neo_styles

Didn't you just get the DCON/Khaotik combo in your trunk?

I'd say yes and no to what I bolded. If you're chasing numbers on the meter, a scope is invaluable. I always tell people who don't own an oscilloscope to tune by ear. It was the advice I got from Stephen Mantz on how to tune his equipment, so I took it and ran with it. BUT...I remember reading something about the human ear only picking up on distortion closer to the 10% threshold, so going full tilt on your sub(s) probably requires a bit more due diligence than just a by-ear tune, especially if you're planning to go far beyond rated power to them. In this situation? Absolutely, tune with your eyes, ears, and nose. If someone tries to hand you a DD-1, just laugh. Tuning to a blinking light instead of using an iota of knowledge in car audio is starting to breed a lot of problems. Finally, OP, I don't know diddly squat about SoundQubed's bass knobs, but if there's any doubt, substituting it for an extra pair of RCAs and a PAC LC-1 should be high on your list.

This build would be insane by my standards, but for you? Just another walk in the park, right?

God, those Singer alts always come out looking great. Hopefully it stands the test of time. Nice build log and look forward to seeing you continue to kick ass!

Great review, Julian, and I'm glad you're happy with the B.A. Now I just have to figure out if I want to go for this or the Leviathan on my next build. I mean do I really NEED 300+ watts to those Mirus coaxials? Interested to see what you think of this long-term.

Top-notch work, bud. I'm kinda envious seeing as how this is VERY much in line with what I hope to be doing by the end of the year. Demo video came out extremely well, btw.

Just curious to hear all of your responses. We know why people say not to buy it and 99 percent of the time, cost comes into the picture. The only other potential negative I've ever noticed was in terms of how some of the lower lines used to be packaged that caused a little paint damage on the basket during shipping. So assume you're around a bunch of people who've never heard of nor actually heard SSA subs. What do you say that convinces them it's a solid purchase over the competition? Asking for purely informational purposes and keep in mind I have an ICON myself on order.

Damp Pro is great stuff, but damn if it isn't hard to shape when it's not hot outside. I have the 18" Death Row, so I'm definitely curious to see what you end up thinking of the Judges. Just don't forget to weatherproof those speaker rings before you close up the whole build.

I swear to God, I thought they were covering Black Sabbath.

Didjeridoo?

Regardless, I'm still all ears. What would make me really happy is tune the amps to just below known distortion and control levels with a remote knob for staging Why bother. Then you'll change music and have to do it again. Remote knobs suck for staging, not at all the purpose. Matching should be your goal. How you "match" is for you to decide as it is your ears, not mine.Add to that setting your gains to some Dave Holland or Charles Mingus isn't going to make you happy. I was just going to use some Gregorian chants and bluegrass, but thanks for ruining that for me. Find something dynamic and unclipped...got it.

Trap in SMALL DOSES. I can't listen to the stuff non-stop or I feel like there's a mosquito constantly flying around my ears. THIS song, though...love this song

Regardless, I'm still all ears. What would make me really happy is tune the amps to just below known distortion and control levels with a remote knob for staging

M5, any suggestions on preferred dynamic material for setting gains? I'm sure there's a few Sean fan favorites out there

Let my KEFs break in for a bit and threw some intentionally-subpar source material at it. That's what the KEFs sounded like on a 320 AAC AirPlay stream from my laptop to an AppleTV. Not half bad...

I think the takeaway is that there isn't a blanket solution for everyone's noise problems. Can it help relieve issues some are having? Apparently as I've been seeing first-hand accounts of a cable swap being the fix. But the clincher for me is what's going on behind the casing on those connectors. Seeing what some people (not naming for impartiality's sake) consider a "quality" solder job and what will result in the long-term effects of the crap jobs some of these Premium/Deluxe/Audiophile sets is what irks me. At least West is taking a little extra time and attention to the little things with these cables and not charging an arm and asshole for them.

And, yes, the Pios were great, but it was time for an upgrade. These Q300s are much more of a Hi-Fi setup than the Pios were and I could immediately tell the difference in tonality between the two. While the Pios are very warm and forgiving with a really steep rolloff on the top, these KEFs just kinda reveal everything (although they're definitely not sibilant). The coaxial design with their little "tangerine waveguides" were a big reason I chose these in lieu of some other designs I was eyeing. Other contenders were the DefTech BP6B, KEF C7, and a couple lifestyle systems like the Energy Take Classic and Boston Soundware XS. Once I stripped my system down to a 2.1, though, I couldn't really go back. Taught me a lot about setting up a HT for proper imaging, especially when I couldn't just let the center channel take care of all the guesswork for me.

Lol don't laugh... http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/20135300/#/60135299

Well after going through hell and back, I finally have my stuff lol. Time for HT pron?

I'd have a couple photos to show if USPS wasn't jerking me around right now with where my new monitors and sub are atm. Upgrading from some Andrew Jones bookshelves/center and JBL SUB300 to a pair of KEF Q300 and Sunfire SDS-12. Receiver is a Pioneer VSX-1021-K. Not ideal for hifi use, but very utilitarian for HT.

It's my understanding that he actually wants to compete in SQ with this setup. Correct me if I'm wrong, Senchez. If that wasn't the case, I would have recommended PA for him as well, but it looks like he's trying to do this legitimately. Another note for you, Senchez...I understand that MECA likes to critique SQ cars just as much with the install quality itself as well as how they sound or RTA. Take that into consideration as you move forward in the build.

As you asked off-forum, I'll make my two cents and, for everyone else, please take it as such. I'm an enthusiast among professionals and I'm not ashamed to admit it. Here's one of the drivers I recommended to Senchez as it kinda bridges the gap between his desire for a large driver with the ability to extend high, all without swallowing his chances of having adequate mounting depth: http://www.madisoundspeakerstore.com/approx-8-woofers/morel-caw938-9-woofer/ They should do okay mounted IB in the stock locations, but run as recommended (2 cubes sealed) may dramatically help with low-end extension. A 3rd order at 43Hz ain't too shabby. What sucks about going SQ for you, Senchez, is it kinda betrays a lot of things you didn't have to think about when building a groundpounder. Primarily, that's whenever you have multiple drivers playing the same frequency (in the same airspace), it's very easy to get cancelation. This is particularly more true when those frequencies have a large amount of sound force, particularly with midbass and subwoofer relations. That's why running proper Time Alignment tends to produce such rich, tight midbass as you're not having out-of-phase signals swallowing up that amplitude. Be prepared, should you be looking for a midbass driver with ultra-low extension, to either spend A LOT of time working your TA to get them just in phase or, as some have done, carefully select your crossover points so the amount of information both drivers process is minimal without leaving any gaps. On this one, I say pick or choose. I thought TA was going to be the biggest bitch ever for me to work and, surprisingly, it's an absolute blast for me. Can't say it's going to be the same for you, though, as everyone is different. Next point is that, at least as it's been preached to me ad nauseum since I started getting serious about this hobby, the real ticket to having that up-front bass is to have the largest midbass driver you can fit up front. Makes sense in theory, right? When you're watching music live, they don't put the speakers behind you or it'd be a giant smack to the back, not the chest, and throw off the whole idea. But what I found interesting over the last year is that, at least with enough SPL behind the music, it didn't matter how I was oriented in a concert hall as the effect was the same. So now you get the double-edge sword: pressurize the cabin enough with a sub stage to make it hurt from any angle and potentially screw up any chance of having meaningful midbass response or run your sub at a reasonably lower amplitude and let the midbass handle the majority of the information. The only fix for this would be to find a set of midbasses that could play at the same SPL as the subs, then tweets that would have the same SPL as the mids, and Bob's your Uncle now you're deaf. And therein lies why a lot of people tend to be underwhelmed with a SQ setup because, as stated, you throw a lot of wrenches into the gears when you start to pressurize a vehicle's cabin. Sucks because it works great in an outdoor venue or concert hall where it has a chance to decay. (tl;dr = no balls-to-the-wall sub stage, just get a bigger midbass without sacrificing top-end response). Getting horns was a really smart choice. They like playing low without being overly harsh or fatiguing, but just because the equipment is rated to play down below 800Hz doesn't mean that you really should. Have you ever read about how you really don't need to TA tweeters in a setup? I know that I have and it didn't make sense to me until I saw Erin (bikinpunk on DIYMA) explain that, at the frequencies a tweeter is supposed to play, sound power is the determining factor over TA (meaning adjusting gains on the tweets is going to produce a more profound effect on the stage than trying to time align them to the mids). Does that mean that TA produces NO benefit? Of course not; just not as much as adjusting sound power. What am I trying to state in this wild tangent of a paragraph? That running your tweets lower throws them INTO that arena where you now have to be concerned with TA. You're reaching upper midrange territory and asking a tweeter trapped in a waveguide to represent it. Now you have a tradeoff of having enough power sent to the tweeter to produce reasonable output at that in exchange for far more than is necessary in the treble and upper treble regions (yes, techies, I came up with "upper treble" off the top of my head). Basically, let the mid be a mid and the tweet be a tweet, but a damn leopard can't change its spots. Finally, take a look at what parts of music are represented by what frequencies in the spectrum. By trying to cross a tweeter down around 600Hz, you're running the risk of chopping up a large portion of the spectrum used to produce vocals and very specific instruments between two drivers, which is never bueno. Cutoffs at around 2K allow one driver to process more of that spectrum and allows you to better TA and EQ for a nice center stage. Some have even seen benefits of crossing even higher (as someone I know who's crossed over a pair of MLK165s close to 6KHz to ensure there's virtually no overlap between mid and tweet). And, in a convoluted way of explaining things (which I'm sure the technical types here can dissect and make better sense of the the rest of the people here), I'm just saying that you can put your stock into a slightly smaller midbass and run the horns higher (around 1.5-2k). Those Morels would be a good start. Other smart choices, assuming you're willing to shell out the coin, would be: Eton Symphony, http://www.madisoundspeakerstore.com/approx-8-woofers/eton-8-200/a8-symphony-8-mid/bass-with-aluminum-former/ Peerless SLS, http://www.madisoundspeakerstore.com/approx-8-woofers/peerless-sls-830667-8-paper-cone-woofer/ (though these will require a crossover realistically closer to 1KHz) SB Acoustics SB23, http://www.madisoundspeakerstore.com/approx-8-woofers/sb-acoustics-sb23nrxs45-8-8-woofer/ (W140 can tell you more about these, he runs the 6.5") ScanSpeak Classic, http://www.madisoundspeakerstore.com/approx-8-woofers/scanspeak-classic-21w/8555-00-8-woofer/ (though the 22W is the fan favorite, they're way above your budget and these are only slightly above) -or everyone's favorite budget choice (HYPERBOLE!): Silver Flutes, http://www.madisoundspeakerstore.com/approx-8-woofers/silver-flute-w20rc38-08-8-wool-cone/ (and at this price, you could even get a pair of 6.5" and rely on cone area vice gratuitous power) As for going 3-way Kyle, best of luck man. Those systems are a bitch to tune. I was almost going to do one myself and pussed out in favor of a 2-way. But don't let me stop you.

Claimed or not, do understand that there's a large concentration of easily-impressionable people on CACO and other forums that will take the clamp as gold because it came from a consumer using stuff they can't just walk down to Harbor Freight and buy with their weekly allowance. Just as much as we all get annoyed to hell about companies marketing by Max Power/Burst ratings, the techies are getting frustrated with clamp tests to determine the value of an amplifier being used as gospel by the novice crowd and are doing their damnedest to squash the impression that it CAN be used as anything considering an accurate test. If I were to go on CACO and make a thread explaining HALF of what's being discussed here, would I not just get flamed out of existence? So how is that any different from a forum of people who go by empirical evidence forming up against a thread saying that there's bad news for IA because a clamp was done on one of their amps that made things look bad?

After reading this entire thread, I have an analogy for everyone. Consider this the in-between perspective: A man goes to Vegas and watches a Criss Angel show. Everything he sees that night has him believing Criss is a sorcerer/wizard/what have you, so he goes back to his Podunk town and starts describing what he saw to his friends at a bar. His friends, only having what this guy has to go off, now believe just as much about magic. But there's another patron at the bar: one of Criss' stage techs who fully understands how the illusions are performed. He tries to reason with these guys (who are probably, by now, quite intoxicated) about the logic behind how these illusions are performed. Madness/hilarity/mass argument ensues. Just as much as the stage tech is getting frustrated with the Podunk townspeople, the townspeople question the outsider about whether or not what actually happened is magic. That is this thread right now. It would behoove both of you to take a step back, forget about your titles/credentials/etc and have a meaningful discussion about the validity, lack thereof, or however you feel about the situation. I respect both sides' views of the subject and (for once) am removing my own, but for fuck's sake, let's be adults about this.