New car Audio bandwagon

I've heard plenty of bad RCA cables while "fixing" installs.

It's easy for an edge of a box to cut into the rca. One time a guy ran the rca behind a panel and screwed the panel right through it. I have even cut an rca while opening the container with a razorblade.

I have seen a protection light go on before because of bad RCA's. Changed out the RCA's, it worked. There is no way to find out whats the problem if you don't try it.

 
i was running the rca's through the center of the car. i was desperate for bass. but still nothing. thanks 3.5max.
No prob, if you need some more help trouble shooting ask don(pearl96max) on the org

Did you run another amp for instance prior to buying this off that sub out from your HU ? that can be the only other thing I can think of....

 
is there supposed to be a certain voltage i can test if the amp or hu RCA cables are supposed to put out? like the cd8454 has 8 volt preout. if i use a multimeter to test the leads on the non-fading/subwoofer rca jacks, will they read a certain number? like 8.0volts?

 
okay there is definatly something wrong with the amp. i bought it off ebay from soundgoodies, and i just called them. they want me to ship it back to them, and send a money order for $20 for them to send it back to me after they fix it. witch is bull since they sent me a defective product! so i gotta shell out $40 to get this amp fixed. man im angry

 
the ss vga series is picky about rcas say you had stinger dream series rca's the amp wont work with those at all. as far as the vga's go they are still soundstream amps not like the 2 lower lines tarantula's and vga's are still soundstream as we knew them. there is a ss dealer on carsound forums that sells them but only bad thing he has against them is price. they are very comparible to zapco audison and others as far as performance. i have a gaming buddy that lives in la that loves his soundstream vga 320.4 he talked it up good enough i bought 1. his runs an mb quart 3 way set and a jl 12w3

 
the ss vga series is picky about rcas say you had stinger dream series rca's the amp wont work with those at all. as far as the vga's go they are still soundstream amps not like the 2 lower lines tarantula's and vga's are still soundstream as we knew them. there is a ss dealer on carsound forums that sells them but only bad thing he has against them is price. they are very comparible to zapco audison and others as far as performance. i have a gaming buddy that lives in la that loves his soundstream vga 320.4 he talked it up good enough i bought 1. his runs an mb quart 3 way set and a jl 12w3
Having owned a vga320.4 myself, i cannot agree- I expected old school Soundstream performance- not the case, and I payed top dollar for the amp, i dont believe in buying resticted brands online- It may be better than anything you've ran before, but the amp doesn't cut it IMO for a 'suppossed high end' amp- wheras its a beauty as far as build and aesthetics, it fell way short on performance- Does that make them a bad amp, not at all- i feel they are decent

Therefore I would not compare them to anything Zapco- Reference line would take my vote, and obviously designed better-I have two small SS SA120/USA180 that i bought in 95 that are much more dynamic an even though rated 60rms put out sick power, and they were low line amps bought off Crutchfield, I still have them this day- those were the 'built in the USA' days

Now Killcrap, feel your pain bro- before sending any more money to those leeches contact American Express- thats what you pay that annual fee, they'll fight for your/their money- and if their plan is to send the amp into soundstream, i have bad news for you- my Rubicon sub went in for warranty repair the first week of August and from all the phone calls even to SS directly , I got 'the picture'- i wont be seeing it till over 6+months, terrible CS //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/verymad.gif.3f39c5c2fd57527b671fad3efdfac756.gif

 
his best not me i had 3 soundstreams 2 3.0s and a 5.0 all factory modded on the input and output, i have 2 monolithic a25's, i have had us amps usa 400 (old big one) usa 150 usa 100, audio art 100 hc's and zapco ag 360. now if you want to compare build quality the ag series zapco wire terminals arent that great, even my monolithics (hooks up old old school)with 8 ga comming out of it lol has better terminals. here is the link http://www.carsound.com/UBB/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=1;t=023142

Yes, the specs are legit, actually the Tarantula can pull about 4K MAX. I am a SoundStream Dealer. I have used the VG amps & they are good SQ amps. They are finniky though about RCA Cables used. They will not work With the Stinger Expert Series (the blue RCA Open Light stays on). For the Price, I personally think there are better amps out there....Zapco or Audison comes to mind for the price.

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Mod 901-1800 155.8

#7 04 world finals

Super Port 1000-5000 163.5

Old Beyond My Years

on another note way back in 98 we did some testing between crossfire amps and a few others like xtant. granted they were not "scientific" by any stretch of the imagination, but in just pure listening tests on the SAME vehicle there wasnt that huge of a gap between many 200 dollar suggested retail amps and fancier 500+ dollar amps rated to do the same thing. granted we were using all audio control out board processing namely a 2xs and 2 eqts. this was in a friends camaro with 2 kove 6.5 sets in front kick panels and 3 kove kld 10's (before he went to horns) he bought a zapco set (studio series off ebay ended up using it because he bought them) a 3 channel xtant (was from my freinds vw) and the crossfires were donated from the gentalman with vw. we all used to argue the "amp challenge" and alot of times when we were free and doing installs on our own cars we would put things to a test (especially in the camaroes/firebirds due to haveing the wires ran prior to haveing the amp rack made. very easy to switch amps) the biggest suprise to us was the bottom of the line crossfires were just as good sounding as anything we tried and seemingly had the same or better headroom. which was funny because mike (the guy that had the kove/zapco set up) just sprung 600 smackers for these 2 amps used off ebay and scott (the owner of the xtant and crossfires) was trying to sell mike those crossfires for 2 months being shot down because they were ENTRY level crossfire amps. all boiled down to scott that his system was more simple. playing everything via the iasca test cd the crossfires made his system "center" better due to more power to his front components and on the subs it basically made a 1.4 db difference(when you are only popping 133's that extra 1.4 db boils down to points in most shows that at least went up to 135. mike ended up using his zapco's and took a second place in his class at the show he built this for beating 2 of the 3 usac/iasca cars in his class and would have finished first with a 1 point higher score in spl. would the judges score him the same using crossfire? i dont know, but i do know he was mad that he spent 300 more for the zapcos (wanna say they were a studio 50 and 200) and after listening to them within 5 min of his zapcos in the same system he wasnt preaching about "ultra high end amps". espeacially after we put my horn amp (ss 3.0) on his 3 10's lol. there is more to this story than what im typing and generally speaking i dont have the model numbers to the crossfires but they were the bottom of the line 50x2 and 100x2.

 
wired up the brahma in series to net 4ohms.

+1 -1 +2 -2

the +1 with the -2 was how the amp said to be bridged. so i hooked up a piece of 10ga wire 3 inches in length, to them, and the -1 with the +2 was the wires for the brahma. i checked the load on the speakers and it was around 4ohms. turned on the car, and then i got short circuit protect on. //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/frown.gif.a3531fa0534503350665a1e957861287.gif

 
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