Bluliner

You'll fry a coil or have some other mechanical malfunction before the cone falls apart. Between the SQ of kevlar vs. CFRP; the passive crossovers will have more to do with how they sound than the materials used to make the cone. While kevlar & carbon fiber are both very strong, they're only strong when woven as a reinforcement of some sort of plastic (the resin). And depending on what & how much resin was used, there may be no benefit to using kevlar or carbon mat other than for marketing & bling purposes. Some of the finest sounding speakers I've ever heard for either car or home have been paper woofers. I have a pair that are nearly 30 years old and still function 100% today. Don't play the materials or RMS game; use your ears.

Who cares if the HU has a 2v output? Are your RCA's 30ft long? With good grounds, quality twisted RCAs, and a proper install; there's no audible difference in noise levels between 2v & 4v. That's not say I don't like line drivers, but I wouldn't expect any difference between a HU's 2v & another's 4v. The EQs I've used and really liked are all trunk mounted & kinda big. I loathe in-dash 1/2 DIN units.

Ya...like dim his lights more. The alternator has to run the car and maintain the battery. Typically, batteries draw about about 7A of current and need 13v< to charge. The flickering lights means the alternator cannot keep up and the voltage is stepping down to the battery. In case you don't know; a battery is around 12.5v and the alternator produces around 14v. When the voltage dips b/c of current demand, you're running off the battery. I don't care if you have a stock battery or 15 aftermarket batteries; the lights are still going to dim. ... To fix this issue, I'd like to know more about the OP's system and vehicle. In normal daily drivers (<1kW), a "Big 3" upgrade is a waste of time and money. A 4ga run that's <3' can carry A LOT of current with minimal voltage loss. Spending who knows how much on 1/0, connectors, loom, and a few hours doesn't make much sense if you're going to gain .1v at the back of the car. Likewise, it's probably a bad idea to toss HO alternators and whatnot at the car if the problem can be fixed by finding a better grounding point and/or turning down the gains a bit. Hell, a good cap will probably fix the problem but I'd prefer a "free" solution...wouldn't you?

If the woofer & port were both down firing or corner loaded, there should be little difference as the distance between the woofer & port will be nowhere near the size of a wave.

the amp was 300 and speakers are worth 700 thats why i wanted to know the exact type of amp and im still wondering how much watts it has to be Who cares about watts? Seriously, there's a lot more to an amp than the sticker on the case. For instance, watts do not tell you how noisy an amp is nor will it tell you if the onboard crossover network is terrible. Watts won't tell you if you'll have to replace your amp in 366 days nor will watts tell you if it will even sound good. There's plenty of amps on the market that sound terrible, or worse, gutless...you'd never know by reading the specs. Likewise, some companies like to get cute and rate their amps without all channels being driven and using a wattage figure at 1kHz. Not too useful if you plan on using all the channels and driving a subwoofer now is it? Don't even get me started on a-weighting. Use your ears and not what the spec sheet says. I have owned plenty of amps that looked marginal on paper but curb stomped high-end equipment. Amps have their own sonic signature when used in the real world. Anyone who brings up the Richard Clark $10k challenge doesn't understand the challenge nor do they understand how amplifiers are used in the car audio environment. There's plenty of quality products out there both new and used. Amps I've always been partial to would be the old Rockfords that used Hafler's Trans-nova design, the hand-made Japanese ADS amps, Linear Power amps with the T03 metal cased transistors, Xtants with the removable cases, Soundstream Reference Class A3.0's, Boston Acoustics GT series (sleeper SQ amps), the non-designed by Arpa Zapcos (look for a sticker), and this is just the used gear list. New amps? There's still a big list but if you're on a budget, might as well go used instead of buying a cheap amp just b/c it's new.

Slot port boxes are larger b/c the port displaces more internal volume. And if a slot port is greater than a 4:1 (meaning 4" high and 1" wide) ratio, you lose output. Aeroports are cheap & easy, especially if you want a smaller overall footprint for your enclosure. Box dimensions aside; slot ports can be made to sound better than aeroports so long as the ratio is less than 4:1.

OP; You're buying a $100 amp to power $1000+ worth of speakers? Anything about that sound odd to you?

This reminds me of a mess I saw a long time ago. Customer brought in their HU for warranty with the vehicle & HU harness still attached. Every single wire was soldered together in what can only be described as a massive lead booger poorly wrapped in what felt like hockey tape. And when I mean every wire I mean every wire was soldered together at one point (gigantic lead sputnik booger). When I inquired why this was wired that way the customer calmly said, and I'm not making this shit up, "the electricity should know where to go and not break the radio." Darwin? Where were you that day? ... Carry on.

If you want to bring the soundstage up a bit, first try RAISING your crossover points. If that doesn't work, you may want to adjust your time alignment if you have that function. If you have any spare tweets laying around, mock up a mount with some carpet tape and take a listen to those tweeters in the a-pillar and firing up at the windshield like you're planning to do with the 5.25". That usually takes care of the rainbow. But having a midbass & tweeter lower and adding a mid up high on the dash is always a bad idea. You want the mid & tweet as close together as possible if they're mounted up high. (like a 4"mid in a vent & tweeter in the a-pillar)

Peerless SLS woofers do very nicely in door locations. Depending on how much depth you have, JL 8IB4's make some nice midbass drivers too.

If they are receiving 750 instead of 900, would you even notice? No... Since you're asking it's probably safe to assume that you're not happy with something in your system and are thinking about changing amps. Am I right or are you just curious?

Hmm...I thought the newer (2004 & on) Clarion HU's were quite reliable. Some may not have sounded great but I don't recall seeing a lot of them broken like you would Alpine & Kenwoods. With that, I also thought Pioneer's radios were pretty reliable, electronically at least. Sure, the buttons may fall off or the face may flip on it's own; it'll always play a CD though. But Boss? That's fleamarket junk.

First off; that system is wayyyyyyyyy to complicated. You have speakers up high, down low, behind you, and staring you in the face. It might get loud, it might sound clean, but it will in no way image right. You have to localize as much as you can in one area and use some tricks to bring the sound stage up. Ditch all the speakers behind the b-pillar except subwoofers. Up front, I'd do away with either the 6" or 8" woofer. Build either the 6 or 8 into the door and have the 4" & tweet in kicks. They're higher freq. speakers and will have better dispersion. To bring the sound stage up, run some ambient tweets in the a-pillars either firing at one another or crisscrossed firing at the windshield. You want these to be a bit quieter than the tweets in the kicks. You're only using these to "fool" listeners in thinking the music is coming from much higher in the sound stage. This is similar to using good midbass to "fool" listeners in thinking the bass is coming from the front. With that, you have 8 channels up front; 4 tweeters, two 4" mids, and two 6/8" midbass drivers. In regards to using the 360.2; can't you set it up so that only 1 input feeds signal to all of its channels? You're not going to be balancing/fading with the HU...no need for all those extra RCAs or Y-splitters.

It's kind of like jacking the treble up on a POS mid 90's GM car...that kinda sound.

If they work and you only paid $45, you're getting what you paid for. If you're expecting hi-fidelity sound reproduction from those, you're not going to get it. 3-way 6x9's with plastic tweets tend to all be kinda screechy/harsh as there's no LP filter for any of the speakers. So you have 3 speakers all reproducing high frequencies giving you that harsh tone.

i'm not running them off the HU, if anyone buys focals and does that, they should be lynched. i'm just saying i haven't put too much thought into what amps i'm going to upgrade to because i don't know what they're going to be powering as of yet. the polk is not a shitty amp but not a SQ amp by any means. Sorry...missed that that bit. As an experiment, turn the x-over off on the amp and reset your gains. I never trust the silk screening on an amp when it comes to crossover points and in my experience with Polk amps, their crossovers kinda suck anyway. That's why I recommended resetting your gains as you may be able to get more clean power out of the amp with the crossover turned off. Unless they updated their crossovers from the original MOMO carbon things, you're adding distortion if you use them. I'd also be weary of manufacturers who rate their amps at only 1 freq (1kHz). But since you have your heart set on an Arc amp, and really - who doesn't?, you have nothing to worry about. Their products are top-notch and are one of only handful of amps out there I'd buy sight unseen. But since I'm cheap I stick to old school SQ amps.

So you're powering your Focal components off the head unit and are wondering why they "don't hit the lows"? Buy that Arc amp you're thinking about or at least something that doesn't start clipping around 5w of output. Worry about the processor later as it won't make a lick of difference if you don't have an amplifier or your amp is a POS.

What amp/amps are you using and do you have any processing? Over doing time alignment, using the wrong crossover points, EQing by ear with poor music, or powering good speakers with a bad amp can all cause the issue you're having. A bad install can do it too... What kind of car is this in BTW?

There is no correlation between clarity and power handling. Actually, there isn't a correlation between anything and power handling as there is no enforcement of an industry standard when it comes to those numbers. For instance; 10w of bass sent to a tweeter will smoke it despite it being rated at 100w (or whatever). In that instance, power handling didn't mean anything. If you want loud & clear; go to a local shop and listen to some for yourself. Your ears & preferences are different than everyone else on this board. From there, how you set the high-pass crossover and how much you abuse your system will have more of an affect on the longevity of those components than what's printed on the box. RMS ratings are marketing tools used to fool people. Is a 200w speaker louder, cleaner, tougher, and overall better than a 100w speaker? No. Unless you know how each manufacturer tested their product and unless they all used the same method to reach their RMS ratings, you're really comparing apples & oranges.

I've used similar pieces in almost all of my systems. I hate having to scroll through menus to change the volume of the subs and I've owned a lot of 2ch systems which made the RCA volume control almost a necessity. The way I've always set the gains with these things is to crank it & the radio all the way up then set the gains on the amp. You could probably get away with your radio @ 3/4 volume, but leave the RCA level control at MAX. Remember, bass does not come from a volume knob - it comes from moving air. If you find that you need more volume, you need to move more air (bigger subs, more subs, more power, better box) and not a volume knob that goes to 11. Some people forget that and expect having a separate knob will act like some sort of magical bass booster.

The goal of a high voltage pre-out is much the same as twisted pair RCA's and keeping your signal wire away from power wire. Ever wonder why you don't need a lot of shielding for speaker leads yet you do for signal leads? It's all do to voltage. There's always going to be a few electrons here & there that get, shall we say, confused and just kinda hang out where they are. In a low voltage signal lead, that can be a problem as there isn't a lot of electrons being passed through (compared to speaker leads). Hence, you get into the mathematics of the signal to noise ratio. Boost the signal with the noise being the same and you never notice as the ratio is much more favorable. The fact that you can keep the gains down on your amp is a nice unintended consequence. The higher voltage signal going into the amp means you're not amplifying much, if any, noise that's picked up through the RCA run AND the noise floor of the amp stays low. WIN-WIN That's the good news...here's the bad news. Do you really think every head unit that's rated @ whatever voltage really does that? Unfortunately, they do not. Furthermore, the resistance of the RCAs will lower the voltage that amp sees @ it's input anyway. I've seen nice Alpine HU's meter out below 2v at the end of a nice set of RCAs. So how do you get around that? 2-ways: 1. Use home audio RCA's - they're thicker, have less resistance, but forgo twisting in favor of shielding. 2. Line drivers I swear by line drivers, however they can cause more problems than they solve. For instance, you can run into ground loops & other noise related issues if you have a bad install or bad unit. The better ones are not exactly cheap and some can take up as much room as an amp; so there's a give & take with them. But if you're not a hack installer and don't mind having a processor that's not in the dashboard, line drivers are great as most processors will do a better job than what comes in a HU and boost the RCA voltage. The ones I've always used have been Audio Control pieces as every processor they make is also a line driver. I also know some people with car PC's who have used Audio Control line drivers with great success. So a quick wrap up: High voltages going through the RCA's is good, some manufacturers lie about their specs, and line drivers (or processors that do the same thing) are usually money well spent.

If you're looking for a component set that can overcome being drowned out by your subwoofers, I'd probably stay away from Alpine products. Historically speaking, Alpine components have always been kinda mellow and laid back...not something that could get nasty when you wanted it too nor were they something that could get very loud. I still lust after some DDDrives...but that's for another post. Speakers I'd recommend if you're on a budget and have some sort of EQ; a used set of the old Boston Pros. Those things were damn near indestructible and they sounded awesome after being EQ'd. The newer ones sound just as good, if not better, but I'm not sure how abusive you are with your system as the newer Bostons may not be as tough (neo magnets can't take a lot of heat). Oh, and Boston will warranty anything. They're a very cool company so long as the speakers were originally bought at a dealer. Another option, if you can find them, are Rainbow speakers. These have the same edge & in-your-face-ness as the Bostons, but they have more of a mid-bass 150hz pop to them. Tough speakers and can sound very good with minimal tweaking. If you're on more of a budget I'll let you in on a dirty little secret...the Image Dynamics components sound almost identical and cost a lot less. Want another secret? Alumapro components use the same x-over manufacturer as Rainbow, their mids sound better, they're more efficient, and you can choose between a soft dome or hard dome tweet. More expensive than the IDs though and I'm not sure if they're still in business. Haven't heard too much from them. If you find a dealer or you call them up, ask 'em if they still have the 6" add-a-woofer setup for their components to turn them into a 2x6.5 & 1" tweet 3-way set. Oh, Rainbow has the same thing too... Hmmm...Focals can get down but are a bit smoother than the speakers I mentioned above. At least their higher end models are. The sub <$300 Focals are, IMO, nothing to write home about. In the interest of full disclosure; I'm an SQ guy and have used ADS components on and off since I can remember and haven't had a system over 500w in almost a decade. So my opinion comes from a background of not having a lot of overpowering bass and liking super smooth "airy" sounding components.

Never heard a 3-way co-ax that didn't sound like garbage. The problem is you have 3 speakers (woofer, tweet x2) all playing the same high frequencies and none of them do it very well. If I had 6x9" openings in my front doors, I'd be real tempted to try this: http://www.parts-express.com/pe/showdetl.cfm?Partnumber=264-837 Pair that up w/a 3" in a vent and a tweet in the pillar and I bet you can make a pretty killer 3-way component system if you have the crossover capabilities to do so.