kickass audio

Alright bro, there are so many things to try with this idk what to tell you without seeing what happens next so sorry if it seems like im screwing with you or anything. I ran into several stupid things like this with my system. Hell even today i had almost shat myself with my system. I had it metered and after i got done burping it i decided to play some music to see where it gets metered at. Well when i played the music the SMD was going full force but my mids and highs didnt play a single note. I looked at the amp and it was not in protect and was only slightly warm, i then looked at the signal indicators on my 3sixty.2 and they were working. Then i shut it off and tested the resistance of all my speakers to make sure i didnt blow them up (thats my famous trick from all my previous installs, rofl) and none were blown. I turned it back on and it suddenly worked. idk what was up with that but oh well, it works fine now. lol.

Thanks guys, i appreciate the fast reply. I am going to try and install the SS Damp Pro tomorrow as well as the speaker tweaker pads as long as my dad is in better shape tomorrow, today he is getting really sick.

Hahaha, idk what to say. Maybe those high-low converters are shit? It shouldnt clip if you are just starting to take the gain and turn it up on the high-low converter. Maybe it is correct for it doing that as the high-low converter is made to take the 40+volts that comes out of your headunits speaker terminals and turn it down to a low voltage like 2-6v that rca wires can carry without any problems. Do you happen to have a Digital Multi Meter? If you do i want you to try this and report back to me with the results. First, you need to know where your headunit clips at (you already know this) and how high you can turn the little sensitivity knobs on the high-low converter before the dd-1 shows it has clipping. Once you have both of these figured out, proceed with step 1. 1.) With your headunit at full volume before it starts to clip, play a 0db track. It doesnt matter if its the 1000Hz or 40Hz one, just play a track on the DD-1 disc that is at 0db. 2.) Take the positive (red) wire from your digital multi meter and insert it in the opening of where the rca cables inner part goes in. 3.) Take the negative (black) wire from your digital multi meter and touch it on the outer jacket of the rca connector which you can visually see when looking at the converter. 4.) Set your DMM to AC Voltage (start it at like 200v AC and then if it has a low reading, turn it down some more. Dont turn it down anymore than 10v AC on your DMM or you can burn the dmm out) 5.) Read the voltage you see on the screen of your DMM. It should be in the range of 2-6v (idk what your output is rms on those converters so i cant say what it should be other than somewhere in that range) 6.) If your voltage isnt in that range then your high-low converter is crippling your output and you should really think about a new headunit. If it is in that range then it is perfectly fine and you can then set your gains on the amps. Let me know what your voltage is when you hook up the DMM to the high-low converter. Tip: If you have a problem with connecting the red wire and black wire off your DMM to the output of one of the channels on the high-low converters terminal, do this. Connect a single RCA wire to the high-low converter and go in the back where your amp is. That same wire you have hooked up just simply touch the red probe (positive) of the digital multi meter on the center conductor of the RCA (the part that is inside the outer ring and sticks out the longest), then touch the black probe on the outer ring of the RCA connector (the part that holds it down when you are inserting the rca cable in fully) I forgot to mention before that the high-low converter shouldnt really have the knobs turned up very far, they should be down pretty low since if it is up high, you are boosting the hell out of your signal and clipping it to all hell.

Thats not bad, as long as its the same brand you should be able to plug it right into the back of the radio without any problems. I had the same problem before and i got another pioneer radio that actually worked and never re-wired them up, just connected it to the back of the new radio that worked. To disconnect the harness coming out of the back of your radio, there is a tiny retainer clip that you have to depress in order for it to allow you to pull it straight out. Once you do that just disconnect the harness that came with the new radio that works and compare the colors to make sure they all match up. If they do, make sure the plug connector looks the same. If it does, just drop the new radio in and it should fire up right away.

Yea the reason it probably didnt work with setting the high low converter is that it probably has a lower voltage than the sensitivity of the DD-1 itself. Dont give up just yet, there is a way to get around this and its fairly simple and wont involve another headunit purchase. In your DD-1 manual, look at page 7 and 8. It has the entire details of how to set the high low converters. You should seek assistance with this unless you can clearly see the DD-1 while you are up behind your radio adjusting the gain levels of the high-low converter. Here are my steps to get them set (more detailed than the dd-1): 1.) Disconnect all the speaker connections from all your amplifiers (dont want to play these test tones with your speakers connected, you can smoke them if you do) 2.) Insert the DD-1 disc and play track 1 (40Hz at 0db) and set your radio to repeat so you dont have to keep starting the track over if you reach the end of its play time 3.) Turn the headunit all the way up until the point you found earlier where it distorts (this is what you did or should have in the other post i made where you connected the red wire off the DD-1 to the positive speaker wire off the headunits harness, and connected the black wire off the DD-1 to the negative of the same speaker wire coming off the headunits harness) 4.) Connect the rca's coming from one of your high-low converters to one of your amplifiers 5.) Connect the red wire coming off the dd-1 to the positive wire of just ONE of the channels of your amplifier (if it is a 2 or 4 channel, if its a monoblock disregard this), then connect the black wire off the dd-1 to the ground wire of the same amplifier you are testing. 6.) Turn the gain knob on your amplifier ALL THE WAY DOWN, turn off any frequency settings such as crossover points (if you can switch the crossover to full do that to save the need to adjust the screws on the amp) 7.) Once the dd-1 is connected and powered on to your amplifier, look at the dd-1 while you turn up just one of the gain knobs of the high-low converter until the light clips (this part you may need the assistance of a friend or neighbor, etc if you cant see the dd-1 while you are setting the gains on the high-low converters) 8.) Once you set one side of the high-low converter, swap the red wire from the channel it is connected to now from step 5 to the other channel of the same amp. 9.) Set the gain the same on the high-low converter the same as you did in step 6 10.) You successfully set the gains on the high-low converter. Notes: If step 4 was confusing, heres another way to look at it. Lets say you have a 2 channel amplifier for your door speakers. Connect just one rca wire from the left channel output of the high-low converter and then put it to the left channel RCA input on your 2 channel amp. Once thats connected, connect the red wire off the DD-1 to the left channel positive speaker terminal of the amp and then the black wire off the dd-1 to the ground of your amp (vehicles ground point). When you have this hooked up and the radio is at its max volume before it clips (you found this out in a few posts back), start to slowly turn the gain knob up for the left channel output of your high-low converter until your dd-1 shows that it has found distortion. Once you reach this point back it off a little until the distortion led no longer illuminates. Once that is done you successfully set the gains of your one output of the high-low converter. You now need to change over to the other side of the high-low converter and swap the red-wire the dd-1 is connected to on your 2 channel amp to the right channel positive, adjust the gain knob on the high-low and call it a day. Its that easy, its amazing that i dont own a dd-1 but i know how to do all this stuff for it, lol. If only i lived near you, i would totally help you set the gains for free.

Yea smd is deff a great site. I learned about 75% of my tricks from the site and the rest was either from good old google or experience i had from screwing around with it all. My setup sure does kick ass and rocks. This is what i had today for termlab results: 146.6 db on the dash 148.1 db in the kick 151.7 db next to the port of the box Peak freq on the termlab was 49Hz Peak freq from my ears seems to be like 35-38Hz This was with the windows rolled up, doors shut, tailgate shut as well. I played the song Its Doja from Ren Da Heat Monsta and got a 135 on the termlab. I also had the bassboost all the way off on the db8000's since i didnt want to do any of that crap anymore and was playing with absolutely no distortion. If your car is unibody grounding to the strut tower is alright but a direct ground from the rear battery (if you have one) to the front battery will help out a ton for resistance. If you ever get stuck feel free to pm me, im on this site almost daily and it is deff the best site i have ever been a member of. There are so many great things to learn and great people on here to get help from or tips to the trade. Yea SMD has their a-holes but hey every site has them. lol

Just the mechman. Putting a dual alt on my engine is a pain in the ass and I didn't want to do it.

why you gotta hold out on the rest of us? I think he is since there is a rule on here about sharing and doing illegal stuff like that. I dont think im in the wrong for sharing how i do it since i didnt actually do it and provide it to anybody. If you put the time to google "youtube video downloader" you would easily see the dvdvideosoft program. The program is pretty robust and i use it almost daily when i am on my laptop, for things even more than just youtube video and song downloads.

I used to be able to use a program called "dvd videosoft" it is an entire suite of software that you can use to copy music, edit music, make videos, etc. They have two features that allow you to just copy and paste the url of the youtube video in the program and download it as either a mp3 or a mpeg video to see the video. This used to work 100% for me but recently youtube is changing to their newer player which is harder to decode and download with dvdvideosoft. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesnt. Maybe you can get lucky and download the latest version from their site http://www.dvdvideos...eo-software.htm and get it to download but im not gonna guarantee it. What i do now is try to find it on frostwire and i typically download the entire album. If it isnt on there then what i do is open good old audacity and get the youtube video up. In audacity i set the default recording device to the playback device of my soundcard on my laptop. Then what i do since i have windows 7 is i put the windows side by side. Next to ensure you dont have random tones get recorded go into your sound properties and mute all the programs you have opened except for windows playback and your web browser in which the youtube video resides. What i do next is wait for the full youtube video to download (there is a light grey bar that will move across in the timer bar of the video) once the entire bar is grey, only Then i press the red record button on audacity to begin recording a sound file and i will then press play on the youtube video. Once the video finishes its play time i then stop the audacity recording. I then take that same recording and export it as a mp3 (note: for audacity you need a custom file, it tells you what it is, just google it and download it for free) and then i open it with the dvdvideosoft mp3 cutting program and get rid of the short amount of silence from the beginning and end of the track you recorded. It wont sound all that hot and you may not have good bass reproduction but its better than nothing right? edit: if you download the program i provided the link for, the newest version of their program will work with your youtube link perfectly fine.

It is the old as hell Kicker SoloBaric subwoofer. It is similar to the current Solobaric kicker sells but in the square version. It was the model before they created the l5, l7, and solox. And kicker does make 10" l5, l7, and solox but that i can assure you 150%, hell even my entire system, that it isnt a solox. I dare you to toss anywhere near 2000w rms at that sub and see how long it lasts before you burn the coil up. If i were you, save your money and buy something else. You can get something a lot better on here that will sound a hell of a lot better.

Hello, I just received my order for the trunk pack of SS Damplifier Pro today and since we have the competition promo going on, i decided to get the pair of speaker tweakers just for the hell of it. I got them along with the trunk pack and the roller tool you sell. The Damp Pro seems like it is going to do a perfect job for my liftgate of my Envoy to eliminate the rattles and noise i get from it when the bass hits. I just have a question about the speaker tweaker pads. I understand you need to install them directly behind the door speaker but there will be a slight problem with this. My door speakers dont have anything behind them except for the door panel itself. The door panel that is there is just the outer part of the door that you can tap on from the exterior of the vehicle. This is about 1-2 inches from the speakers in the door. Will it be fine for me to glue those down on that part of the door? I need to do it there because its the only place i can really put them so it has a solid surface to mount onto. If you can tell me if its fine to mount them on that part of my door i will go ahead and do it, or if you suggest i do something else like zip-tie them right behind the opening of which the door speaker is installed on. I dont know which would work best for these since i have never used them before and i want the best out of my system. Thanks in advance and i am already happy with the look, feel, and the best is the smell of it. I have the entire trunk pack of Damp Pro sitting in my bedroom until i install it tomorrow (weather permitting of course) and it doesnt smell one bit. I am so glad it doesnt have any smell to it.

Alright thats great to do. You can turn the eq up just a bit but dont be the guy who turns the bass up to the max to compensate for a weak ass amp that cant produce bass. lol. You dont want to do that by any means because the money you put toward the DD-1 would be completely wasted on the spot. edit: if you do notice your bass is very minimal after you set the gains on the radio and amp, you can turn the bassboost up WITH the DD-1 until the distortion/clip light illuminates. You would want to set the gains on the amp properly first with absolutely no bass boost. Once the gains are set on the amp, radio, and your high-low converter then you can turn the bassboost knob up on your amp slowly while playing a 40Hz track at -0db and then turn it up until the distortion light comes on the DD-1. Back the bassboost off slowly until the distortion light comes on. That will be the absolute max you can set the bass-boost without damaging your system. If it has too much bass for you, you can obviously turn the bassboost down to your liking but dont go and turn it up any further than you figured in this step.

I was thinking this when i signed off awhile ago. I would NEVER start slicing and dicing at the stock harness that is in the dash. I have always used an adapter that plugs into the stock harness that is already there in the dash. Those adapters always wire up color for color with the wires that come off the aftermarket radio you are installing. What i did to save money and time was go to Advance Auto Parts and they have a ton of wire harnesses for radios cheap. I bought the one for my 04 envoy at Advance for $9.99 last fall. They are a hell of a lot easier to wire up as you have all the room to do so whereas in the dash you have limited room and finding the wires isnt as easy as you think. Plus the stock wires are NOT labeled in any way at all so you never truly know which wire does what. You are relying on someone else who screwed with it to find out and sometimes it isnt always accurate. This is what you should need for your car you are installing: http://www.metraonline.com/part/70-1858 To ensure it is take the stock radio out and look at the back of the radio. The plug in the pic should look just like the one on the back of the radio except the one on the radio is a female connector. If they match then buy the metra adapter at your nearest advance automotive store, the number on the bottom right of the package should read "70-1858". This is directly from advance automotives website: http://shop.advanceautoparts.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/product_Into-Car-Wire-Harness-Metra_6050220-P_2529_R%7CGRP60023_1380247188____ The price went up just a bit but it is still better than screwing around with the wires behind the dash and fucking something up. Id rather spend $11 than $100 if you ask me.

not a problem bro, usually its just matching wires up to their corresponding colors on both harnesses. It seems wrong though that the ground is black/white. The ground is almost always solid black. You may want to grab a buddy who can read the small print on the wires (not trying to make fun of you at all) and have them help you make sure the wires match up. It is better to be over cautious than have something wire up wrong and catch fire.

If it doesnt then just read what that wire is for. If you read very closely on the wires that come out of the back of the radio, they print on there with what the wires are for. They will indicate what speaker it is, what power wire it is, etc. You may need a buddy to help you read them if you cant read small stuff as the writing is often very small on the wires jacket but its there. It will say on there as well as the wire jacket on the wire harness itself so if the colors dont match you can do that to figure out what wire to put where.

it means it is black AND white. For example the positive wire is solid yellow so you connect the all yellow wire together. Now for your rear channel, there is a green/black one. This means that one of the wires will be green AND black for that same channel. If you passed first grade and know your colors and can match them up you will be fine. If a wire is almost green but has a small black line on it, match it with the other wire that is almost green but has a small black line on it. Its just color matching when you are using a wire harness adapter with the wires that come out the back of the radio.

Heres what i had happen the one time i got bass happy and blasted my system on the crappy walmart battery i had in my old car. I was cranking my music in the parking lot up quite a bit for 20 minutes before class and then i had left the car and went to class. When i came out to class i was able to unlock the doors remotely with my remote starter remote that i have but when i tried to start the engine all you could hear was a fast clicking noise whenever i had the key turned to start. I also noticed that my gauges in my dash would jump up and down with the clicks i heard from the starter not getting enough power to start. I also saw that my lights inside the car would dip down quite a bit and have a yellowish tint to them because the voltage was dropping down so far. After i figured it was the battery not having enough power in it i had a girl in my colleges parking lot jump my car for a minute and i was able to start the car just fine. My solenoid was trying to get engaged but since the amperage was down so far it wasnt enough to turn the starter around. I was able to turn on my radio, lights, and lock/unlock all the doors in the vehicle with no problem since they dont draw a ton of current to make them work. It could easily be a battery issue where you have a dead cell or two. I have this issue with my dads Tahoe. He has a 6 year old battery under his hood and the battery and the resting voltage is only at 11.7v so it is deff on its way out but he has a bad cell. The reason i can tell he has a bad cell even though his truck starts up is that there is a good amount of voltage drop with basic electronics being turned on in the truck. I tested the alt on his truck both at autozone and with my own clamp and meter and i have full power on the alt and it does charge at 14.3v and puts out its correct amperage. The issue is that whenever you have the turn signals on the voltage meter in the dash will bob up and down with the lights turning on and off and the voltage drops even more when the fan for the interior of the truck gets turned on. Point is, if your battery is dying it would let some things work but the starter is the only electronic part of your vehicles stock electrical that will draw the most current.

How long did you try to start it for before you quit and walked away? Did you give it any time to rest between starting the car and not getting it to actually kick over? When you couldnt start it, did you hear the clicking noise or the engine actually turning over just not getting a spark? If you just flooded the engine you would smell the gas at a very strong smell and the car would eventually (like 5 minutes) start back up but seem to mis fire until it burns out all that excess fuel that was dumped into the engine. Also even if the engine flooded your engine would still turn and you could hear the starter working like normal but it wouldnt "catch" or get a kick from the fuel combusting in the engine.

Yes a 0db is the same as a -0db. The only reason they put the "-" next to the track is so you know what level the track is compared to the rest. I personally would set them all with a 0db track to ensure that you will not have much of a chance to clip/distort unless your song you are playing from the ipod has a volume level greater than 0db. The only time this really happens is when people dont have their eq set to flat and are boosting the living hell out of a range of frequencies to compensate for low powered and poorly built systems. You should really keep your eq set to flat even after you set your gains and only raise them a minimal amount when you have it all set up.

If you mainly use your ipod, just use audacity to create a 0db track and sync it on your ipod. Then if you use your headphone jack on your ipod to play music through turn up the music to the point where the ipod starts to distort, if you connect the ipod to the radio like i do with the cable similar to the USB cable then dont worry about it. Play the 0db track you synced up and then set your gains as above in post #4. It will be perfectly fine.

youre welcome bro. for the test track you can use, try to use the one that is a -5db tone. If your volume is still very low then use a -10db tone. You still perform the same procedures as noted above but instead of a 0db track, you will use a -5 or -10db track at your discretion. Just note that when you use a -5db track to set your gains, songs that have notes or are recorded above -5db (such as -2db or 0db) you will instantly present distortion and clipping in your system. If you set the gains with a -10db track, you will have even more of a risk than at -5db for distortion and clipping. Also note that with most headunits both stock and aftermarket there are different levels in which each input works at for reproducing volume. One way you can see this is listen to the radio, some stations playback louder than others. You can also listen to a CD and then switch to a MP3 and hear a difference in the volume level. This makes it hard to set the gains since if your cd player has a higher volume than the other sources you can use, your other sources such as your radio will play at low volumes. I have this in my system since as i said before i set my gains with a 0db test track since i didnt want any distortion or clipping at all in my system. What i did though was i created a 0db track on audacity and played it on my radio through my ipod dock and set the gains that way. Because i used my ipod my volume for the radio is a lot lower since they typically play back around -8db in my area. My ipod volume when i play songs with it is loud, clear, and sounds great but the radio as i mentioned before is at a lower volume. So just be advised if you set your gains through the cd player, your radio MAY play at lower volumes but this is just because the radio stations change things when they play music back. Some radio stations change the equalizer settings, volume setting, playback speed, etc to make their station sound better. How i set my system up is fine for me since i hate listening to the radio but for you it may not be the same.

I edited the post btw, i didnt see i omitted that part but it would be better to do that. This is all up to the OP so if they want to keep the stock headunit then just do like i posted and you will be perfectly fine and have a nice distortion free system. There are just some more steps involved since you are using a high-low converter compared to someone who has an aftermarket headunit but its not the end of the world.

The dd-1 im 99% sure will work with this. If you have that exact high-low converter simply do this to get around it... First you need to find out what volume your headunit clips at. 1.) Set your eq settings to 0, turn off any bass-boost, loudness, crossover settings, anything like that. 2.) If you have any speakers connected to the headunit, you MUST disconnect them or you can take the risk of blowing them when you play the frequency tone. 3.) Disconnect the high-low converter just temporarily so you can test the speaker wires on the headunit to see where they clip at. 4.) Once you have the high-low converter disconnected take the positive test lead of the dd-1 and clamp it around the positive speaker output of your radio's wire, and take the negative test lead of the dd-1 and clamp it around the negative speaker wire. (note: you want to make sure you are testing this on the same channel, for example if the positive lead is on the positive wire for the front driver speaker, make sure the negative is on the front driver speaker as well) 5.) Insert the cd that the dd-1 comes with into your radio and play the 1000Hz test track, set your radio on repeat (idk how long the tracks are on the cd so just do it so it doesnt skip to another track on you) 6.) Start to slowly turn up the volume on your radio until the clip/distortion light illuminates on the dd-1. 7.) Turn the volume down one click at a time until the clip light goes off. Once you do this write down the volume your headunit got to. This is the max you can turn your headunit up to so that you dont send a clipped signal or have distortion either. Now that you found out where your headunit clips at, you need to set the gain adjustment on your high-low converter unit. 1.) Connect the high-low converter back up to the speaker output leads of your radio. 2.) Make sure once again you dont have any of your speakers hooked up to the system before you start to play the track. 3.) Turn your radios volume up all the way to the volume level you marked in step 7 above. 4.) Keep the radio at the volume level and Continue to play the 1000Hz test track you previously used (set the radio on repeat for the track to make it easy too) 5.) Get a small screw driver you can use to get inside the screws that are on the high-low converter unit itself as you will be playing with those. 6.) Connect a small and short RCA wire from the output of one of the connectors on the high-low to the RCA input on the DD-1. 7.) Turn the screw all the way to the left and slowly turn the screw to the right until your clip/distortion light illuminates. 8.) When the distortion/clip light is on turn the screw back just a little until it turns off. 9.) Repeat steps 6-7 for the other rca connector on the high-low connector. __________________________________ Notes: From the last time i recall the dd-1's negative conductor is supposed to be connected to the ground of the device you are testing when you test at the amp. For the test of when to see if the h/u clips at, you DONT ground to the negative terminal of your battery. edit: if you read page 6 in your DD-1 manual it says how to perform this test.

Are you getting a 15 because you want penetrating bass? rofl. And so you know, you can edit the title of your topic. Just go to edit post, then click on use full editor and at the top the area that says "topic title" is what you change to make it say 15, not 18

For the alt, i run a mechman 270 in mine and have next to none voltage drop and im running at .25 ohms resting on my amps. I always say it because its true, i did have one problem with an alt from mechman but it was damaged in shipping and matt hooked me up, since i was looking for a new car i found my truck i have now and he gave me a deal to just pay $50 and get an alt that was bigger and better than my old one i had that was broken. I did that and the alt works like a tank on my truck. I have never had any problems with this alt other than getting the damn thing in the engine but thats by no means mechmans fault. For your case i believe a 250-270 amp alternator would be great for your needs. I would just get the biggest you possibly can because like me, i didnt think i would go as extreme as i am with electrical and stuff for my truck. I knew i was gonna keep upgrading it since im never satisfied but i didnt think in a million years id have a setup like i do now so im glad i bought what i did. What you can do is just like i did. At first i bought an XS Power S3400 battery (it was the largest i could fit in my engine without having to retrofit a hold down for it or anything). I then did the big-3 with the stock alternator i had on my old car. My voltage drop was a hell of a lot better than with the crappy walmart wet-cell battery i was using but i still had drop since i was running a 1400w 2 channel class ab amplifier and as most people know, most class ab amps suck a TON of power. What i would do is play my system loud but when my lights got too dim i would turn it down and let the alt charge the battery back up and then go back to slamming. I also to take good care of that single battery i put it on my battery charger once a week just to keep them working great. Then i got a mechman alt, another xs power d3100 battery, and another 3 more xs power d3100's. I usually say to go with an xs power battery first and then an alt after that when you can afford it since the battery will be a little bit cheaper than the alt but you got to look at it this way. If you are drawing a shit ton of power and you have a tiny alt, you will have voltage drop. With voltage drop your amps have to work even harder to put out their power ratings and your lights will flicker badly at night. Plus when your voltage starts to drop like that you are slowly killing your alt as it cant keep up with your current demands and it will get very hot and possibly overheat and die on you. If you are tight on money do this: Get the biggest battery you can fit under your hood from XS Power, then as soon as you get enough money again, get a Mechman alternator If you are not tight on money do this: Get the Mechman Alternator first, then get an XS Power battery.