2003 Brazillian Fiat Palio Hatchback (P1Y + Old School Amp @ 134.8 dB) my humble ~600W daily driver

[transeunte]

Well, first things first, I have been around here for some time, specially because of Meade's legendary builds on his truck and Decaf's Loud/Screwed collection, but didn't had the urge to post until now. Since english is not my native language, please bear with my spelling errors.

Like most of you guys, I discovered what car audio was about when I was a Kid in the late 90's and have ever since wanted to build my own system. Problem is, here in Brazil Car audio equipment has been always a VERY expensive hobby, and as a college student/intern there hasn't been lots of money to spend. This set represents the final product of some long years of my research on automotive sound.

I tried to go simple, to avoid mistakes following car audio best practices and proper execution of a clean install. My goal was to have the most efficient system within it's constraints, therefore I went for decent cabling, the best-sounding Head Unit and the best-sounding Old School A/B Amplifier on this class that I could afford, trying to match most evenly all those items. This is what I have up to now:

Head Unit: Pioneer P1Y - I'm In love with it since 2006, it is a blast with 4 x 60W RMS at 4 Ohms

Amplifiers: Banda 4.8 480W (4x 2 Ohm 120W RMS) Powering the front stage + subwoofer. It's an Old School Brazillian A/B Amp, very strong bass, sounds amazing, much better than the rebranded chinese stuff that obliterates the local market nowadays.

Mids and Highs, Front: Bravox CS60D 2-Way Component Kit (120W RMS) 6" Midbass + 2" Tweeter on the OEM places: doors and side-mirror mounting.

Mids and Highs, Back: Bravox Coaxial 50W Speakers, powered by the head unit (just to have some rear fill).

Sub Woofer: N.A.R. 1204SW2 (12" Single 4 Ohm, 200W RMS) powered by 2 Bridged Channels (240W @ 4 Ohms). Another Brazillian gem, very deep sound.

Speaker Enclosure: Ported 60L of 20mm MDF, custom design by myself, tuned at 37Hz (could be optionally tuned at 26Hz if I shut down one of the pipes)

Signal Wires: Knukonceptz Krystal Smoke Triple Shielded 4 Channel (Front Stage + Subwoofer)

Power Cables: Industrial Copper 35mm² (~2 AWG)

To close it up, the car has been deadened all around with asphalt adhesive mats and re-done the OEM carpeted underlay with a fabric 2x thick than originally.

On the aesthetics side, I have set up an MDF matte black panel that stands 1.5" from the trunk floor, it accomodates the Amplifier itself along with three big LED displays beside, monitoring it's Voltage (top), Current/Amperes (middle) and Temperature (bottom), along with some Warm White accent 5050 LED strip that helps to show-off a little bit (I chose warm because it matches the white amp nicely, and doesn't accent dust like the cool white LEDs do). The trunk looks like this:

(sorry for the crappy Blackberry pic. And yes, those are HID Ballasts.. for the backup lighs, you know.. LOL)

In the picture the sound was banging a bit with the engine shutt off, that's why the voltage is below 12v. With the massive 35mm I have negligible drop in voltage levels after 4m of cable, wich is very nice. The original 50A/h Battery has been upgraded to a Silver-Based Lead Acid 70A/h - the largest that could fit on the engine compartment - and I have yet to see any dimming on the lights when the car is on, even though the alternator is an original 90A/h.

Also recently I have upgraded the amplifier guts with huge aluminum heatsinks (from older pc's I had here) over all transistors (that's where most heat comes from), along with two 60mm fans that blow cool air inside it and over all the heatsinks. Also the Amplifier has had a "backplate-delete" and also sits 1.5" over the trunk floor, wich also helps increase cooling a lot. Was a good weekend project for sure:

(sorry for the crappy picture, this time is the iPad's fault)

I have competed only once, and won 1st place on a local DB DRAG RACE event in 2007~2008, with 134.8 dB on the "up-to-1000W" amateur category (and yes, I had opponents) with my old 240W Subwoofer. I went to the event just to watch, but friends told me to go for it. My score could have been better since cabling at that time was ridiculously sub-par, but little did I know about it back then.

Since then I've become not so much interested on setting off other car's alarms (it's fun when you are young LOL), but in deeper bass, and that's why I am now using a "weaker" subwoofer - the one currently on my setup has an awesome response curve, check this out:

As you can see, my box was designed for maximum SPL, the two 4" matte black ducts are 20" long and protrude on the outside of the box, providing a +10dB gain around 50Hz which can only make me proud - at that time it was designed, I was all about Funk Carioca/Miami Bass and Hip Hip. The box is all carpeted on the outside, with some foam inside to help deal with unwanted resonances.

Thanks for looking, I would love to have some feedback from you guys on where to go next. I am thinking on adding another 500~1000W Class D amp for an equally powerful sub, and leaving my current amp just for the front and back stage, but need some more info on which brand/equipment should I go for.

Also hope to upload more detailed pics soon (can't do it on the iPad).

Edited March 15, 2012 by transeunte