helotaxi

Car Stereo Review (became Mobile Entertainment) was the best of the consumer mags while it was published. Soon after the name change it went down the crapper. Car Audio and Electronics was decent back in the day, but now all it has become is a showcase for the Sony, Audiobahn and Alpine demo vehicles (all of which are retarded in a bad way). Nothing but gaudy show vehicles in it. No, thanks. Some of the How-To articles are decent but you need a magnifying glass to see the pics. The only about circle cutting with a router in this month's issue was dumb. Multi pass cuts with a spiral DOWN cut bit? How dumb is the author? Performance Auto and Sound from our neighbors to the north is decent. They cover mostly tuner car stuff. All the featured vehicles are sponsored show cars. They do have pretty good (though not timely in any sense) event coverage. They get into the performance aspect of things quite a bit. Not much depth to the articles. Lots of good pics. They will typically have one or two of the same vehicles as CA&E in given month. They are running a full build log in the audio how to section of a really trick and elegantly done EVO that's been going on for 6 months. Auto Sound and Security was a rag from day one. Bunch of bimbos draped over show cars. Mobile Sound was the industry mag back in the day. It was great but as a consumer you couldn't get it unless you had connections. Sadly I didn't. I could manage an article or two on a regular basis. I'll probably need an editor though. I tend to write in a very thorough manner and it can be difficult to read sometimes.

Its the new style (if you can call the new one stylish) durangos that have issues. The original style was pretty solid from what I've heard.

The Alpine 9887 will be out nexy month and finally brings back the Bass Engine Pro and still keeps the iPod direct connect and is compatible with the Imprint stuff do out soon as well.

Only way to get it in the dash is to cut. Either build a center console to mount the new unit in or deal with it being in the glove box if you don't want to cut. As far as wiring, you only need 3 wires. There are only like 6 behind the whole dash. You need power, ground and ignition switched power. Those shouldn't be that hard to come by on that truck. I know it wasn't on my '69.

3 words for all 3 of those: Waste of money. If you want a BMW, get a 6 series. If you want a Porsche, get a Cayman S. If you want a VW get anything but the Touareg. 3 vehicles that should have never been made. If you must have a European SUV (and I don't know why you would) get a Range Rover or a UNIMOG.

Don't think you're going to be able to keep the factory XM. If your new HU is SAT radio ready, you can get an XM tuner module and the adapter specific to your HU for not too much $.

The lowpass on the Sundown goes up to 5k on channels 3&4 and the highpass goes up to 5k on channels 1&2. You can use it for most any driver combo.

The 2125 is only giving me a loud squeal on the outputs and the 275 is being overly sensitive to source grounding so I'm getting a bit of alt whine that I've never had an issue with before.

Me, too. Now if the old only worked...

It's usually a sign of a bad component.

Sounds like rumble coming from the amp. Not a good thing.

What type of music you listen to? How much space you willing to give up for the sub enclosure? What's the rest of the system?

Actually there is very little musical content below 32hz in most any music. It's out of the bandwidth of TV and radio broadcasts and therefore misses the target medium. Compared to a sealed box, loud in the 30s in really pounding out the lows. Most people don't know what 30 hz sounds like. As far as the sub being able to play lower than the box tuning, it will, to a point. The problem that you run into is the air in the port which provides the majority of the output at tuning, very quickly gets out of phase with the sub below that and starts to cancel out the subs output. The effect becomes more pronounced the farther below tuning you go. It will provide output below tuning it just won't be as loud. Final thing, a box designed using 99% of the software and equations out there is designed without accounting for the effects that the cabin of the car will have on response and actual enclosure tuning. You actually want to tune a few hz higher than desired because the cabin effect is going to lower your tuning a bit.

Ask that question of someone with a motorcycle...oh, wait, that's me... Yes asphalt effectively melts when it gets hot. Many a motorcycle has ended up on its side because the owner forgot about that and placed their kickstand on it in the summer. They come back to find their bike laying down and a hole in the pavement where their kickstand was. Like I said, my asphalt based deadener has partially melted in several places in my car. It hasn't come off or anything like that but it has left some really nasty, gooey, sticky puddles of tar.

Two speakers of equal impedance wired to the same channel of an amp will divide the power produced by that channel equally. There's no reason to feel that you need to send a sub or speaker its rated power. With music you'll never get there anyway. If you're planning to choose the subs and then an amp to match, decide if you want single or dual coil, what the final wired load will be and then decide what amp will give you the power you want into that load. For 2 dual 4 ohm coil subs rated at 600rms the Sundown SAE-1000d should do well for a decent price. The SAZ-1500D is more expensive but more powerful and overbuilt, too. There are also a ton of other companies out there that make amps ranging from decent to superb that will suit the application. A recommendation would be based on budget. What's yours?

There are two ways to isolate a battery. One is with a switch contact rated for more current than the system will draw. It's a solenoid triggered by the ignition so when the car is off the system battery is disconnected from the starter battery keeping the system from draining the main battery with the car off. It also has the effect of keeping to dissimilar batteries from draining each other. The second is a solid state isolator that is basically two big diodes that only allow charge to flow from the alt to the battery and not from battery to battery. The limitations on this are a .7V drop from the regulated voltage of the alt and the front battery cannot contribute any current to the system with the car on or off. Most people don't isolate their batteries, so I would say that is isn't a necessity, but if you have a daily driver that you want to be relaiable for the long term and your front a rear batteries are different, then it isn't a bad idea. If you listen to the system with the engine off on a regular basis, it starts to become necessary.

If you are after SPL, and it would seem that you are, you would be better served by a different sub than the Q. The BL as mentioned, would probably be a better choice. I'm sure that you'd get better feedback as far as which Fi sub would serve you best and how to best get what you want from that sub in the Fi forum.

A pair of Mags can't be wired to either 1 or 4 ohms though. They are D2 only. I like my XXX a lot but unless you can find them in D4 config, you will have the same prob as with the Mags.

First the damage: Here's the underhood wiring. I like the Knukonceptz terminal layout with two exceptions: there's no cover over the ring terminal bolt so I've got a live + post sticking up there and the set screw for the clamp is in a bad spot. I liked my Stinger experts much better except that I had to use a t-block to get the number of 1/0 outputs that I needed for the system. The one oreal complaint I have about the Knu battery teminals are that they don't grip the battery posts very well at all. The main system fuse. Most people add an aftermarket intake to get more power. For me it was to make room for the main fuse. The mounting plate is made of 1/16" aluminum and bolted to the battery tray. Again a Knukonceptz piece that works but I don't "love." The whole thing has to be disassembled to remove/replace the fuse including removing the wire from one end or the other. As it is, the only way I have to disconnect power from the system to work on it is by removing the power wire from the battery terminal. I would remover the whole ground terminal like I did with the Stinger terminals but it's almost impossible to get to the clamp screw on the negative terminal. Here is where it all ended up, minus the vanity panels. The wiring was a temp solution until I made sure it was all working. Since it isn't working, I'm not cleaning up the wiring or making vanity panels until I finalize what I'm going to do with the amps. The Drive30 is mounted to the back of the passenger side rear seat allowing me to mess with it from the driver's seat and giving me easy access to the seial port to plug it into the laptop when I get it all ready to tweak (eventually). The next step is to figure out what to do for amplification. From there I'll figure out which direction the amprack needs to go. All in all this current iteration of my system build (ever since I tore out the setup that had been in there for 3 years untouched) has been very frustrating. My 9813 was killed when the 275 portion of SOFAS melted down. Fixed SOFAS. Bought new Alpine with NO processing. Installed my HCCA 250G5 running 3 JL 10W6s and it decide to quit for no good reason. Went to 2 Assassin 8s on the 2100HCCA and wired up a PRA-H400 that I had for crossover an time alignment duty. Was repositioning the processor with it's fuse pulled and power harness disconnected when the ground wire came in contact with the hot lead on my mini distro panel and the + wire grounded out. Smoked the whole power harness and managed to kill something else in the processor. Repaired the power harness but the unit still doesn't work. Went to work on the sub install again and ordered the Drive30 to handle all my processing. Started with a fiberglass box for 4 Assassin 8s that didn't fit how I wanted (I'll just about give it away if someone wants it). Went from that back to my XXX and effed up the motor brace on the first box. Then I built this box. Now more problems with SOFAS. Really frustrated. I've never so much as blown a fuse before this last year and now I have 3 amps a HU and a processor to my credit. Not been a good year.

Well I wired the front stage to the 275 using the ES-200 passives and the Drive30 as a HPF. Ground loop from hell. The 275 is really sensitive to source grounding. Really sensitive. I've used the same HU install with 2 different amp configs with my HCCAs and no noise. I ran the inputs straight to the 275 from the HU (my mids are subs and work just fine with no HPF) and the whine was decreased, but still there. SOFAS is coming out of the car. I just have to figure out what to replace it with. SAX-100.4 is the logical choice but will almost require an amp rack rebuild. I'd also like a bit more power on the midbasses and would end up turning the mid/tweets down with the Sundown. I wish the 250.2 was in the final stages of production. Pics of where it stands to follow.

A 2-way and a 3-way daisychained.

Depending on the depth of discharge the batteries could be drawing a decent amount of current, enough to tap the alt. You have to consider that the alt still has the rest of the car to run as well.

Anyone know of a decent home receiver or integrated amp that doesn't mind 4 ohm speakers? I had a Carver CM-1090 but my sister somehow got it. Still trying to figure that one out. She got my CD changer, TV, VCR and speakers, too. Not looking to spend too much and don't mind used.

So I get it all in and wired this morning. Yeah! Or not. SOFAS it would appear is no worky. Bad outputs on the 2125 section. Not sure about the 275 section, but I think it's OK. Now I have to tear it all back out to get SOFAS out and replace the 2125 section with one from a Tenth Anniversary edition that I have here. Not happy at all right now.

The "add half the port width" is to determine the effective port length given the physical port length. If you are calculating what the port should be, the equation gives you the effective length and you subtract half the width to get the physical length that you need to build. This only applies to slot ports where one of the port sides continues past the opening of the port. If you're using round ports, this is totally irrelevant. For figuring flared ports http://www.subwoofertools.com/forum/flare.htm that calculator should give you what you need. To figure the flare radius measure the overall diameter of the flare, sbtract the diameter of the tube and divide by two. Should be 'net' not 'gross.'