helotaxi

Experience and a tin ear...

So I decided on this unit awhile back, forgoing built in nav for a generally better unit for the money. Really like the interface and the Bluetooth is much more reliable and has much better audio quality than the Kenwood it replaced. I'm having a problem with the unit though. I live in the desert and it's hot like hell here from time to time. On hot days when the truck has been sitting in the sun, the radio will activate the mute until the truck cools down enough from the AC and then it works fine. It's annoying but I can live with that. The problem is yesterday I was driving in the mountains were it most certainly was NOT hot, OAT was between 55 and 42 F with the interior temp set to 69, and the radio muted on me twice for about 20 min. The unit was not even warm to the touch either time. Any idea on the cause or the remedy?

The problem with aluminum is that it readily corrodes and its oxides are non-conductive.

It's not something that you can do at home. It also isn't the firt upgrade I'd do to my electrical system. You may not even need to do it at all.

Nothing wrong with using copper you just can't really crank down on them when tightening things down. Brass is the next best but you're only talking about 3/4" or so and relatively low current so it's not super critical that you find a fantastic conductor.

The F150 times out at 10 minutes.

After port displacement you'll probably be in the 4cf range on that box. To figure out the length of the port you need to fiure out how much area the port will have (H x W). From there you plug it into the formula for dertimining port length. Or you can just use a program like WinISD to figure it all out. Realize that you want a decent amount of port area to make sure that port noise isn't a problem and the more port area you have, the longer the port needs to be to maintain a certain tuning. The longer port displaces more airspace making for a smaller box, which needs a longer port to maintain a certain tuning and so the downward spiral goes. Your best bet is to determine what size box you want with regard to net volume (I'd shoot for somewhere between 3.5 and 4cf based on your space limitations) and figure out how much port area you can go with while maintaining you max external enclosure dimensions. I would also plan on a vertical port simply for ease of construction. A horizontal port that ran the full width of the enclosure with a realistic amount of area would be so narrow that it would behave funny and probably exhibit a lot of noise. If you made it tall enough not to whistle, it would be so large that it would end up displacing more volume than the main chambers of the enclosure.

Regardless of what he had, you have a GM vehicle and it's about a simple as simple gets.

Depending on the driver, the enclosure has a complete role in the mechanical power handling of a sub. Whether you blow the sub by cooking the coil or by tearing the suspension up and smashing the former against the backplate, it's just as dead.

You're going to lose the hatch if you go ported. It's simply going to take up a lot of space. No way around it. If space savings are a consideration, the most cone area you can get in a smallish sealed box is the way to go. A pair of 12s sealed will hang with a pair of 10s in boxes of equal gross volume. The 12s can be in their optimum sized box where the 10s will either be in a box smaller than they really want and/or you will have to sacrifice port area to the point where either port noise is a serious problem or the box begins behaving like a severely mistuned box at high output as the air in the port packs up. If you really want a ported box, 8's might be the way to go. That said the last pair of 8's I ported had ports that displaced more air than the actual chamber of the box just to get enough port area with a tuning around 40hz. Each 8 had right at .6cf of airspace. They weren't going to win any SPL comps but they were pretty surprising in output.

A large midrange isn't a benefit. At all. The whole point of a 3-way system is to get the midrange playing as much of the frequency spectrum as possible. The midbass and the tweeter are just there to handle ideally the bottom octave and the top octave. A large midrange will start to beam at a low (relatively) frequency forcing the tweeter to play more of the freq range than is desired in a 3-way. In other words a big midrange totally defeats the purpose of the 3-way system. Get a good 2-way system and call it good.

"Going active" is using an electronic crossover (before the amplifier) to divide the frequencies between the individual drivers in a system so the bass goes to the sub (this is the normal way to do this one), the mid-range goes to the midrange speaker and the highs go to the tweeter. Normally the division between the mid a tweeter in a component set is done by a passive crossover (capacitors, inductors and resistors) after the amp. There are benefits to both kinds of setups. Good component sets have well matched drivers and the included passive crossover is designed to blend the drivers together well and account for the impedance curve of the drivers to make sure that the frequency division point doesn't wander with changing impedance. They are also simple to install and wire up and the hard part of the tuning is done for you. The disadvantages are primarliy the lack of flexibility and the fact that some power (though not that much) is lost in the crossover. Active setups allow you to select each driver yourself and match the response of the drivers to the needs of your selected install location. It also gives you discrete control over each driver limited only by the capability of the processor(s) that you're using. This allows you to EQ each driver individually, tailor filtering points and slopes and provide phase adjustment and time alignment. The disadvantages here are cost and complexity. You need a processor capable of dividing the frequencies at the very least and ideally able to provide complete signal control over each channel. You also need a channel of amplification for every speaker in the system. Those requirements can add considerably to the cost and unless you know what you're doing when it comes time to select the drivers and tune the system, all that extra cost won't yield you any benefit and it can easily end up sounding much worse than a decent set of components with a passive crossover. Bottom line, unless you know that you're willing to spend the time and effort to tune the system (and have the know-how or willingness to learn and a friend with the know-how), I wouldn't base any decisions on the future (and honestly unlikely) possiblity of moving to an active setup. If you just want a system to install and enjoy, active isn't the way to go and really isn't even worth considering. If you like to tinker and tune and mess around with stuff until you get it "just so" then an active setup might be for you.

I would recommend the Rockford 3.sixty over the Cleansweep for the simple reason that it is much more capable. The Cleansweep will give you a nice clean slate, frequency response wise, to add other processors and amplification to a stock system. The 3.sixty on the other hand will do that AND give you a full suite of processing functions from EQ to crossover to time alignment. I think the 3.sixty is cheaper as well. I would not recommend a 4 channel amp. Here's why. If you start off running a set of component speakers using their included passive crossovers on a bridged 4-channel, you'll come to expect the headroom and the effortless output that 4x the power can provide. Going from that to an active setup on the same 4-channel will end up disappointing simply because it will lose a lot of the dynamic capability. It might technically sound better, but it will seem like a downgrade nonetheless because you're losing 6dB of headroom. I'd look for a nice big 2-channel. If you decide to go active later, you can add another 2-channel and it will be a right and proper upgrade. That said, I'm not one to recommend brands, especially with speakers. It's just too much a personal preference. If you're planning to get everything including the processor and have a shop install it, budget probably $1500

Is the grand for just the speakers and amp or does that include the integration processor as well? What exactly are your goals? Really good sound at normal, sane listening levels? Much louder without breaking up? Are you planning on a custom install or are you going to use the stock speaker locations? Some general thoughts: Don't spend a dime on rear speakers. Use all of your budget on the fronts and an amp to power them. If you simply must have rear speakers, keep the stock ones running off the stock head unit. Fade all the way forward and the overwhelming majority of people find that is the front stage is solid, they don't notice the lack of rear speakers and relize that they don't need them. A single set of tweeters is plenty. Adding more will muck up the frequency response and make the top end harsh. Deaden the doors.

If you specify the acceptable reject rate in the OEM contract, it quickly becomes in their financial best interest to provide an increased level of quality and QC. They had some real growing pains in this regard originally, but the established OEMs that work with the bigger western companies have it figured out at this point. The smaller manufacturers over there still haven't quite got it right, but the cheapskates over here will keep them in business regardless.