Electrical System Help

[theo111 0]

Hey guys, i'm a new member here and I was looking to get a little bit of help with my car audio setup. I recently bought a Skar Audio VVX 12" 4ohm DVC sub off SSA here and have it hooked up to a kicker zx1000.1 in a 1.6 cu. ft. ported box tuned to 32 hz. It slams pretty nice, shakes the hell out of my car and blurs my vision so I'm pretty satisfied with it. However, I'm pretty much running it on my stock electrical (I have a 2006 Pontiav Wave btw). My alternator is rated at 100A and my battery is rated at 550CCA and 55Ah. My headlights and my dashboard dim heavily even while driving but especially when stopped. I wouldn't normally care about this but on certain songs when my sub is slamming really hard i start to notice a strange smell. I have confirmed that it does come from the sub as it does smell the strongest from the ports and the surface of the cone gets quite warm to the touch when this occurs. I've done a bit of research and I believe that the smell is the paper and glue from the cone burning, although ive also read from some sources that this is normal in new sub woofers. I also realized that since my voltage is dropping so low, it is probably causing clipping in the signal which is why the sub is overheating. So my question is, assuming my theory on the cause of the smell is correct, what should I upgrade to keep my voltage from dropping low? I am a student and don't have the biggest budget so I can't exactly go all out. I was thinking of getting a second battery in the trunk but don't know if that'd be sufficient, or if there are any prerequisites to that such as upgrading the alternator or my battery under the hood. Please give me some opinions on what I should do, I would really appreciate any help. I should also mention my head unit has a 4V pre amp out, and i never play it past 75% total volume, my bass boost on the amp is set to 0, my gain is at about 2/3. Let me know if you need any other info and thanks for taking the time to read through this, i see it is quite long.

[MikeMartel 64]

Well, if your seeing significant voltage drop a second battery in the back would most likely solve this problem considering your only running 1000 watts. Ontop of this I would also do the BIg 3 upgrade at the same time.

[theo111 0]

okay thanks, I'm looking into buying one of the xspower batteries asap. will this help stop ny sub from overheating or am I just overpowering it way too much and playing it too heavily?

[pmureika 31]

Yes, If you are using bass boost it makes it worse.

Edited October 29, 2012 by pmureika

[Notorious97200 339]

Maybe the gain is set too high.

If you're on a small budget, you can try to find a cheaper AGM battery : you have a lot of choice in the USA. But the XS batteries are very good. A friend of mine run 2 in his car, after running some Optima, or Vmax batts. He loves the XS, and doesn't want any other brand of batts !

Good luck !

[swift 501]

okay thanks, I'm looking into buying one of the xspower batteries asap. will this help stop ny sub from overheating or am I just overpowering it way too much and playing it too heavily?

It will help voltage drop but if you are clipping heavily it will still overheat your sub. Turn the gain down, with 4V preouts you should probably not have to go more then 1/2 way up. Probably not even that far really.

You need to download a test tone. You can even find them on Itunes. example......Search (Bass Mekanik, King of Bass) on Itunes and download the whole disc. It has test tones on it. Or find one somewhere else.

Rough guideline for setting gain by ear.

1..Turn gain on amp all the way down. Bass boost on amp off completely

2.. Put a 50hz tone preferably (or loudest song you have in your playlist) and Turn volume up to the highest you will go to. (roughly 75-80%) Also go ahead and set the EQ the way you want for the bass portion on head unit.

3. start turning the gain up until you hear the bass change to a unwanted sound, back the gain back down until that goes away.

If its a test tone it will be easier to hear the change from a clean signal to clipping unless you can turn your mids and highs completely off if playing a song.

T

[djjdnap 78]

what size wire are you running.

Big 3?

And yea your battery is horrible at 550cca.

Upgrade that battery as well IMO.

any battery other than an economy 1 yr warranty is at least 600cca +

[theo111 0]

my bass boost is turned to 0 and the gain is at about 2/3, I never hear any distortion or unwanted sounds when playing my music, just that weird smell filling ny car. I haven't done the Big 3 upgrade yet and Im running true 4gauge wire to my amp and ground from ampI don't think ny car can fit a very big battery in it so it's hard to find a decent one. 06 Pontiac wave, it's basically an aveo

Edited October 29, 2012 by theo111

[swift 501]

my bass boost is turned to 0 and the gain is at about 2/3, I never hear any distortion or unwanted sounds when playing my music, just that weird smell filling ny car. I haven't done the Big 3 upgrade yet and Im running true 4gauge wire to my amp and ground from ampI don't think ny car can fit a very big battery in it so it's hard to find a decent one. 06 Pontiac wave, it's basically an aveo

If the gain wasnt up so high you would not smell the sub.

[SS Teacher 177]

The big 3 is the cheapest, I'd do that first, than upgrade the battery. The burning smell on the sub is most likely the glue that holds the copper wire to the pole connected to the cone- the voice coil, that's a bad smell, turn it down whenever you smell that smell, if the glue gets too hot it will loosen the coil and your sub will fail.

[theo111 0]

So i just upgraded my battery under the hood to a northstar agm 880cca battery that barely fits in the tray (its not even sitting flat) and the problem seems to be gone, my lights dont dim and my sub is not overheating even playing the songs that it usually would have overheated on. I'm gonna start slowly turning my gain up slowly cause id like it to be a little louder still. as for the big 3 upgrade, im trying to find a place in my city that sells 0guage wire and im going to get my mechanic to do it when i get my clutch changed this week since he has to take the engine out anyway and will have easy access to everything

thanks for the help everyone

[ariamirsh 0]

Head unit: Alpine CDA-117E

Front speaker: Focal 165K2P

Rear speaker : Focal 165 K2P

Subwoofer: Focal V1

Speaker Amplifier: JBL px300.4

Subwoofer Amplifier: JBL GTO 601.1 ii

can someone please comment on this so I can know if it's good? and if it is, how good is it?!

[pmureika 31]

ohm's law!