Migz

Bridges the 3/4 channels. I think youd need another set of RCAs for that though. Dont think you can have it on 3 and only have RCAs going to channels 1 and 2.

Old school golfs are stunning! Especially yours. Great audio setup too, cant wait to see whats next.

No worries, i found out the hard way with my old amplifier, it had a setting just like that one but i didn't see it. So i had a mess of RCA cables being split and then running round in circles to and from amplifiers. Just for me to realise that there was a simple switch to run 4 channels using only 2 channel signal haha.

On that MB Quart amplifier it has a little "Mode" switch, all you need to do is set it to "2". Then run your front RCA from your headunit to channel 1/2 of your amplifier, your amplifier will then use the signal from your front two channels and repeat them in the rear two. Then run your second set of RCAs from your headunit to you bass amp. Edit: No need to buy splitters like in the post above, your amp already has the built in feature to use one set of RCAs for 4 channels. http://www.gpsfever.com/upload-folder/MBQuartOnyxAmplifierManual2010.pdf Go to page 6, and then read the part about the mode setting on your amplifier.

The only thing i understood from that was that you wanted to blow your sub? Why? :S

No. THIS is what happens when steve meade drives through a city.

I didn't't have any RCA's from anything plugged in though, so it was getting 1.3v from somewhere inside the amplifier.

I don't think anything is cracked as i didn't see any dodgy solder joints and i think i wouldn't have measured 1.3v on them if they werent attatched to anything.

I googled how to check rca shield, and it said that to do that i needed to put my negative probe on the amplifier ground, and my positive on the outer bit of the female RCA in on the amplifier. I used that method and checked the outer metal of the female RCA area on the amplifier and i checked the center bit of the female RCA area on the amplifier. I did this on both the input and output. All of them measured 1.3v (give or take 0.1) I also tried measuring with my negative probe on the outer metal and my positive probe on the inside center bit, there was no voltage like that. I just tried that incase that mightve been a different way to do it.

So im checking the outer bit of where the RCA plugs into the amplifier on the inside? I'll do it tomorow as it's 4:30am here so i need to go to bed. But will post back here with the results tomorow. Also i've uploaded more pictures. They can be found here. Hopefully those are good enough. Thanks.

Powers up fine, power light comes on, when i had it plugged in my girlfriends car the subwoofers just had no output at all. Tried different set of RCA's, same problem. Got home and wired it to a spare computer PSU i have and plugged it into a 6x9, started making a sort of static noise, like the noise you get when you're not on a radio channel. Although i didn't hear that noise when it was in the car, couldve been because i wasn't close enough to the subs or could be interference from the PSU. I twiddled with everything on the amp (gain, lpf, subsonic, phase) to see if it would affect the volume of the static noise but it didn't. It also made the noise when there was no rca's plugged in. Yeah sorry, don't actually know the proper names of any of them, i just read a tutorial that went over the basics of what they are but couldn't remember exactly what it was. Also going to get photos up sometime in the next hour, just need to upload some videos to youtube.

Wil do when I get home. Will take it with a better camera as well.

Bought a used amplifier as untested in the hopes that maybe it worked. Plugged power, rem and earth in, power light came on and i was about to start having a party in my head, then when i connected the rca and cables to my sub it wouldn't play anything, absolutely gutted! I was really looking forward to hearing this amp with my subs, atm i have 400w @ 2ohm to two subs. This amp runs 750w @ 2 ohm. I know its nothing compared to you guys but car audio is alot more expensive over here in the uk. So i want to see if i can fix it, but i can't afford to send it away, nor do i know anywhere in the uk that fixes them. I took it apart to see if maybe i could work out whats wrong with it, the only obvious thing i could find was a dark mark on the board. This is what it looks like From a bit further away. On the otherside it was directly under one of those donut looking things, i was reading a tutorial about fixing amplifier last night and i think its the power supply transformer? Does anyone know if this could be an easy fix? Im also going to check all the 3 pronged resistor things later to see if any of them have a broken circuit. I apologise if any of the terms i've used are incorrect but im not an expert in resistors, capacitors and all the rest of that, i can only guess what i think they are from the brief tutorial i read. Edit: Its a Vibe VP4 amplifier just in case anyone needs to know that.

Is the free postage US only? Or is it worldwide by any chance?

I thought you'd end up signing up here after Jakg told you to haha. Should be easy no? Just wire the new headunit in, run a RCA cable down the car from your headunit to your amp. And hey presto. Stock speakers, aftermarket sub.

The size of the box is 100cm width, 40cm height, 50cm depth The port area is 10.2cm width, 35cm height, 35cm depth. The size of one subwoofer area, from the wall of the port to the other side (not including the corner bits) is 17.71 depth, 15.70 width, 14.76 height. All in inches. So am i correct in getting the cubes by multiplying them together and dividing them by 1728? If so then i have 2.37 cubic foot for one side of the box. Times that by 2 for the other side and its 4.74 cubic foot. Plus i haven't added to that the bit in the middle where the port is. So it should be roughly around 5 cubic foot, maybe just under. I've uploaded the Google sketch file on the link below. You can get all the measurements from that if there's anything I've missed. http://www.filedropper.com/subwooferenclosure

Like I said though, it's my first box and I'm still getting to grips with trying to work out how big the box need to be, what size the port needs to be, working out the internal size and such. Also forgot to mention the subs I'm putting in are cheap knock off Sony xplod which I would never usually buy but my friend has one and gives some pretty decent bass for £20. So I thought for my first box don't want to spend lots of money on great subs when it's just going to sound shit. Rather spend a tiny bit on good subs and save the money for next time.

Not sure what it is after displacement, didn't have enough time to work it out after doing it before I had to go out. But would I be right in guessing I've just gotta times the width by height by length for each subwoofer section, convert then to cubes and then add the two together. At the moment it's not tuned to anything in particular, it's just the rough design of how it looks. Still trying to work out how to use the box tuning app, so haven't worked out yet how to find what it'll be tune to. Not sure what the size of the port area is, will measure it when I get home. And it's going to be in a Volkswagon Golf Mk3. These subs don't say they need 3 cubes each, but I read a guide on the Internet that said 12's need roughly 2.5 - 3 cubes each. I'm using this subwoofer http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=260794234103&ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT Will give you the box sizes when I get home as I don't have anything on me.

Building my first box soon, ive made it to the dimensions of my boot. I read that for 2 12" subwoofers i need around 6 cubic foot inside the box, and that i should design it slightly more to compensate for everything that goes inside the box. So i designed the size of the box to start with about 7.5 cubic foot. Does it look about right?

I installed some special terminals on my battery which tell me the volts in my battery for just this reason, but A.) I didn't realise my battery would run low that quickly so i want to help make it last a bit longer. And B.) Im not too sure how im meant to know when its low, because when my bass hits my voltage drops, but then when the bass goes my voltage comes back up. How can i tell if the voltage is low because it seems to just go back up to normal when i'm not playing anything :/ Not sure what the output is at idle, but it says 70 on it, although thats most likely when it's properly going. I'll see if i can find out what it is at idle, its a bog standard VW alternator though. And how would i find out how much demand i have in amps? I know i have a total of 120 Amps worth of fuses on my amplifiers so it cant be more then that. But how do i know exactly what amount is being used? Roughly what kind of RC rating will play for how long? Thanks for the quick replies!

Hey, Today i was listening to my music as usual and for the first time ever my battery died, had to bump start my car and leave it running for a bit. I'm running a bog standard battery and alternator so I've decided its time to up my power a bit as my system is starting to become a strain on standard power. I've got a 4 channel 100wRMS x 4 Vibe Blackbox Amplifier and a 1 Channel 400wRMS Orion Cobalt Monoblock. I'm pretty sure both have 2x 30A Fuses. First of all can anybody tell me what the formula is to work out how long i can play music at full volume for before my battery is dead? I'm pretty sure my battery is 50ah i think. How can i use that along with the total of 120A from my Amps to work out how long until my battery is dead. I also need some advice on what alternator to get, my car is a Volkswagen Golf Mk3 if that helps at all. And what battery to get. I have absolutely no clue what numbers i should be looking at on batteries, there's CCA, ah and others. But i don't know which one means how long the battery will last playing music before it dies. I'm sorry if anything i say doesn't make sense, there's so much to learn about batteries that I'm getting quite confused.

hey im Miguel/Migz, found Steves youtube channel while looking for carputers. Spent about 5 hours watching alot of his videos and then commented on his channel and felt honoured when he acknowledged me in his reply. Found the forum through his website and decided to sign up as im getting my first car in a few months and i'm going to need some help with it

Sorry, tottally forgot about that as i don't ever tend to dual boot, requires more effort.

Just thought i'd post and mention that i tottally agree with newls1 rig. Great setup that will run like a dream. Although maybe it'd be better to have a less powerful GPU and a bit more Ram? Something in the 4xxx series instead of the 5xxx series as the rig wouldn't be used for gaming so not as much of a need for a powerful card. Then either get 2GB or 4GB more Ram. Besides that the rig posted by newls1 is spot on.

As someone said, getting a linux live cd would be the best idea. IIRC Ubuntus install cd is also a live cd so give that one a try. See if you like it first before installing it. Make sure you backup all your data as when installing Linux it will completely wipe everything. Also alot of aplications wont work and you'll have to get programmes which serve the same functions as the original but with a different layout/design. Why do you want Linux? Do you have a reason to use it or do you just want to get it because someone else has/it looks cool? You could always try installing it as a virtual machine under Vista and having a proper good play with it and see if you can find the programmes you want for it.