor for my alarm as i dont have that. Is there a shatter sensor that also has a shock sensor built into it? Right now there is no glass sensor and the shock sensor is only good for if i hit the truck from the b pillar to the very front. The brain is mounted up under my dash deep and is tied to the support frame of the dash/firewall. From the b pillar to the back of the truck, i can hit it with a jackhammer and not set off the shock sensor no matter how sensitive i adjust the alarm. And finally, i know you need an extra module to add other sensors to monitor but im not sure what one i need. Right now my rear doors rarely set off the alarm if you open them up from the inside of the truck with the system armed. I want to make it so that they are just like the front doors and the tailgate so that if its open, it will set off the alarm. I currently have 4 switches for the door setup to actually set off the alarm if they are tripped. They are my front doors, tailgate, and rear glass latch. Thank you all for your help as always in advance.

I got my 1/0 knu wire from him tuesday this week. It took awhile to get to me for some odd reason but none the less, it got to me and in perfect shape. When i was concerned about where it was due to it not arriving after 7 days i asked him and he was cool about the entire deal and said he would get on it and sure enough he did and assured me it would get to me but for some reason it was taking longer for me. Then 3 days later it came on my door step for me. The wire isnt in use right now until i get 3 more xs d3100's but it will be used when i get them all and start to make my subwoofer box and finish getting it designed. So overall, very smoothe transaction process, excellent prices, fast shipping (even though it was longer than i expected but then again i never ordered anything from outside of the us so i didnt know how long it would take), and it arrived to me as expected and in perfect condition. I would highly recommend buying from bre2ts again and if he sells something i am interested in, i would sure buy from him again. Thanks for the great sale man!!!

So my sister has a 2006 Chevy Impala with 60 some odd thousand miles on it and she has a O2 sensor problem. I dont know the exact code it gives as my dad had it checked out but it is stating that the bank 1 sensor is missing from the circuit. The guy who scanned the code said it was before the catalytic converter. So i jacked up the car and made sure it was plugged in and it was. I also checked all the sensors on the manifold, exhaust, etc. and none of them were loose. I unplugged them from the harness and put them back on and they clicked in place and locked in good. I didnt unscrew any of the O2 sensors because i didnt know if a faulty O2 sensor would throw a code saying it wasnt found by the computer. If anyone has something to suggest other than taking out the O2 sensor on that bank and sensor and replace it please let me know.

good catch on that. i didnt think of the 3sixty doing that. i did that to mine once before too.

have you perhaps tried to bypass the 3sixty? Try to hook up your rca wires directly to the amps and not through the 3sixty. Its a slim chance that it isnt working right. Also, since your 3sixty seems to be sensing a signal on its input, if you have a digital multi meter, try to put the positive on the middle part of the RCA and the negative probe on the outside of the rca (the outer piece that is thin and round) Set your DMM to AC volts and see if it reads any power. If it doesnt then your 3sixty is defective. Or you can do like i said before and bypass the 3sixty entirely or maybe save your configuration by going into the file>save as. Then reset everything on the 3sixty to default settings. When i hooked up my 3sixty.2 on saturday it worked really weird until i set all the settings on it just right. And maybe as a final resort, if the steps above yeild no results, try to go to radioshack or if you have one yourself, get a headphone to rca cable. Then get your ipod or other mp3 player with headphone outputs and hook one end to the ipod and the other end to your amp. Before you turn on the radio turn the ipod volume all the way down as the volume is somewhat loud on the headphone outputs. Then turn on your amp with the ipod hooked up to the rca inputs and see if it plays volume. If it does then that means your problem is between the 3sixty.2 and the amps, possibly a busted rca wire in there. If it doesnt then it seems to be an issue with your amps.

Not a problem man.

Ok I what if the battery is under the back seat? My car's battery is under the rear seat. Is it still ok? Also, I used my full length of wire instead of cutting it so around 17 ft of 0 gauge wire from the back seat to the trunk LOL In that case i would ground it right at the battery since you have all that wire floating around. Dont want to take a chance of it getting cut and shorting out on your body.