kickass audio

I had two 12" kicker cvx subs and then after i burned them out i went to a 12" solox. I gave the solox 2-3x more power than the cvx's and it wasnt as loud. I was pretty happy with the two 12" i had in there and now im in the progress of seeing how a 18" sounds. Also... Dr. Subwoofer is in the building everyone. If you want to give the chicks in your ride penetration, get a 15" subwoofer XD edit: just from something i experienced, kicker subs seem to be kinda punchy with bass until they are worn in. All my kicker subs i own (cvr, cvx, solox) have a tight and punchy bass response at any frequency as long as it isnt below tuning if its in a ported box. Now granted i only had a fusion (like a pyle sub but better looking, rofl), elevation audio sqx, and a kenwood subwoofer, all 12", but the kicker still seemed to be a tad bit louder but again, it was punchy.

Just so you are aware, ground loop isolators arent a 100% guarantee to fix your whine you are hearing. They help but dont eliminate all the noise.

This is true. like i said, i have alternator whine in mine but i dont hear it on my speakers when i slam my music (although i just have mids and highs on my truck till next week) and i hear the whine when its just starting to warm the engine up, after its warm it doesnt do it for some odd reason or another.

you can get those ground loop rca's at best buy or radioshack. i know radioshack sells them for sure cuz i worked at both stores.

I would try what i said with the headphone to female rca jack and connect it to a ipod, pc, or anything with a standard headphone jack. I would really do that as a final say in what the problem could be. It would be the easiest to do than checking that ground wire. This is what you need: http://www.google.com/imgres?q=headphone+to+female+rca&um=1&hl=en&sa=N&tbm=isch&tbnid=sNj2Y9ESdHbi3M:&imgrefurl=http://www.cablewholesale.com/specs/headphone-to-rca-cable/10a1-12206.htm&docid=bfwImxaqNBJG3M&w=380&h=179&ei=8K80TpKmJILEgQeHj6WNDQ&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=1090&vpy=184&dur=211&hovh=110&hovw=235&tx=133&ty=66&page=2&tbnh=91&tbnw=194&start=19&ndsp=18&ved=1t:429,r:17,s:19&biw=1366&bih=643 just go to a radioshack, best buy, or any other electronics store, they will have these in stock no doubt. Also when you do it, make sure your ipod volume is down low or you will blast the hell out of your speakers with music, start the volume down low and play something then. Im 100% sure its your headunit that has a problem, now whether its the ground or just a bad unit idk unless you test the ground wires resistance.

I would do the ground trick and then see if it helps any. If it doesnt then you can do a final test to take the headunit out of the equation. Take a ipod or similar MP3 player and get a headphone to RCA (female) jack connector. Then connect your rca wire you originally ran to the rear of the vehicle and play music with the engine running. If you hear noise then its not the radio or rca's, its the amps.

I swapped the RCAs coming from the front RCA channel to the sub RCA on HU and plugged them from the front amp RCAs to the Sub amp and the same problem occured. I'm thinking either blown RCAs or just simply a bad headunit ground. There's a ground directly behind my headunit I'm going to try an ground there. Not trying to be a jackass or what not but thats not what he meant by swapping rca's. He means did you buy new and fully working rca wires and tried to connect them from the headunit to your amps to see if the noise is present. I would buy new rca cables and run them on the driver side of your vehicle in the floor panel that is underneath the plastic trim you can pop up and slip the wire underneath. Im sure that will kill your alternator noise. You also gotta remember that on your vehicle, there are wire harnesses that come from the factory that are under your carpet and im sure that wire loom is causing some noise too.

Double check that your rca wires are clear from any positive or ground wires. The whine you are hearing is alternator whine. I have this in my truck until i finish my system next week wed because my rca cable isnt fully sheilded like my old one and is close to the +12v wire i have going to the rear battery bank. As soon as i pick the wire up and away from the battery wire, it will not whine anymore. I would take the entire run of your rca cable and make sure it is away from all power cables. Also you can try to enhance the ground of your radio if that doesnt help. The low noise you hear with your subs is partly of your alternator whine as well. Just get your rca cables away from your power and ground wires and if it doesnt help, consider buying double insulated (twisted pair wire with foil shielding on the wires) to help get rid of the alternator whine.

Hmmm it may be your computer regulating your voltage or maybe the alt has a bad diode but i doubt that. Maybe contact dc or mechman to see what they think it would be but im thinking it is either your ecu that is restricting your voltage or your alt may have a bad diode but im not a guy who builds alts so dont quote me on it

I had this happen with my 04 envoy. The alt is regulated internally by itself so its not like the newer vehicles where the ecu controls my voltage output on the alt. The problem mine had is that the ground from my battery to the engine and frame was getting rusty. Everytime i cleaned it up, my voltage would come back up to 14.9v warm but when it got a little bit of rust, it would start to drop back down at 13v. I also noticed a random "dancing" affect of my volt meter in my dash when i first started my truck up. The voltage would go up to 14.4v but drop to 13, go up, back down, and then stay steady. As soon as i fixed the ground it worked fine. I would just double check your positive and ground wires in your engine to make sure they have no corrosion or rust on them and go from there. Mine was extremely sensitive to rust and would screw up my charging system a ton with it.

I know its ghetto but for my amps, im going to use the rubber stoppers they have for cabinet doors. It is 1/4 of a inch thick and tough but still flexible. I am going to see how that works with my amps and if they shake too much then ill do something else. What i am doing is taking the amps and putting them on-top of a 1/4 inch high piece of wood and then putting rubber washers on-top of that then screwing the amps down. I have never had problems putting my amps on my box tho. I did that to two different amps (stetsom 2k6d and precision power pc2350) without any problems. The precision power amp would have broken over my stetsom since it had a crap load of buss bars internally and they are usually what snap on amps mounted on the box. The stetsom was flat against my box when i had my 12" solox installed and my precision power pc2350 amp was mounted on a piece of wood that raised the amp up 1/4 of a inch from the box so it could breathe better.

I thought of something else but im sure you are more than smart enough to not do this but ill chime in anyway. Are your wire ends stripped back enough so that the screw comes down on the bare wire and not any insulation? I fixed my friends truck and the jackass shop he went to put the wire in the distro without cutting enough of the wires jacket off. Other than that i really dont know what else could cause a problem other than that resistance in your wires. Just start there and work from there, report back when you complete it so i can help you from there.

Have you checked the resistance of ALL your power and ground wires? If there is no load but there is a ton of resistance in the line, the voltage will be normal but if you load the wire down and there is resistance, it will drop voltage since you are basically squeezing the power. Since i have had this happen to me so many times, i always run my wires and take my TPI 440 and test resistance (but a normal DMM works as well) any run that is greater than .2 ohms in resistance needs to be redone. I always run it so that the positive of the wire coming from my alt, i test it to the positive of my battery. When checking resistance make sure you NEVER cross a positive lead to a negative lead. If you do this you will fry your meter and possibly melt the probe wires.

I would advise 100% against this. If he prys up on a large piece of the glass, since its busted it will lift that piece up over the rest of the glass and cause it to point into the lcd panel. It can then either scratch the lcd panel or crack the lcd panel. Plus either way as soon as you start to pry up on it, the fragments of the glass will start to crumble and come apart and land on the screen. DO NOT brush these off!! You should either use a vacuum and suck them up with it and NOT rest the vacuum on the lcd panel, or tip the laptop upside down over a garbage can to shake the glass pieces loose. I would do the vacuum part if i was doing the repair.

Haha nicee!!! Sounds like a good time to me

Hahaha, it is a pain in the ass trust me but you cant do anything bad unless you slip and stab the lcd panel. Thats the absolute worst thing that can go wrong with this. Just take your time, be slow, and pay attention and you will do fine with it.

It still seems like 3 feet is short. For how i ran my wire for the accessory turn on to my IVA-W205, i used 5.5 feet of it and i had a few feet left of the spool. Either way, thats what i used and didnt have any problems with it.

My bad, you know what i mean. lol.

Yes you can do it like that but it may not grab tightly and allow the wire for your volt meter to come loose and short out somewhere. If you can, see if you can put the wire for your volt meter on the ring terminal of your amps power wire. Or you can give it a try by putting the 18 awg wire in the amps terminal FIRST, and then put the 1/0 wire on top of that and screw down the terminal as far as you can get it to go. To verify a good connection that wont break loose, try to tug on the 18 awg wire to see if it comes out. If it does then it wasnt getting enough pressure from the terminal screw. Another thing you can do is get yourself some shrink wrap and get it big enough to fit over your 0 gauge wire and put your 0 and 18 gauge wire in that, connect it to the amp, then shrink wrap it so the wire cant come loose easy. This isnt really necessary but i always take wiring into a safe way to prevent a short or fire.

I would use 16 or 18 awg wire for it. You arent drawing much current with it so there is no need to have 0 gauge going to your volt meter. Hell if you wanted to, you could use some remote hookup wire for your positive and negative wires but one thing with this is MAKE SURE YOU KNOW WHICH ONE IS POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE. Dont want to take the risk of reversing the polarity on it. If you wanted to do it a cheap way just head to advance automotive or any other car store and get some hookup wire. Its like $7-8 for a 40 foot roll. Heres a link to what im talking about.. http://shop.advanceautoparts.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/product_Primary-Wire-18-Ga--40%22-Black-Card-Autocraft_5013747-P_N4022B_A%7CGRP2020A_____ They put it near the fuses and i used that when i had to make an accessory turn on for my radio since my envoy doesnt have an accessory wire to turn the radio on and off with the ignition.

Not sure if you ripped it out yet but ill give you my advice i use for doing stuff like this on apple equipment. Use the heat gun trick but get a fine guitar pick or a small bendable knife and use it to cut free the glass from the body. Be very careful to not get it to hit the LCD and crack or scratch it. I typically use a fine tipped guitar pick, kitchen knife, utility knife blade, or another plastic pry tool i have in my tool box. Also, when and if you get it off, make sure there is no dust on the lcd panel or the inside part of the glass. Also check for any fragments of the glass or fingerprints as you will clearly see them once you assemble it all and it will look like crap.

Its not a bad start. To be honest though its kinda busy and boring. Not trying to bash you in any ways tho so please dont take it that way. Heres my suggestions for it: Maybe for the background take a picture of a good scene you filmed or took pics of. Also use your real name not your username for the forum so people know who you are. Possibly add your phone number (i would get one you dont care about for people being smart asses, such as google voice if you have a droid phone), maybe tell them what you specialize in (like video shooting, pictures, what type of scenes you are great in, etc.), and im sure its a dead giveaway as you are local but your city/state you are in so people know where abouts you are located. Again, its just my opinion and im not bashing you in any way.

Be very careful to not play a song that is lower than your box tuning though, if you do then you will kill that sub. I would set the lowpass to 80 as 100+ will not be any benefit to you through the subwoofer and like i said watch playing music with low notes that are lower than your tuning.

I just make my tracks on audacity. its a totally free program and i never had issues with it. Honestly, if it was my setup heres what i would do. Disconnect the wire that runs the remote knob when you are setting everything so that it isnt put in the mix of screwing things up. Then turn the punch eq all the way down and if you have a scope (which is really the only good way to set a gain unless you have meades dd-1 tool) then set the gains just right and adjust the punch eq after that a little bit. NEVER I REPEAT NEVER use the punch eq as a way to make the bass punchier sounding or louder as it is going to clip your shit and fry something. I would turn it up so far and then when its to a level you like, plug in the remote knob and call it a day. For the crossover points, i think you have some confusion and maybe a misconfiguration on it. For lowpass, i like setting them to 80-90Hz TOPS, i usually stick with 80Hz for lowpass, and for highpass, you want it to be just above the tuning of your box. For example if your box was tuned to 30Hz like mine will be, then i will set the highpass to 30-31Hz. The reason for this is so that you dont feed a tone lower than what your box can reproduce and bottom out your subs and wreck them (and thats one thing i KNOW how to do from past experience, learn from my dumbass mistakes) So if you know your box tuning, set the highpass around that tuning and you will be satisfied with the results.

To set the gains, most of the time a -6 or -4db tone will be good for most songs. I went above and beyond and used a pure 0db tone so i will NEVER have any clipping in my system at all as i have never seen a song go over 0db for the level. As for tuning the amp gains, try to turn down the punch eq (not the freq but the actual gain part for it) and only use it very slightly, you dont want to use boost as it can screw up your stuff bad and cause more clipping.