Johnny248

I don't know where to start with this rant.... So I will start with what just pissed me off.... Doing a simple 4 channel amp install in a vehicle which my customer had already upgraded the head unit, and added a single woofer and amplifier. This was a pretty basic low cost 4 channel amp install, and so (I know someone will bitch about lazyness or hackness or whatever, but think what you want. I've done this hundreds of times, and don't see a problem with it) the plan was to install said amp under a front seat, make the normal power and signal runs, AND run four speaker leads from the amp up to the head unit wiring harness and back into the factory speaker wiring. This is where my problem started. Normally I would twist up 16 or 18ga copper primary and build my speaker wires. BUT, I was about 3 feet short which what I had on the rack. Ok, no biggie, speaker wire. Right? Wrong, I forgot to re-up after using up close to 200' of copper 16ga speaker wire on the SUV I worked on last week. F*ck me. There is know way I'm wasting the 12ga or 8ga twisted pair ofc wire I have have in stock. Soooo... I figure I will run out to the store, get a nice 50' roll of speaker wire and be done with it. First off, I guess I haven't been to the store lately, because finding speaker wire is not as easy as it should be. First of all, I checked Meijer,Walmart, BestBuy, ABC Warehouse, and Radio Shack because there are all basically in one area near me. The options are HORRIBLE! Meijer & Walmart had some Scoshe CCA car audio rolls. I checked home audio also and they had some nice RCA Speaker wire which did not have any specs. Opened it, CCA. Wtf?? ABC has some E3 CCA everything. They had a couple RF Amp kits for $$$$. No thanks. Best Buy? They had a 30' roll of 18ga wire, and some $100 monster home wire. I asked the employee there what the deal is? They used to carry the nice smoked RF wire, not it looks like they are getting out of the business since there is one small corner left with a couple items. Anyway, last stop is Radio Shack. By the time I got there, they were closing. So back to Meijer for some Scoshe CCA 16 ga wire. I guess I am old school, but I prefer OFC speaker wire over CCA. It flexes better, generally has a better jacket, doesn't fall part while stripping,and most of all generally has some consistency of its AWG rating. Which gets to me to the next thing. There SERIOUSLY needs to be a better industry standard when it comes to wire. There is so much variance between manufactures, materials, insulation, and prob even length. I think they just roll the die to see what they should print on the next batch. "8ga CCA" which looks like 16ga OFC, 16ga CCA which you can't even see in a cross cut. "12ga" which looks like 24ga. It is crazy. Has the car audio customer evolved into such a cheap ass that quality is not even a factor any more? Is cost the only factor when buying products? Spend hundreds if not thousands of dollars and amplifiers, speakers, source units, etc, but buy the cheapest, crap wiring available? Seriously, you can buy a very high quality 4ga OFC amplifier kit for ~$55. but why spend than when you can spend $20 a get some CCA undersized wire? I just don't get it. So my final point on the wire, is it has come to the point where someone can't even go to the store and buy some OFC wiring if they wanted to spend the extra money, because the cheap cheap cheap walmart type shopper has ruined it. ---Note to all. I really doubt anyone is going to take the time to read this. I'm not sure how much sense it makes, I didn't take the time to read it over. Just me bitching and ranting about the frustration of the market these days. My old lady is tired of listening to me bitch about things she doesn't care about, so I figured at least I could put it out there if anyone did care lol

I know right?? God, It was way to fucking long. I guess it was just hard for me to sum up that there are 8 different level adjustments

Ok... lets see if I can do this without getting my head torn off for not searching correctly... lol anyway, here is what I have... Factory head unit, all adjustments flat, DD-1'd through speaker outputs shows 25 being a good max volume. No questions here. From the factory head unit, the speaker outputs go into a JL Audio CL441DSP. The CL441 DSP has two functions here, first it acts as a High-level to Low-Level converter, and at the same time provides DSP signal processing to "flatten" out the factory vehicle specific EQ which is programed into the factory head unit. Little info on this unit. JL Audio says to set the headunit at their idea of properly set head unit volume (in this case 25) and run the calibration CD to calibrate the CL441. The JL Audio unit has a master volume control, which I have opted to leave at full level and to simply use the head unit's volume control. So after everything is done, I still maintain my 25 has max volume on the head unit, and with the CL441 at full volume, I am not showing distortion on the DD-1. JL Claims 8v unbalanced low-level output. The head unit has 4 channels, the CL441DSP inputs and outputs 4 channels. I have front channels feeding into an AudioControl DQT 2 ch processor. The 2 channels then run from the DQT into the PDX-M12 Subwoofer amp, and then pass through into 2 channels of an Alpine PDX-F6. Therefore, the DQT provides eq for the front stange, and subwoofers. The rear channels are untouched from the CL441 to the rear channels of the PDX-F6. I'm sorry if this is confusiong. The DQT has and input level adjustment, as well as an output level adjustment. This is where my questions start.... DQT instructions say something along the line of turn up some dynamic muisc, and turn up input level until the "Input Maximizied" led starts to flicker. This doesn't really happen. I have the input level turned to the max (wait before yelling). The output level is similar, turn up until 2volt or 5volt flckers, but make sure output overloaded is not lit. Here is where I am at this these adjustments.... regardless of where the input level adjustment on the DQT is at, I can control the amount of hiss/noise (most noticible when the head unit is at a low or off volume level) by adjusting the DQT output level control. Right now, I have the input level at max, and the output level near mininum to prevent the system hiss. Is the input up, output down an "ok" way to have these AudioControl levels set if I am not expereincing any noise or other problems? My worry is that it just goes against what the AudioControl book is telling me. Next level's are at the amplifiers. The rear amp channels are cut and dry, since the signal goes right from the CL441 to the amplifier. No problem setting gains. However, the Front Channles and Subwoofer channels are processed through the DQT. When setting the amplifier levels, Am I correct in thinking this should be done AFTER I made EQ ajustements using the DQT? My thoughts are that the cutting and boosting of the EQ would change clipping factors of the amplfiiers since boosting a signal to compensate for acoustical envroment requires so much additional amplifier power?

It is up and running.. .Sounds pretty damn good so far. My DD-1 stopped working after setting the T1500-1 gains (still waiting for a reply from D'Amore about the problem ) so I had to set the T600-4 up without it. The QS drivers are pretty impressive. Phyiscally, they look pretty beefy. Tweeers seem good also. The Crossovers are beautiful, however I would have thought that they would have more tuning options. All you get is a bi-amp option, and 0, +3. +6 tweeter inserts. The KS in the rear stress a little at the higher volumes. You can def tell the difference between the two sets. The L3's are hitting pretty hard, however I think the enclsoure is tuned a little bit too high. Does not have quite the low end output I was hoping for. Other than that, I can say that the Blunty is loving it. It is at a point where you can play it loud and enjoy it. I do want to get the gains set correctly though....

I agree 110% ! I recently purchased two sets ID speakers from them. Original order was fast, and perfect. but then.... I was having issues with one of the componet drivers. I was pretty upset that my new $400+ speaker set went bad. I filled out an RMA request on Sonics site, returned it, and a couple of days later they sent me out a recplacement driver. No arguing, issues, or anything like that. Fantastic customer service. I will def continue to purchase from them.

First posting here. Have been following for awhile, but more of a reader... Anyway, here is the pile of stuff going into 'Blunty's' Tahoe Pioneer AVH-P6300Bt RF T600-4 RF T1500-1 bdcp Kicker QS 65.2 Kicker KS65 (3) Kicker L3's 20" Flip Down lbs of mat lbs of KunKonceptz copper wire As of midnight lastnight, the sound system is up and running. Just making noise at this point. Have to finish setting it up. Still need to install the flip down and security.... oh yeah, we had the help from 'Cricket' the whole day. She chilled back and fourth between the center console and one of the woofers helping the boys work on the truck lol