dwz

second skin is certainly better than fatmat.. and looks better. have you made sure you're not using a stock 4-channel amp? and is/are your crossover/s hooked up correctly?

dynamat xtreme is the best according to dozens of reviews i've read. i also use dynamat xtreme myself. it's FANTASTIC. a bit expensive though, so make sure you get a good deal - buy online only. second skin would come in second. no pun intended. but considering I don't work at best buy anymore i would use second skin...

turn off that bass boost right away. your sub can get smelly, and if you continue playing it, then the voice coil will ignite and your car will be filled with magical smoke (ruining the sub).. but once you start smelling it, it's a good idea to let the amp and subs rest a little, OR change up the song since it could be clipping. amp could be clipping from poor voltage too, or overheating, or shitty rca's or bad ground. bad ground includes the head unit's ground.

i reran the remote wire found out that one of the fuses was blown also changed out my battery and everything sounds cleaner, louder.. no issues with the amps turning on anymore! thanks for the help

cool, i bet thats how mine happened too. crazyness!! thx for the help

My amps stay put. It must be some sort of grounding in the wire itself cause it happens on both amps, which happen to share the wire. My amps always stay on when my car is on, as normal. It's just weird as hell. I just don't know the point at which it started to do that. My remote wire turns on the amps even when the faceplate of the deck is off and the car is off. I replaced my battery today so I'm gonna re-do the setup tomorrow. And yes it was certainly contributing to the problem cause it would turn on and off non-stop for hours upon end. At the same time I know I needed a new batt anyways.

Hey guys I had two amps plugged in. One day my battery died and I just assumed my battery is going (cause it is, I'm gettin a temporary one at wal mart to get to school, as we speak) But anyways I noticed the amps were turning on and off with ONLY the remote wire plugged in. Bizarre... and for a while there my battery was draining very quickly but they still stayed on even while playing -> they were just more quiet. I hope that didn't harm my amps. Either way I'm gettina new battery, but I was wonderin how that could happen. Is it my headunit? I've had a headunit do that to me in the past except it stayed on completely while the car was off. Or do you thnk the wire got pinched against the chassis somewhere? And could it have damaged my equipment in any way? Thanks guys.

I had a set of Rockford Double-twist RCA's that were the culprit when I had that problem. Replaced them with the good (double-twist equivalent) of Kicker RCA's and that fixed a lot of problems. Super clean now! I recommend makin sure the ground to your headunit is solid and preferably usin the battery strap or bolted to the chassis.

sound deadening first things first. you'll get the biggest improvement. that's my opinion but it doubled or tripled the [perceived] loudness of my setup. it tripled how clean it sounds and i didn't even coat my whole car in dynamat xtreme, just the bottom half of the trunk. i did the rear deck and front doors and the improvement blew me away. it's truly an SQ setup now PLUS the loud bass.

2 12"s and a 4 channel with some decent subs/speakers will HIT. 1 or 2 18"s will BANG but only certain songs I recommend 12"s for most rap/hip hop/rock but if you like rap a lot 15"s would be optimal . If you go with 15"s or 18"s or even like rap with lows, period, it's a good idea to get some sound deadening for your trunk/rear deck/front doors. Cause you'll have a lot of flex. xs and kinetik are what i'd recommend.

thanks for the link brotha

thanks for the link brotha

seconded... or thirded... plz fix your grounds

it protects you and your equipment from dying in a tragic fire on the highway

Damn how'd that happen?

ive blown 2 subs due to unloading... ^^^^^ this

go 33 or higher unless you listen to lots of chopped n screwed, which is pretty rare.. the higher it is the louder the high notes are, quite simply... so rock, trance, bla bla bla will be louder... at the same time, rap would not be as clean, and the subs may have to work a bit harder to play the lower tones (which can cause blown subs if one gets absent minded). prefabs are a good example of employing high tuning to fit the average persons music... rock, pop, hits... but with rap it wouldn't sound nearly as good as with a custom box tuned to 33. personally I love 28-38hz, thats where my subs shine.. they shine the most at 33hz which is what my box is tuned to. and it still sounds good with rock/metal (slight port noise)... after putting dynamat my metal sounded much better too. but at the end of the day my rap songs are still the loudest. but still, you do have 18s, so you may have to tune it a tad lower than 33.

Just so you know I read the posts you made after this one ... And I understand it's your first system. But with my first system, if you're not careful, you're gonna damage equipment. On my first system (which is my present one), I damaged a pair of components from Alpine, TWO subs individually, and TWO amps... Oh and a headunit's RCA jacks. Ok, so subsonic should be 20 or higher. There's NO NEED to have it any higher than 25hz anyways, honestly. It's bad for most subwoofers because the boxes are usually tuned much higher than that... especially prefabs.. when subwoofers play songs below their tuning frequency, it causes more exersion of the cone, and usually isn't very loud to the ear, so many newbies turn it up to compensate then BOOM... ripped spider (happened to me twice, only with prefabs too).... LPF, keep it at 80hz to 100hz. I keep it at 80hz because my subs are handling less bass notes and consequently are more accurate on the louder/lower notes, and more efficient (i blew one of the subs @ 100hz and I know it contributed to its mechnical failure... on top of clipping). What kind of Y-Splitters are you using? when I upgraded from radio shack to kicker I noticed a huge difference. Was the ground sanded, free of any paint? Is the surface area of the bolt great enough to cover much of the ground ring terminals? How old is your headunit? I had an older headunit that was clipping a lot sooner (like at 50% volume) than it should have. This was due to age.. Ironically, it was a kenwood. Now I rock ALL alpine other than wiring. Is the ground on your headunit good too? A bad ground on the headunit could also cause overheating, which means the sound going to your speakers and amp is distorted and thus causing clipping and voltage drop - compounding the *not loud enough* factor. (this may not apply to you). but if you have a 4 channel amp /w a HPF on it, and your HPF is turned off on your headunit, your headunit can over heat sooner cause its still sending everything UNDER the HPF you set on your 4channel anyways, only to disappear when it hits the 4channel amp. So if ya keep your HPF @ the same level as your 4channel amp, your headunit will be more efficient cause it's not sending signals that are going nowhere. Maybe I'm crazy, but when I changed my HPFs to be the same on my headunit and 4channel, it was more crisp/clear. This paragraph will probably confuse the shit out of you unless you are familiar with HPF and 4 channels/

nice you got in an article tune the amps to proper ac voltage... see the guides in the forums.. also whats your sub sonic and HPF set to? what kind of headunit are you using? are you using proper RCA's? is your ground bolted down to the chassis (not the seat belt)? if its a 4-door sedan try putting the back seats down so the bass can get into the cabin... it has to be able to get into the cabin somehow some way if you wanna hear it. so you can cut a hole in your rear deck.. use some dynamat to keep the bass inside the car... i built my box not as wide, and a little longer so that there was around 4 inches of space (on each side) between the sides of the car and the box, so that pressure from the trunk could leak into the cabin.

yeah don't use seat belt bolt at all.. DO bolt it down /w a couple washers, a bolt and a nut (cost me like 1 dollar at home depot dude). make sure you don't drill into the gas tank. also, use some sand paper so the ground is free of any paint. be thorough. make sure you have good quality connections /w your power and ground wires too.. you know in case a terminal fork is loose (if you use that). make sure the fuse holder is nice and tight

lol seriously.. I mean I love Gucci, Oj Da Juiceman's, (etc) beats and melodies, but the lyrics are all about 1) half bricks 2) quarter bricks 3) whole brick 4) OKAY! AY!! I mean come on. Luckily Gucci is steppin out of the game for a lil bit

those are some cool cops for once... i like their vehicle too haha

7zip works great cause it's open source (free).

Albums on CDs are generally 320kbps, if they're not they're not in the industry standard. But keep in mind, the files are originally wave files (uncompressed), THEN converted to 320kbps MP3s (which are compressed, and inevitably do away with some data). If you play a CD that you purchase at the store you'll have the least tampered-with and highest-quality version.. Then when you rip them to your computer, they lose quality. Ya get me? There's lots of mixtape websites out there, too, that have mixtapes of all types of bitrates (kbps). I only hold onto the 320kbps versions...

Right click, choose extract all... then press next or whatever import the folder that appears