audiofanaticz

Why the alts, They would be weaker and not as beneficial. I provided facts, everyone else is just guessing. So the option is 300ah of top quality lithium or 4 390ish amp alternators totaling 1,560 amps. Top quality lithium Im going to go with 300ah of the new XS Power Titan 8 PWR-S5 Lithium Titanate batteries (LTO). Each battery is 10AH and suitable for 5,000watts, and can have a 1000amp burst rating 300AH of those would be 10 batteries. 10 batteries is 50,000 watts, and up to 10,000 amps of burst amperage. Even if you half those specs of the new XS Power Titan 8 batteries (25,000watts and 5,000 amps of burst amperage) please explain to me how 4 alternators producing 1,560 amps of current would be the better route to go in terms of performance????? I'll be waiting

Who cares about the amplifier setup, 300ah of lithium is a lot and seeing what can be done with 1/3 that speaks volumes... I thought the alt way was the way to go as well, and sadly with no reserve you have massive voltage drop I have three DC Power 390XP alternators (1170 amps of current) and until I added agm reserve the struggle was real with only 2 5k amps. I was always put into an Extreme competition class because I had 3 alts because the rule was alts max for Super Street, even though Super Street allowed unlimited batteries and a max voltage of 18volts. I was told the 1 additional alternator gave me an advantage. So I was stuck competing with my daily driven and only vehicle that had a four 15 box in the cargo area, all interior, stock glass, etc against vehicles that had concrete floors, 3 inch thick windshields and side windows, ceilings that where built down, dashes that got built up, and steel reinforcements all over. These vehicles could barely move under their own power and were far from road legal and always trailered but if I wanted to compete thats what my only option was all because I had 3 alternators instead of 2. The thing about alternators is they only put out massive amperage when they sense the load, and that sense isnt instant and takes a moment. Another con to the alternator setup is even when the demand for power is present they will never put out full power unless your spinning them at 2000ish engine rpm constantly anything else less there will be a huge dip in performance. Also when you get into these multiple alt setups, or even rather large single ones you can figure each alt will rob the engine of roughly 20hp which adds up quick. So lets take a common vehicle that a lot do big installs and alt setups in such as the Tahoe with the 5.7l vortec which is 255hp now but after you subtract that 80hp from alternator load your left with a 175hp vehicle that weights in at 8,500lbs. You literately have an army tank that dont move anywhere too fast... Yet we can't forget to add in the additional fuel that will be spent spinning those alternator when they are taxing your engine!

It looks like the Kenwood DDX396 has 6 volt preouts. If you measured it and only got 0.2 volts there is something else going on. Search your manual how to turn up the subwoofer volume, its usually in the crossover menu someplace but Im not familiar with that exact radio. If its turned down you will never get full voltage out of your subwoofer preouts. What did you use to set the subsonic? because to me it looks like its around 35+hz or so. The thing is without something like a SMD CC-1 you really have no idea where you set it and are just pretty much guessing and the slightest movement can make a huge difference. If both of those are good check your RCA cables to make sure they are not bad, sometimes most of the time cheaper cables have a lot of resistance in them which makes your voltage from the deck very low by the time it reaches your amp. Some cheap cables dont even have wires soldered on the ends but just a crappy loose crimp. Here is an example of just how bad cheap RCA cables resistance can be. The shorter cable in the video should logically have the lesser resistance than the cables that are way longer, however the short cable is a cheap rca cable and has the most resistance! It took me a minute to find this live video I made years ago.

So the physical port length on torres is the actual length of the wood needed to make the port. The port length that you enter in the box is the actual length of the port when you measure down the middle of the port. The physical port length will always be shorter than the port length entered into the box, unless the port does not bend because both would be equal length.

Unless your friend with the same amp has the same vehicle, headunit, subs, box, etc as you do you cant really compare one being louder than the other. That being said that amp has 1/0 gauge inputs for a reason. 4 gauge wire has its limits on how much amperage it can handle safely. That amp can pull 170 amps of current, and if your power wire is longer than 7 feet or so then you're exceeding the limit of the power wire. This goes of OFC wire, if you're using CCA wire then it handles even less amperage at the same length. When you running smaller gauge wire than the amp needs it is possible for the wire to heat up. The wire will also have greater resistance from the front to the back which can result in voltage drop and less power out of the amp. Are you absolutely positive you have the both voice coils on both subs wired in parallel and both subs wired together in parallel? I dont know how many times people say they got things wired right but then they wire things in series instead which increases the ohm load. What radio are you using? Does it have a subwoofer volume option in the settings and is that option turned up? Where is your subsonic filter set on the amp?

is it the actual SPL cone you have? or do you have the megaroll v2 that use to called the spl cone for a while? Plus with how the sub is currently built now you could have a huge impedance rise that you didnt have before giving you less power on those higher frequencies. Which is kinda why I asked you what the sub is actually doing when playing those frequencies. I try to stay pretty up to date on the Sundown stuff and use their parts a bit on other brand woofers so I have a sense on how they work. You can buy a DATs on PartsExpress for like $100 to measure your own T/S parameters, or if you have an SMD IM/SG you can measure them with that too!! Pics?

Also a side note for port velocity and a perfect example is Meades Tahoe. His port is hella small something like 140 sq inches for 4 18s, there should be a lot of port noise and his port is violent due to the port velocity, but you cant really hear any port noise. He has even built different ports with more port area and played with tuning for the box and he said they all metered pretty much the same. I think there maybe old pictures in his build logs even but I forget its been so long. I just remember asking him about it a while ago and that is why the port is bolted in, and not permanent.

While more port area wont limit the upper frequencies the box being tuned at 32hz and with said frankenwoofer it may not play those frequencies that are 20+ hz above tuning the same as the old woofer especially with the changes made. From the Zv3 to the X series there is a 11hz drop in FS, granted since it is a frankenwoofer it could be a bit different than that still since the motor will have a huge roll on the T/S parameters so its not like you can just insert numbers from the 2 models thought it will give you a slight idea. Increasing port area even more will not get you to hit those high notes like it once did, and if you went to model both the X series and the Zv3 series in the same exact box you would have 2 completely different results which would back up what is being described. I would experiment with current box as much as possible with trying different things like raising tuning if you want more highs and shrinking port area just a little in an attempt to flatten out the range. Also iirc the box specs on Sundowns site haven't been changed forever and I remember someone there saying they needed to be updated and I thought that they were working on that, because all the X, Zv4, Zv5, NSv3, NSv4 all have the same suggested box specs.

If the sub is flopping around like a fish out of water when your playing higher notes then you are unloading, unloading will typically be caused by 1 of 3 things or a combination of those things. Too much power, to much port, or playing out of tuning frequency. I personally don't like the port area by wattage method because things just like this happen, and that is why I prefer the per cube method. It only seems to work good in more of your SPL style builds where your only playing 1 frequency. You get to a point where too much is too much and you start to lose output. Ideally you want to take the sub(s) cone area, xmax, enclosure size, and applied power into consideration when figuring out port area. For a free calculator WinISD is great there is a graph for port velocity on there, its worth downloading and learning, or if you need something more basic Torres works decently well too but wont give you any port velocity numbers. Port velocity isn't that bad as long as you stay under 10-12% speed of sound. Depending on the setup and how the sub(s) and port are oriented you may not hear port noise at all even if you have a really high port velocity. For example a a box in the trunk with everything firing towards the rear of the vehicle.

The softer X spider is going to change a lot, the X series is more tuned for the low end, not so much the Zv4 or Zv5 series though they can play low. The old Zv3 series use to be more sought after for SPL and because Sundown didnt have anything similar in their current line any longer they came out with the U series that had a very simlilar sound to the old Zv3 series. The X series has a distinct sound compared to any of the Z series (current generation or old) and using the X spider is going to be a lot softer of a suspension compared to the Zv3, Zv4, and Zv5 so it will have a lower fs. That being said if you are truly giving the woofer an actual 2000-2200 rms you are kind of large on the port area since the Zv3 is something like 34sq inches total in a 2.5 cubed net. So your at 40sq in a 2 cubed net and over powering it. A box tuned in such a low region such as 32 hz with a lot of port volume is going to have a significant drop off in the higher frequency ranges and that will also change from woofer to woofer that you install in that said box. Personally in daily applications Id say around 14sq per cube dependent on power. Typically you would increase box volume and port area to increase enclosure efficiency if you're lacking on power. Ideally you would want to run T/S parameters on the sub since its basically a frankenwoofer. Have you adjusted any crossovers on the amp such as changing the LPF? Did you somehow change the crossover on the deck to something lower? What is the sub doing physically wise when you play music with these higher frequencies? That could tell you a lot right there.

These are all so damn clean and sexy looking!!!!

Just get rid of the agm, no use having it. Even if you isolate it there will be no real benefit in having it.

That is only for running 2 of the same amps strapped together. so if your not using 2 Clarion DBX11551 amps it is useless to you.

Because the fuses are all internally connected as 1 fuse block inside the amp, there maybe 3 fuses but the amp sees it as 1 90 amp fuse instead of 3 30 amp fuses.. Similar to how some amps have two 1/0 gauge power and ground outputs, or some monoblocks have 2 positive and 2 negative speaker wire outputs even though they are internally connected as 1. So if 1 fuse is still good the amp will continue to play, though it is taking on the work load of the other 2 blown fuses plus its own. All fuses are not created equal, just because they are rated at a specific amperage doesn't mean they will blow at said amperage. In this case a 30 amp fuse might blow once current surpasses 30 amps for a period of time or it might blow once it surpasses 40 amps of current for a specific time. So that 1 fuse that was still good maybe a much stronger 30 amp fuse than the other 2 for one reason or another, could be a different brand, or a different production run made at a different time even.. If grounded out the outter shield of the RCAs fixed your engine whine that leads me to believe you hot swapped your rca cables at one point or another. Hot swapping your rca cables is when you unplug and plug them in when the radio/amp(s) are turned on. Which is fine to do as long as you don't touch the center pin of the RCA cable on anything grounded such as the vehicle body, battery ground, or even the outter rca terminal when you goto plug the rca back in (which can happen very easily without you even noticing). This is very similar to blowing the pico fuse on Pioneer radios, but it can happen to other brand radios as well when you hot swap the rca cables and short out the positive RCA cable signal. So if I was a betting man I would say you unplugged your RCA cables with the stereo on, grounded out your RCA cable one way or another which not only fried a trace inside your radio but also caused you to short out your amp and blow fuses. Its really the only logical thing since both issues appeared to happen at the same time. Of coarse Im sure you didn't do that, no one never does that and things just blow on their own!