Ideas for my System

[Bresch 0]

So I'll start off with my goals. I want a setup where the bass is accurate, precise, and powerful. However, I don't want subwoofers that are just loud and completely overwhelm the musicality of my front stage and midbass. I want midbass that efficiently bridges the gap where my subwoofer(s) fall off and I want midbass that is loud enough to make itself heard. The front stage I'm not too concerned with, though I would like a nice blend for vocals. The experience where you feel as if you are at the concert. 

That being said, I will now talk about the system as it is now.

 

THE POWER GRID:

What's in it now:

180 amp high output alternator.

2000 watt supporting Kinetic AMG battery. Starter/Front battery.

Knu Koncept Kollosus FLEX 1/0 power and ground cable (all around). Has 400 amp inline fuses between alternator and Kinetic AMG battery and there will be one between the kinetic and Shuriken AMG Batteries.

Rockville 20 Farad hybrid capacitor: Basically useless, just serves as a nice distribution block and shows me the AMPs drawn by my system and has a working voltmeter. 

What will be added:

SK-BT140 4000 watt supporting Shuriken AMG battery

NVX Isolator

 

THE HEAD UNIT/AMPS/CROSSOVERS

Whats in it now:

Alpine BT149 head unit 

Audio Control 6XS Active Crossover

A/D/S PS5 Amplifier (For midbass). I plan on moving this to the front stage later. 

Alpine MRX110 amplifier (For subwoofers)

Alpine MRV F300 amplifier (For front stage)

 

What will be added:

Alpine PDX-F6 (For midbass): This will take over also what the A/D/S PS5 amplifier is supplying now. 

Another Alpine MRX110 amplifier for the subwoofers

 

The Speakers:

Subwoofers:

2X Infinity Kappa 120.9w subwoofers. The Alpine MRX 110 makes them cry (I have to be really carefully to make sure their excursion isn't exceeded). They are in a custom box containing a volume that is divided into two 1^3 ft chambers. It's my first box and it holds up well. It has 3/4 inch MDF and is doubled up on the front. 

I wish to replace these Infiinty Kappa's, but I'm unsure what to get. The current GCONs looked attractive, but are getting a rework. Orion XTR Pro's also looked pretty great as well. However, I'm most interested in a pair of Twisted Sound TX 1000 subwoofers. There has been a lot of praise for their performance, but they are a new line. Bottom line, I'm still deciding.

The rest of the speakers are aftermarket rockford fosgate midrange and tweeters and a pioneer 6x9 where the midbass should be. I want to replace the fronts with sundown audio-65s v.2 midrange/tweeters and the 6x9 with a mid bass sundown audio NeoPro V2. 

 

The car is a Toyota Celica 2000 GT. No sound dampening work has been done, but I plan on it once I obtain the speakers I want. I have most of the elements of the system I need, however there are a few additions I need to make.

That's about it off the top of my head. Tell me what you think!

Edited March 7, 2017 by Bresch

[SS Teacher 177]

One suggestion, if you're worried about your sub drowning out your front stage you could run a single sub.  If you're look at 2 GCONs you could go with a single ICON or XCON.

[Shogen 325]

very nice looking equipment ideas.... def look at single vs dual but honestly if you have the room and money for it just make sure you put that bass knob in a good spot

[///M5 2,833]

1 hour ago, Bresch said:

The rest of the speakers are aftermarket rockford fosgate midrange and tweeters and a pioneer 6x9 where the midbass should be. I want to replace the fronts with sundown audio-65s v.2 midrange/tweeters and the 6x9 with a mid bass sundown audio NeoPro V2. 

 

Thanks for the nice write up, that helps a ton.

One thing to clarify.  Midbass drivers are part of the front stage.  Of course this also means it makes basically zero sense to use a 6.5" midrange when you have a midbass driver.  Something MUCH smaller will GREATLY improve how things sound.

A few questions to get us going:

1) Have you had an active setup before

2) How big of a driver can you fit for a midbass

3) Where are the speaker mounting locations

4) What is the plan for the 3 way crossover.  The 6XS really cannot be used for this...

[Bresch 0]

50 minutes ago, ///M5 said:

Thanks for the nice write up, that helps a ton.

One thing to clarify.  Midbass drivers are part of the front stage.  Of course this also means it makes basically zero sense to use a 6.5" midrange when you have a midbass driver.  Something MUCH smaller will GREATLY improve how things sound.

A few questions to get us going:

1) Have you had an active setup before

2) How big of a driver can you fit for a midbass

3) Where are the speaker mounting locations

4) What is the plan for the 3 way crossover.  The 6XS really cannot be used for this...

 

Mid bass is incorporated into the front stage, good to know!

1) This is my first active setup.

2) I can fit a 6.5 inch midbass driver.

3) There are two tweeter mounts and two 6.5 inch mounts in the side doors of the vehicle. There are an additional pair of mounts in the rear. These mounts are adjacent to the rear seats and directly in front of the trunk. 

4) Honestly your comment went a little over my head and I'll need to be educated or do research of my own on 3 way crossover set ups.

What I do know is that the 6XS only has one crossover point which determines, in my basic understanding of the setup I have constructed, the lowest frequency signal sent to the tweeters and the highest frequency signal sent to mids of the front stage.

In the 6XS I have already changed the modules so that the appropriate frequency signals will be sent to my speakers within their frequency response range. If you want I can tell you the specs of the modules, but I can't remember off the top of my head at the moment.

By the way, thank you for replying! 

Edited March 7, 2017 by Bresch

[Bresch 0]

3 hours ago, SS Teacher said:

One suggestion, if you're worried about your sub drowning out your front stage you could run a single sub.  If you're look at 2 GCONs you could go with a single ICON or XCON.

 

3 hours ago, Shogen said:

very nice looking equipment ideas.... def look at single vs dual but honestly if you have the room and money for it just make sure you put that bass knob in a good spot

A single subwoofer might not be a bad idea! I haven't heard the twisted sounds subwoofer yet so it might be good to start off with just one and then upgrade to a second if necessary.

 

Does anyone know the suggested sealed box volume of the Tx 1000 subs?

[///M5 2,833]

Doing a 3 way active as your first step isn't something I would recommend.

6.5" midbass won't be much of a midbass.  If you are in the mode of a 3 way...I'd try like hell to fit something bigger.  

As for the rears, those locations are useless.  Don't use them.

[Bresch 0]

1 hour ago, ///M5 said:

Doing a 3 way active as your first step isn't something I would recommend.

6.5" midbass won't be much of a midbass.  If you are in the mode of a 3 way...I'd try like hell to fit something bigger.  

As for the rears, those locations are useless.  Don't use them.

Understood. Working with what I have, I could certainly cut out a larger mount and fit an 8 inch mid bass. 

I'm wondering why the rear locations are useless? I'm not doubting your point. I need a little clarification as to the reason. 

Another point, this is my daily driver. It could possibly be a competition system someday, but as of now it is just my daily. I'm going to add this to the original post.

[nigel 148]

19 minutes ago, Bresch said:

Understood. Working with what I have, I could certainly cut out a larger mount and fit an 8 inch mid bass. 

I'm wondering why the rear locations are useless? I'm not doubting your point. I need a little clarification as to the reason. 

Another point, this is my daily driver. It could possibly be a competition system someday, but as of now it is just my daily. I'm going to add this to the original post.

in your first post you said you wanted it to sound like you were at a concert, no live performance has the artist or speakers behind you, so why would you place speakers there to recreate this?

Having speakers both in front and behind causes issues with imaging, it's not what you are looking for. The more speakers you have producing the same sound from multiple locations, you run into more issues with cancellation, time alignment etc...

Stick with working on a good solid front stage, you will be surprised just how much time and work this will take to do correctly.  Especially if you are insistent on trying a 3 way active set up for the first time.  Focus there first before adding anything else.

[Bresch 0]

3 minutes ago, nigel said:

in your first post you said you wanted it to sound like you were at a concert, no live performance has the artist or speakers behind you, so why would you place speakers there to recreate this?

Having speakers both in front and behind causes issues with imaging, it's not what you are looking for. The more speakers you have producing the same sound from multiple locations, you run into more issues with cancellation, time alignment etc...

Stick with working on a good solid front stage, you will be surprised just how much time and work this will take to do correctly.  Especially if you are insistent on trying a 3 way active set up for the first time.  Focus there first before adding anything else.

That makes a lot of sense! I need to start off with better midrange speakers and from what I've learned an 8 inch midbass driver would be all I need for now. I'll just remove the 6X9's when I replace the front midrange component speakers with the mid bass driver and leave the rear placements vacant. 

Then instead of buying the new component speakers I'll focus on dampening the car doors, then see if additional speakers are necessary.

[///M5 2,833]

Where are you mounting drivers?   Curious why you are so deadset on a 3 way as well.  You would have an awful lot of audio gains if you went 2 way active first.

[Bresch 0]

29 minutes ago, ///M5 said:

Where are you mounting drivers?   Curious why you are so deadset on a 3 way as well.  You would have an awful lot of audio gains if you went 2 way active first.

I have the current drivers mounted on the factory location inside the door panels. The tweeters are also mounted on their factor location above the current drivers. 

I'm unsure yet where I'll mount the new drivers. 

I'm not deadset, though I'd like to have the subwoofers, mids, and tweeters to have their own dedicated auxillary outputs. The head unit has three sets of preouts for subwoofers, mids, and highs.

Edited March 8, 2017 by Bresch

[Billy Jack 145]

If you are wanting to just use the factory location I would just do a 2-way active front stage with as much bass as You can fit. You can always adjust volume levels to make it all blend, so that no one frequency range is over powering the other. Ideally you want 20-40% as much power up front as your sub stage.  But that's just a rough estimate, as some sub stages are louder on less power and some front stages are the same. 

[Bresch 0]

1 hour ago, Billy Jack said:

If you are wanting to just use the factory location I would just do a 2-way active front stage with as much bass as You can fit. You can always adjust volume levels to make it all blend, so that no one frequency range is over powering the other. Ideally you want 20-40% as much power up front as your sub stage.  But that's just a rough estimate, as some sub stages are louder on less power and some front stages are the same. 

This seems to be a popular idea for my setup as it is now. Right now my front stage has a combined RMS wattage ratting of 400. My subwoofers get a combined 1200 watts RMS. I'll keep your power rating rule of thumb in mind as I figure out what front stage speakers I want to use. 

Thank you for your input!

Edited March 8, 2017 by Bresch

[Notorious97200 339]

7 hours ago, Bresch said:

This seems to be a popular idea for my setup as it is now. Right now my front stage has a combined RMS wattage ratting of 400. My subwoofers get a combined 1200 watts RMS. I'll keep your power rating rule of thumb in mind as I figure out what front stage speakers I want to use. 

Thank you for your input!

I would not keep that in mind.

Play with what you have, now that you won't use rear speakers.  

I did not know Twisted Sound made subwoofers.  Take a look at the SSA line of subs, a single Icon should do it for you.

 

[Bresch 0]

2 hours ago, Notorious97200 said:

I would not keep that in mind.

Play with what you have, now that you won't use rear speakers.  

I did not know Twisted Sound made subwoofers.  Take a look at the SSA line of subs, a single Icon should do it for you.

 

Unfortunately the Icon only comes in 1ohm and 2ohm dual voice coils. This would require me to wire up my Alpine MRX110 amp at 1ohm either way and the amp's mono block circuitry isn't the best for a 1 ohm load. It only has an output of 800 watts RMS at that load and I'm unsure how quickly it would heat up, but I assume too quickly.

[SS Teacher 177]

10 minutes ago, Bresch said:

Unfortunately the Icon only comes in 1ohm and 2ohm dual voice coils. This would require me to wire up my Alpine MRX110 amp at 1ohm either way and the amp's mono block circuitry isn't the best for a 1 ohm load. It only has an output of 800 watts RMS at that load and I'm unsure how quickly it would heat up, but I assume too quickly.

I bought an XCON in dual 1 voice coils so I could wire it to 2 ohm and take it easy on my electrical.

[S.DeYoung 968]

34 minutes ago, Bresch said:

Unfortunately the Icon only comes in 1ohm and 2ohm dual voice coils. This would require me to wire up my Alpine MRX110 amp at 1ohm either way and the amp's mono block circuitry isn't the best for a 1 ohm load. It only has an output of 800 watts RMS at that load and I'm unsure how quickly it would heat up, but I assume too quickly.

Dual one ohm can be wired into .5 ohm or 2 ohm. Dual two ohm can be wired into 1 ohm or 4 ohm.

[Bresch 0]

31 minutes ago, SS Teacher said:

I bought an XCON in dual 1 voice coils so I could wire it to 2 ohm and take it easy on my electrical.

Oh, I assumed too much! How do you wire it up at 2 ohms? Is it a standard wiring schematic like the following: 

 

 

Credit to Crutchfield.com

Edited March 8, 2017 by Bresch

[SS Teacher 177]

Crutchfield and Sonic Electronix have decent how to guides, but...

 

www.bcae1.com is a GREAT website with tons of basic information, check it out.

[S.DeYoung 968]

[Bresch 0]

3 hours ago, S.DeYoung said:

Thank you for your response, this is very helpful.

[Notorious97200 339]

1000 watts at 1 Ohm should not be harder on your electrical than 1000 watts at 2 Ohms.

I would get a DVC 2, wire to 1 Ohm, and set the gain low on the amplifier I want/use until I can upgrade the electrical. 

Unless you're seeing a second sub in the future...  

 

[Bresch 0]

13 hours ago, Notorious97200 said:

1000 watts at 1 Ohm should not be harder on your electrical than 1000 watts at 2 Ohms.

I would get a DVC 2, wire to 1 Ohm, and set the gain low on the amplifier I want/use until I can upgrade the electrical. 

Unless you're seeing a second sub in the future...  

 

Good advice. It depends on how one sub sounds. I'm considering getting neopro V2 midbass 8'' drivers . They get down to about 60hz, but I'll probably cut them off higher with my active crossover because it will be on the factory mount. 

 

[SS Teacher 177]

14 hours ago, Notorious97200 said:

1000 watts at 1 Ohm should not be harder on your electrical than 1000 watts at 2 Ohms.

I would get a DVC 2, wire to 1 Ohm, and set the gain low on the amplifier I want/use until I can upgrade the electrical. 

Unless you're seeing a second sub in the future...  

 

I said 100 watts at 2 Ohms is easier on your electrical because most amps are more efficient at 2 and 4 ohms.

OP decide what route you're going BEFORE you buy amps and subs.  Finding amps that do 1000 watts at 1 ohm is easy.  Finding amps that do 1000 watts at 2 ohms is wayyyyy more expensive.  Finding amps that run at .5 ohm is very hard on electrical as a daily driver.