helotaxi

I didn't mean to imply that you wouldn't beef up the electrical, we are in complete agreement on the need to do that regardless. But the degree of improvement required to support a 2kW Class A/B vs. a 2kW Class D are quite different. Then throw a completely wasteful tube amp on top of that...you won't need the heater in the car in the winter, your amps would keep it nice and toasty. Personally I'd go with DLS or Audison before the AX series if I was looking to blow a lot of dough. All said and done though, my pure SQ install at the end of the year is going to be Zed powered in all likelihood.

I've got Brown Bread in my car. No adhesion problems at all. No smell either. Did get some tar runoff in the spare tire well from the 120 degree summers here in Vegas though. Nothing that shows.

Because the only Class D's in the AX line now are the AX-600DE and AX-3200DE both of which are not suitable for my application. I need between 1600-2000W of power. IN that case I think that I would look elsewhere. You really don't want to try to run that kind of A/B power, especially at that price. $2.5k for amps and then another $500+ to beef up your electrical to run it. Not my idea of an efficient use of funds.

A diesel Jetta gets amazing mileage. Like 40+. Here at least, diesel is cheaper than gas as well.

Why would you use the AX-2000? Why not go with one of the AX series Class D amps?

Make a miter box that will hold the whole tube. You won't have to turn it at all.

I wouldn't nearly say "most." "Some" or "a few" would be a fairer assessment.

You're not alone there.

GO lower than optimal for the sub and you end up with reduced output across the usable range of the sub and muddy sound to boot. Too low is defined by the sub. Lower than practical is determined by the environment. As Acidburn mentioned, lower than the high 20's is really lower than practical in the car. The port will begin to displace more than the airspace of the enclosure.

The Nitro is just a reskinned and slightly stretched Liberty. My Liberty was quite capable off road and would easily break the rear end loose. I still wouldn't call it "sporty" though. If "sporty" and "utilitarian" were the requisites that SUVs had to fit into, I can really only think of 3 vehicles that completely fill that bill: SRT-10 Ram, Silverado SS and Ford Lightning. There in everything but the utility part would be the Jeep SRT-8. Everything else is going into the big minivan category. I drove a Mazda CX-7 and was pretty impressed with its performance. Its a lot roomier on the inside than it looks from the outside, too. Even decent on gas. Price is right in your ballpark.

Good read. There are some variations to those as well such as the split gap/dual motor setup of the Orion H2s. Any idea what the treatment is on the W7 series?

They're the same car in that everthing involving the chassis and drivetrain are identical. The sheetmetal is the difference between them. Think along the lines of the Mazda pickup and Ford Ranger. Based on the criteria you listed, I'm guessing that you're looking the in '03 and older range on those cars to find them in you price range? Go ahead an throw in the Camry and the Accord with that group and I'll think you'll pretty much have the bases covered. There are Domestic models out there that might fit what you want, too, but since you're looking used, I'd stick with the imports. They tend to hold together a bit better on average. That said if you can find a domestic that has been well cared for, you can get a pretty good deal. All the ones that are beat to hell devalue the ones that are in good shape.

The Fusion and the Mazda6 are the same car, BTW. What do you consider "good" gas mileage? What other requirements for the car do you have?

I finally got in the amp, midbasses and so on and got to work. The box has been under construction for the last week and is done, finally. 2 cf @ 30hz 25.5 in^2 of port. I didn't want a full height port because it would have been stupidly long. As such I built the port as a separate unit and then made a cutout in the front panel and a flared trim piece to finish it off. Here's the port. Then I laid out the template for the cutout. and made the cut on the router table. I doubled the baffle around the sub and glued the port in place. Here is the box minus the port flange ready for paint. The flange was going to be painted a different color. The baox itself is painted with hammered finish black. Then I cut out a base plate to bolt in to the spare tire well to mount various things to. To that I mounted my Batcap 800. Then I bolted in the dancefloor for the box to sit on; critical to get it to sit level and keep it all from sliding around. Two 3/8" bolts hold the thing in place. The box in place. It's screwed to the guides on the front of the dnacefloor and is a really tight fit. I built a trim ring for the sub to balance the port flare and painted it to match. The Son of Frank will be running the front stage and is mounted to a board spaced a bit off the back of the sub box. I ran out of daylight at this point. Tomorrow I should be able to get the sub amp and processor mounted and the wiring finished. It should all be working tomorrow night leaving only the trim panels left to build in the trunk. I'll be running the tweets that are currently installed until I can build pods for the CDT ES-02s that I have. I will also be running the ES-06+s in the door pods that I currently have built. I'll build new lower door pods if I decide that I need more airspace for them.

Did you put some kind of protective boot on the sheetmetal where the power cables come through the floor?

The W7 is a 3 ohm sub. Strapped each one is going to see a 1.5 ohm load. The amp should do 400W into 1.5 ohms. 2 of them would give you 800W. If you've got the $ that would be a nice way to go. Plenty of power in reserve.

When you are shopping for a new car and disqualify a model that you love because the factory HU is too integrated into the car. The car is the CX-7, BTW.

Even going straight to digital, there has to be encoding. If the same encoding is used when transferring from the analog master, it *should* yield the same result as direct to digital. With vinyl, you have to consider where the particular record was in the run of its master, how many times it's been played and a myriad other variables that a CD just doesn't have to worry about. Even R2R has issues with wear (my folk had a setup when I was a kid and a friend of ours had a setup even more recently, he converted some of my parents' old R2R recordings to cassette back in the day). Any medium where there is contact between the medium and a pickup is going to exhibit wear traits. You also have to consider portability. I've never heard MiniDisc referred to as a hifi medium. Early mp3 style compression that was fairly readily audible on the high end. It was brought on as a recordable medium that was portable; convenient track access like a CD but recordable and small like a tape.

A Minilith won't give you that much power into the load that sub will present the amp. 2 of them strapped would give you around 800 though.

Nope, it's really that big. 27" x 12" x 2.5". Weighs around 40 lbs. Old school A/B bulletproof power.

It's only a visual thing. Other than how nice it looks when all them amps match, there is no reason to stick with one brand of amp.

The only strange load I could think of would be the amps.

The battery can't be the problem. No way it could have a ripple on the output. The amps, probably the design, are the problem. That I will almost guarantee. I'm having a similar issue with one of my older PG amps and I know it to be a problem with the amp.

If the W0s were out it was not too soon after they began. The W0 was a mid to late 90's thing. I have a W1 from '91 and the W1 was their 3rd or 4th series of subs and was replaced by the W0. The JL brand has been around since about 87-88 timeframe. They're too business smart to bother going after eD on patent infringement unless they have a very solid case. It's not like eD is cutting into their market share. The reason they would go after them is to defend their patents to keep companies like MTX, Kicker, RF and the like from trying to steal their technology, because they are the real competition, not eD.

Sounds like the power supply of the amp itself is the issue, not a ground loop. If it was a ground loop issue, the noise would go away entirely when you unplug the RCAs and you would not have noise with the car off.