Impious

None of the brands you're looking at are going to be over rated enough to make an audible difference. Likewise none of the amps people brag about being under rated are under rated enough to make an audible difference. Reliability, features, size and possibly efficiency are about the only things you really need to concern yourself with when amp shopping.

The best use you could make of the PWX's is to sell them and use the $$ to purchase something that will actually help you achieve your goals.

Seems like they spend a lot of time talking about the foil, and almost nothing talking about the adhesive layer. Which makes me wonder if it's asphalt based.

Luckily gain setting has absolutely zero to do with how hard the amplifier is working, so it doesn't affect longevity. The amplifier is working the same amount regardless of the gain position.

The 360.3 is A LOT more powerful a tool than simply allowing higher preamp voltage and a variable SSF. Whether or not you need it depends on several factors. First, why do you want a line driver? As long as you aren't getting thermal noise from the amps or audible noise induced during the signal transfer there is zero benefit to having a higher preamp voltage or a lower gain setting. Do you have a want or need for the other features? If not, then it's probably a waste of money. Do you understand how to properly utilize the other features? If not, then it'd easily do more damage than good to your system, or result in hair loss as a result of pulling it out trying to figure out what the hell you're doing.

Where ever sounds best. Simply turn the knob until you find the setting that works best for you.

My first suggestion was going to be to pull it out of the car and remeasure.

Mids in the doors can work fine as long it's properly sealed & deadened, the mounting location is solid, you use proper tuning techniques and you aren't getting a ton of deflection from the door panel. I'm not a big fan of tweeters in the pillars, while there aren't many "good" install locations in a vehicle IMO that's one of the worse. But thousands of people do it and seem pleased with the results, so more power to them. Try it and see what you think, luckily relocating tweeters is pretty easy peasy rice and cheesy. I've never been able to get it to work out for my tastes, and I haven't really heard many cars where I liked them installed there. Soundstage is as much a function of tuning as it is install, so your previous experience might not be representative of the potential results if tuning and other considerations weren't optimized.

On a lighter note, cleaned out the interior of my car today for the first time since winter hit. Pretty excited to drive it to work tomorrow not staring at an inch of dust on the dash and 6 months of rocks/dirt/dust on the floor

Absolutely normal. While your restrictions in your previous career were a lot more restrictive and less under your control than my own, I'm in a similar situation. I've been working in the same career field since I was 16yrs old. Being 31 now I would like to move on to something else, but I have no idea where to start or where I could best transfer my limited skill set and still excel performance wise. So what do I do? Keep drudging on with the same-ole same-ole, every day growing slightly more unhappy than the previous. There is one singular reason I don't go crazy at my current job. If that ever changes I don't know what I'll do.

Any progress on those shallow mounts ?

Happy bday !! Another year wiser I'm sure

The soft parts should fit fine, but you wouldn't be physically changing the motor to a v2.

Where are you mounting the tweeters and why are you looking at horn loaded tweeters? I think there are probably a lot better options out there for you.

This. Closing this thread. Use the original.

What is your budget?

Depends. If we assume it's around 70% efficient, which is about average for a class D amp, and it's operating at 14.4V it'd pull right around 200A when going balls to the wall. If the voltage or efficiency is actually lower or if the power output is actually higher than 2kw then the amperage is going to increase. Actual draw is going to be situation specific. It's going to depend on the efficiency you're achieving, the power output you are running, and the voltage is running on.

Was this just a power wire for amplifiers or a "Big 3" upgrade ?

There was some European brand that did the same thing, only theirs is $800 or $900 Not sure what the MiniDSP guys had in mind when they started doing this, but seems like their business is blowing up huge.

The other issue is that cone area is only half of the equation to output. The other half is excursion, which combined with cone area results in total volume displacement (Vd). And total volume displacement is what really matters and is what determines output. Cone area itself is useless, as is any other single loudspeaker specification. So either option having more cone area than the other itself is meaningless. You would need to determine Vd in that enclosure volume with the applied power to determine which would ultimately have more output and over what bandwidth, as alignment is going to matter in regards to output as well.

Does he send the samples back to the company if requested? I know he sells some test samples on ebay periodically, bought a pair of the Audience A3's off him. Didn't use them as my plans changed but sold them for a profit....so it worked out well for me

I can just imagine. K2 I was curious if they did as I would guess....which is to design a sub with huge (claimed) excursion, and then set the T/S in such a manor that it's only useful in ported enclosures which sort of nullifies the entire necessity of huge excursion limits. I'll reserve the rest of my comments until after seeing the T/S.

T/S ??

Is Mark still the owner of Mach 5 ?