Impious

Because I've been into audio for so long I often times assume some else's basic understanding of electronics....and they often prove my assumption wrong. This is the 2nd year I've helped my daughters dance studio setup an audio system for a parade, and both years I'm amazed at what I've had to explain to the guys helping out.

Think about that next you're bitching about not being able to find a good parking spot. Edit: talking about the motorcycle thing

Car is a '94 Buick Roadmaster. Purchased it about 2 years ago. Spent the 1st summer deadening the car, and last summer I just didn't have much time to get things done. Goal is to have a stereo finally installed in it this year! Have a little road trip coming up on June 22nd, and I would really like to at least have it playing music before then. Between work, the gym and my kids' evening activities I don't have much free time so that is quite a challenge. Not starting from scratch here. But hoping a little log will keep me on track and responsible for getting shit done. To get things up to speed...the car is deadened front to rear with SDS sound deadening. I believe 110 CLD tiles, 135sqft MLV/CCF and a roll of butyl rope. Let me also preface this by stating up front that fabrication ain't my thang. I can get it in there and make it work, but it ain't going to be pretty. So if you are looking for fabrication tips, this isn't going to be that type of log. I'm pretty proud of myself for not having any exposed MDF on this build so far as that's been pretty much standard in all of my previous systems. Right now equipment will consist of: Rockford ("Denford") RFX-8250Ti Headunit CSS LD25X Tweeters CSS VWR126X Midrange CSS Trio8 Midbass Adire Brahma 15" Subwoofer (for now, I think) JBL MS-8 Processor 3x Rockford P1000X4D Amps (speakers) Rockford P1000X1D Sub Amp Here is the car as it was the day I brought her home. So it's an old photo, but it still looks about the same... Amp rack, which as long as i didn't fuck anything up and it all works correctly should be done. Going back to that fabrication issue, if you look closely at the wires you can see a few of my mistakes. For starters I drilled the hole for the ground at the D-block too close to the block, I didn't account for the connector and left too tight of a bend for the wire to make. I also purchased new RCA's, which are a little thicker than those I had planned to use when I first laid out the rack last year. So in addition to having to take a Dremel and enlarge all of the RCA holes, the bends for the wire were a bit too tight in a few places for the RCA's as well...Oops !! Kinda hard to see in this pic, but I had also replaced the torsion bars in the trunk for struts. Can't have those pesky torsion bars in the way If I ever get a sub installed, you'll see why they had to go. With the trunk taken care of (except for the sub, but that'll come last) now moving on to the midbass in the doors. The Trio8's were designed for home audio, they are prefer an enclosure. Additionally, they are capable of moving some serious air. So in order to try to bring their response more in line with my goals, and to reduce door vibrations/resonances I'll be 'glassing ~.5cuft sealed enclosures for the door which should put the drivers in an alignment of right around .7 Qtc. They however are not shallow mount, so first I needed to make cut some metal to make room for the motors The ultimate plan here is to make a little "box" that recesses into the door that will fit basically the motor, the rest of the enclosure to be where the map pocket would be. No pics of the rest of it yet, but here's the hole I cut...don't worry about that little guy in the bottom left corner, he's been taken care of. I also do have the molds for the kicks and rings for the midrange and tweeter made, but I want to finish the doors before I move on to completing the kicks. Here's where they stand at the moment, the rings aren't attached to the mold so this is most definitely not their actual aiming. But just to give you can idea of the general setup And that's where it stands right now. Hopefully mid week I'll be able to get crackin' at it again. In the mean time if there are any questions on equipment selection, system plan and layout, etc fire away.

So I have been going to the gym since Feb to try to pack on some mass. In the past month I've had a Facebook post started by my wife's family about the size of my chest following a family get together at a lake, two acquaintances independently comment that my shoulders look much broader, and my daughters friend (high school age) comment to her that my arms have gotten larger. I'm not doing this so I have the satisfaction of people complementing me all the time...but it is nice to know that all of my hard work is not just visible to me alone, and that other people can tell

Finally got my computer to get along with my stereo, so I can start taking measurements when I have the free time. And that means I can start working on aiming and finishing the kicks for real. Hoping I get some time to work on it during the week. I also have my baffles for my temp midbass done.

Is it a car stereo? I'm not sire that it should create a ground issue Yes, car stereo. Plug it into my MS8 and it doesn't work right. Plug it into the garage radio and it works just fine.

She has a Mac. No idea what version of OS, and she doesn't know either. She doesn't know how to figure it out and neither do I

Would really like to be finishing up my stereo right now, but my laptops battery won't hold a charge so I have to leave it plugged into the wall. I believe this is causing some grounding related issues. And for the life of me I can't find a fucking laptop to borrow. My daughter doesn't remember the admin password to hers so she can't install any new software. Mother in laws is windows 8 and I can't find the drivers I need for my mobilepre. Sister and dad don't have one. 2 days I could have been working on finishing this, or atleast verifying that it's the power cable causing the issues. Such a simple task, just can't fucking make it happen. Maybe I can find a cheaply on craigslist? I don't know what else to do. I might have found a battery online but will take 2 weeks to arrive.

I hear this one guy here likes to play a little....

It sounds like they basically just invented a different type of Helmholtz resonator. Narrow band absorption based on essentially catching and dissipating rather than reflecting the energy. Exactly what the helmholtz resonator has done for a century.

And as you can see from the last pic there, I finished up my kickpanel install as well. What do you guys think ? I spent quit a bit of time working on aiming to get the best imaging...I think it flows well and blends in nicely with the vehicle. Almost looks stock !!

IT LIVES !!!!!!!!!!! I needed to come up with a good hiding spot for the MS8 display... I really like hiding the display for a few reasons. First it's one less thing for theives to see, being that it would look like a GPS to someone in passing it's one less reason for a theif to double take at my car. Second it's one less thing shining in my face at night. And last I think it just adds a little something extra to the install to have the display in a unique location and not just out in the open stuck on the dash somewhere. In my old install I had the display for the MS8 hid in the overhead sunglass holder. Unfortunately the Buick doesn't come equipped with a sunglass holder because, being designed for old people, it's presumed their "sunglasses" will always be clipped onto the owner's tri-focals. So I had to come up with a new spot for this car. What I found is that the display is almost exactly the same size as the ashtray. So I popped out the ashtray, built a little mounting panel and secured the display with velcro to the panel so that it was still easily removable without having to tear the whole assembly out of the car. Turned out well. Simply flip the door shut and it's out of sight. I was a little worried that the angle would be poor from the driver's seat but the display is easily visible

You don't want a 94 Impala SS. I have it's cousin, a 94 Buick Roadmaster and they're not audio friendly at all.

Get up at 5:45am, hit the gym around 6am. Move some weight for an hour then head home at 7am to hop in the shower for work. Out the door at 7:20am, drop kids off at school and drive 30 minutes to work. Work from 8am to 5:15pm then head out on the road to field call customers (drive to the house of delinquent customers and pound on their door demanding money, mafia style). Drive 200 miles doing that, get home around 8:45pm. Have enough time to poop and change so I can leave by 9pm to drive 15 miles one way to pick my daughter up from dance. That gets over at 9:30pm so probably won't get home until between 9:45 - 10pm. Sit down and finally eat supper, try to hit the sack by 10:30pm so I can get up the next morning and DO IT ALL FUCKING OVER AGAIN.

HT and music are completely different. For HT you want a large low tuned enclosure as sound effects can rumble down into the low teens. Music obviously doesn't get anywhere near that low, so the enclosure and tuning would be way off for benefiting music. If you plan on dual purpose, you either have to build for HT and accept the fact it'll suck (comparatively) for music or tune for music and accept the fact it'll suck for HT (and run a subsonic filter so you aren't blowing the subs).

Then those people are idiots. No such thing as underpowering.The way you've asked the question would tend to have me recommend the Z for you. Either will be fine however. I ordered the X12 already, supposed to be here Monday. Unless it's absolutely dire that I get Zv4 I'm guessing the X12 will do what I want it to at 2k rms. Also there will probably be some box rise so chances are it won't be seeing the full 2k. Maybe around 1700 considering the 2000d was clamped at 2400w @ 12.5v. Clamp tests are meaningless. There is no such thing as "box rise". Speaker systems have an impedance curve. You are fine with the sub you ordered as long as you intelligently set the system adjustments.

It's a specific type of epoxy resin. I would imagine the big box home improvement stores probably sell a similar product as well. I've seen them use the same type of product on DIY shows before.

http://www.uscomposites.com/kk121.html Never used it, but everyone raves about their fiberglass resin so I'd imagine it's a solid product.

Kinda been slacking here lately. Decided to finally get something done today. My bad on the crappy pictures. It was dark and the camera on my Ipad sucks. Anyways, got my Rockford Fosgate RFX-8250 installed today. For those not in the know, this was RF's high end HU offering about 12 years ago (date of manufacture on the bottom of my unit is April '02). It was OEM'd by Denon and is basically a rebadge of one of their units, although the exact model # eludes me at the moment. I didn't buy it because of supposed sound quality advantages to the unit. To be honest I simply love the aesthetics. Nice and clean, simple, classy, functional. That's it. As with everything else, it took me a lot longer than anticipated. Learned something new about my car today as well. When removing the old HU I accidently ripped the connector off of the antenna wire (FUCK !!). And apparently with my car if the antenna wire is not connected to anything the blower for the AC runs full blast and the display for the HVAC system stops working as do the HVAC controls. So I was pretty excited about having to run to Radio Shack and praying the whole way there that they had the connector I needed. They had one, literally, and it was sort of a shot in the dark when I bought it...but luckily it worked perfect. I'd been screwed if they hadn't had that connector. Then I had to make a 2nd run to town to get screws for mounting the HU. The damn Japanese make their high end HU's ISO-mount, which pretty much nothing in the US is compatable with. The dash kit I have supposedly works with ISO, but the fit/finish of every kit I've used ISO mounting with is shitty, and because of the design of this particular kit the screws I had weren't long enough. So I wasted 2 hours today just driving to and from the store to get materials As you can see (kind of), there isn't a trim ring. The HU doesn't have one, and I couldn't get any of them I had lying around to fit. I tell myself that I'll try to figure something out and get a trim ring on there, but the truth is I'm lazy so this is pretty much how it is probably going to stay. Aside from being one step closer to finishing my install, this is also motivation because, as of this moment, I do not have a working stereo in my car. And I have a 30 mile drive to work every day. Which is going to be boring as fuck. So hopefully that serves as motivation for me to finish the stereo so I have something to listen to again Next step I think is to work on the kicks. Got bored with the doors and those don't bring me closer to listening to music as it's just the midbass. If I can finish the kicks then I'll have 90% of the bandwidth covered, so I can atleast listen to tunes while I work on the doors...which are going to take me for fucking ever to finish.

...... Go with Don @ SDS as has been suggested. Great products, great advice.

Or hell, there is nothing proprietary about your cables. He could probably buy the materials and build an equally good cable for less than yours are selling for unless you are getting really, really good discounts on materials.

To answer the original question; No, they are not worth it. Not sure why you can't use less expensive RCA's throughout multiple installs as well. Or hell, if they were cheap enough don't waste your time pulling them from the car. Send them with the car, buy another affordable pair and still be ahead money, and time.Very few people need to use a warranty on cables. Of the few that do, it is still cheaper to buy multiples of a more affordable cable than to buy one expensive cable (and then potentially have to deal with trying to get it warrantied). Plus a warranty is only good if the company is still in business and, no offense, statistically you have a very low probability of being around mid to long term. Likewise if he is using a UTP cable and doesn't experience noise, then the shielding isn't going to matter

I hate people at the gym who sit at the machine or workbenches to fuck with their phone after their set. GET THE FUCK OUT OF THE WAY. It's a small gym so there is only ONE of everything, and no one else can use it to workout if your just fucking chillin' at the machine

Neil deGrasse Tyson is giving a lecture at my alma mater in Oct. Tickets are free, it's for a lecture series they host every year. I want to go so fucking bad. Neil is one of my idols. He's right there with Carl Sagan as one of the most rational and intelligent thinkers of our time in my opinion...not just in physics but spiritually, socially, etc. Even though it's free, the tickets are still not available for order until Sept 29th, and there is a limited number although I don't know how many.

i would love to do a blowthough but dont have the cash for it... im not trading my truck now.. gonna wait to find something else.. the 1994 buick roadmaster is even worse the my truck on gas! only thing good about that car is there is mad room for subs and amps in trunk.. hope to get a car soon thoOh, yeah, in the winter I get 16-17mpg, in the summer around 19mpg. And that's 90% highway driving.