looking to buy Looking for two budget. Powerful 15s that will be capable of 1ohm

[jgi420]

2 hours ago, Joe X said:

Just use a voltage gauge connected to the amp power terminals to verify that you have a steady 13-14V, no other measurements. If your voltage is not steady and constantly dipping when the bass comes on you will very likely not be doing rated power.

 

I would recommend not to buy Tramps or any other of those full bridge full range Brazilian amps, just get a Korean made half bridge amp about 2000W RMS and for wiring use 0AWG OFC wiring.

No, I just picked up the skar rp2000d hopefully that's an improvement

[jgi420]

Well okay so I finally received my package today. I hooked everything up everything's working like it's supposed to, however I don't notice a huge improvement over the last amp I have adjusted the subsonic filter. I left the low pass filter off and I didn't put on any bass boost started off with the game low then I went and turned it up I got it at about 80% near its max level and The output isn't much different than the last one it seems also realized the fuse that I had in the back was a 125 amp. So it was nowhere near a 60 Miss new amp. It's raining for 200 amp fuse but it's not pulling anywhere near that seems to have big terminals for zero or two gauge does not seem like it needs that works great on four gauge.

 

That's too bad I guess should have probably spent more money and got something different now this is two times that I spent a little over $200 and now I've got two amps that sound about the same.

[Joe X]

You need your new equipment professionally installed, that includes new wiring, battery, setting your gains correctly and such.

 

Talking over the internet looks like is not going to be helpful in your case. You need a person who is properly trained and has the tools to help you.

 

 

 

Edited January 26 by Joe X

[jgi420]

Okay so I went and I tuned everything and dialed in the new amp and it seems like it's somewhat louder than the previous setup. I guess I can't really complain. I mean what do you expect with box ride and everything you know Like you said, you know you would need massive amount of power in order to reach my goal I could have spent five or $600 and maybe I would have gotten close to a realistic number. That was rms level power. 

 

One thing that I noticed is on the last amp. It only had one input so technically you could only hook up one RCA so I thought it would be a good idea to get a y adapter and hook that up. Now I hooked that up thinking that maybe I might have only getting half the power which could have been part of my problem not getting as loud. Well I did that and it seemed like nothing changed. Little did I know because of only one input on the amp. I also disconnected one of the wires from the back of the radio so I wouldn't get any extra noise, ground noise or anything I figured. So now I was not using both RCAs still. So I never got to see what the system would have done with both RCAs hooked up. But I mean, I've always been under the impression that subwoofers put out mono sound and you don't need stereo sound to go into them. A mono signal is what you want I always thought but I could be mistaken. You might lose output with less signal so I guess it would have been interesting to have tried the old amp with both pre outs coming out of the deck going into the y splitter then into the amp.

 

Maybe you could chime in if you know anything about that Like I said in the old days it didn't seem to make much of a difference on an amp if you used left and right or just left or say right instead of a stereo signal The amps seem to play just as loud but on the newest stuff that's coming out maybe it does make a difference.

 

One thing that I did notice when I first hooked the amp up the power was on it seemed like but I didn't hear hardly any audio so I assumed something was wrong right from the factory. I was scratching my head for a couple of minutes yesterday then I unplugged one of the RCAs from the amp and it seemed like I noticed I heard music that was real deep like something was coming out of my subs but not very loud. Then I plugged both cables back in. Didn't seem to hear anything. I'm scratching my head again. I'm going What the heck is going on here. That's when I pulled my deck out of the dash and noticed one of the RCAs was unplugged from the radio. Once I made sure both were plugged in going all the way to the back of the car that's when the subs started hitting.

 

Crazy how something simple like one RCA being unplugged can cause a problem and you have almost no sound.

 

Even though I now had sound, it did not seem like the system was that loud which is why I made the previous post because I didn't think the system sounded much different than on the old amp. However, once I started to tune everything and I set the subsonic filter and the low pass filter, everything started sounding loud and deep.

 

One thing I noticed on this skar amp Is that it appears like when you turn the gain all the way up that's 0.2 on this amp. I didn't notice a voltage number on the previous amp so I had no idea the proper voltage to adjust it to. 

 

Seems like on this new amp I was able to turn the gain level almost all the way to the right as far as it would go and the system sounds good doesn't seem to have a problem It's currently a little below max. 

 

I plan on doing a little more fine tuning so I don't damage the amp or the speakers. I could be overdriving everything. The last amp had a clip light so it made it easy to tell what was going on.

 

So I appreciate some of the advice a few of you have given me on here. This is a great resource that Steve provides to allow people to be able to get help on fine tuning car audio without damaging equipment and making sure that folks do things right, I am sure that a lot of vehicle fires have been prevented by people giving sound advice on here. I'm well aware that people will say anything. Some people know nothing about electrical, current or physics or anything like that so definitely have to be careful.

 

I definitely don't have to do anything more I think my stereo is loud enough and I shouldn't have to purchase a bigger amp. I think everything is loud enough the way it is. I am having no problems my electrical system is up to par My battery came with the car when I bought it. Don't really know how old it is. Probably 5 years old for all I know but it still works just fine. Holds plenty of juice. The alt has no problem keeping it charged fully and my car starts up every time even in 20 below weather it has never failed me.

 

The terminals on the amp for the power and ground seem like they are big but so far everything seems to be working just fine on 4 gauge power and ground I don't think they'll be a problem. 

 

I am pleased that I did not have spend a bunch of extra money and upgrade cables and run a bunch of new wires glad that I oversized everything which left room for expansion.

 

Not just anybody can hook up wires and install electronics vehicles you have to be careful what you're doing and make sure you don't drill holes in the wrong areas and create shorts and stuff like that. 

 

A lot of good information on sites like this and some bad information. If I can somehow upload a video to this site of the system with music playing, I will try

[Joe X]

No issue running your system like you do in fact may be safer for your hardware to run at low power, point is why pay for upgrading amp, subs and box and having a HO alternator to get similar results as before the upgrades? Anyways, you can post a video right here of your system or you can make a thread at the build logs section, describe your system and post pics and videos.

 

https://www.stevemeadedesigns.com/board/forum/13-member-rides-builds-show-off-your-whip-show-off-your-system/

 

Edited January 27 by Joe X

[jgi420]

On 1/27/2024 at 11:02 AM, Joe X said:

No issue running your system like you do in fact may be safer for your hardware to run at low power, point is why pay for upgrading amp, subs and box and having a HO alternator to get similar results as before the upgrades? Anyways, you can post a video right here of your system or you can make a thread at the build logs section, describe your system and post pics and videos.

 

https://www.stevemeadedesigns.com/board/forum/13-member-rides-builds-show-off-your-whip-show-off-your-system/

 

Yeah, I might do that. So people can get an idea.  I could have bought different stuff I like being different. Having different things than other people usually. 

 

I just decided I guess the skar stuff seemed reasonable first I got the subs then I tried the amp skar doesn't seem too bad for the money.

 

One audio shop sells sundown stuff and I'm sure they would have liked to have sold me some of that but it was going to be expensive. 

 

 I asked about a box and they pretty much said they could build me one if I wanted but it would take months they were backed up with work and who knows what it would have cost, but they didn't seem to have anything that would have been 32 Hertz or lower. Probably the standard  39 to 40 Hertz prefab boxes typical I believe that's what they said so I didn't want to end up getting the same thing as before would have been no benefit or gain.