Noob dropping 5k on new system, need help

[LoudSound]

5k can prolly get you a really nice system. you should be smart with your money so you don't end up with a half assed one instead.

 

[BCotrell 10+ year member]

By parts do you mean wood? 400 for then enclosure alone seems pretty high considering they're likely gonna build an enclosure in your trunk that will deem your trunk no longer functional. Will that include all the sound treatment?

Battery labor...running a line of 0/2 from the front to back, does that include an isolator and the wire?

Ofc amp kits....200 bucks each makes no sense. if your amps will be connected/powered at the rear batteries you can probably use ofc wire by the foot since the run from the front battery will be the longest one needed and it sounds

Like they already quoted you for that separately. You could buy a big roll of 1/0 ofc wire, a bunch of inline fuse holders and fuses and two pairs of rca's. Oh yeah and a smaller roll of 12 gauge speaker wire. 700 for all that just seems crazy

What about your big 3 upgrade? Is that already squared away? Still need an alt? hopefully boomin Tahoe comes through because there's probably more than Enough cost savings to be had to get a high output

Alternator

It seems like This shop is already prepping to do the money dance

Here's a breakdown of what they're charging me:
Sub box: parts 150, labor $250

2 battery labor, $100

2 0/2 OFC kit moistrd: parts, $400 labor 300

The fist 2 Orion's I bought were 2 ohm and weren't comparable with the AP amps. He found another shop that sold me 2 more brand new 4 ohm HCCAs that the guy had for a year and didn't come with a warrenty for $325 a piece so I could break even with shipping costs sending the the originals back to Amazon.

 

[EnvoyDenalii]

Here's a breakdown of what they're charging me:
Sub box: parts 150, labor $250

2 battery labor, $100

2 0/2 OFC kit moistrd: parts, $400 labor 300

The fist 2 Orion's I bought were 2 ohm and weren't comparable with the AP amps. He found another shop that sold me 2 more brand new 4 ohm HCCAs that the guy had for a year and didn't come with a warrenty for $325 a piece so I could break even with shipping costs sending the the originals back to Amazon.

u bought new speakers without a warrenty? ut oh

and yes 1200 is way to much

they seen u coming a mile away

 

[Boomin_tahoe 5,000+ posts]

I don't get it.

Has 5000 bucks but still using the same equipment??

I just noticed this and I thought he was starting from scratch.

Noted: the Big 3 is a must if it hasn't been done already.

 

[Jeffdachef 5,000+ posts]

I'd appreciate the help man thanks

Plain and simple they raping your butthole

 

[Boomin_tahoe 5,000+ posts]

Plain and simple they raping your butthole

Oh good, you stopped by.

Tried explaining to him but I dunno if I can steer him away from those money hungry people.

 

[thehardknoxlife 10+ year member]

Has this place grown into a bunch of retards?

 

[Jeffdachef 5,000+ posts]

Here's a breakdown of what they're charging me:
Sub box: parts 150, labor $250

2 battery labor, $100

2 0/2 OFC kit moistrd: parts, $400 labor 300

The fist 2 Orion's I bought were 2 ohm and weren't comparable with the AP amps. He found another shop that sold me 2 more brand new 4 ohm HCCAs that the guy had for a year and didn't come with a warrenty for $325 a piece so I could break even with shipping costs sending the the originals back to Amazon.

the trunk wall box is actually reasonable if they can do a proper seal which requires not only sealing the front of the box and port from the trunk but you also need to completely seal off the rear deck as well. Plus a nice paint job on top then yeah thats actually reasonable for a shop to charge that for a trunk wall.

Swapping Adding a battery doesnt need that much labor unless the whole amp, RCA and remote wire install is included as well. Then thats fine

Since you have two batteries, WHY THE FK do you need 2 amp kits. and Why the fk are they 200 each? around 17 feet of wire from front battery to back battery. 3 feet of wire to ground. 3 x 4 feet of wire from rear battery to amps. Most you need is around 35 feet of wire.... Dont buy wire from them. After using the 35, the 15 feet extra will be used for the big 3 upgrade. Without this you wont get loud. Same with the alternator. no alt = blown everything, not just your amps and your subs, your alternator, battery and everything else in your vehicle is in jeopardy from low voltages. Especially those audiopipe amps are complete current hogs. No less than a 320 amp high output alt(nothing from ebay, only trusted brands)

Buy a 50 feet spool of 2/0 or 3/0 welding cable which is better quality than car audio wire, better copper purity, highly standardized and tested and best of all its around 2 bucks a foot.

So you looking at $130 ish shipped for 50 feet of quality wire.

3 ANL fuse blocks with fuses is around 20 bucks.

10 ring terminals = 10 dollars shipped

10 gauge Speaker wire = 20 bucks

all the wire and install accessories you need for 180$

I hope you arent doing all this without having a powerful high quality head unit with strong 4-5 volt pre-outs

You havent even mentioned door speakers either. Is loud farts all you want to hear? You'll need a proper front stage speaker to keep up with a trunk wall.

Also you will never get close to that explorer's loudness

1: you are in a toyota and toyotas s*ck @ss for bass, takes a lot of work for them to get loud.

2: your car is a trunk car, SUVs get WAY louder way easier than trunks.

3: ported can easily sound as good if not WAY better than sealed. Just dont have idiots design your box. A ported box built by people who have no idea what they are doing will easily sound like garbage. Not every ported is created equally. You have SH*T ported and you have good ported thats designed to completely match the vehicle acoustics along with the subwoofer's electromechanical parameters.

speaking of electromechanical parameters, those orions are absolute SH*T in sealed boxes. They were not made to be ran in sealed by any means. You have subs that work well in ported and some work well in sealed, some can do both. This is one of those subs thats built and designed for purely ported.

You also need to work on major amounts of sound deadening and rattle treatment or else all you gonna hear is similar to a wood pecker beak fking a metal trash can rather than actual bass.

 

[LosIsATool 5,000+ posts]

If they have to build inside the trunk $400 is about right. But $1200 total for a install better be a show quality one with plexi and displayed amps. I personally wouldn't want to display those. That will cause you to match amp sizes when it time to upgrade

 

[BCotrell 10+ year member]

Has this place grown into a bunch of retards?

Interested why you say that? I think the tone of everyone's response is general shock at the price tag of op's estimated retail install cost. Either he hasn't effectively communicated the extent of his consultation and corresponding estimate with the shop or he's plain and simple experiencing an expensive version of what happens when you go buy all your big ticket items like subs and amps from the internet and expect a local shop to do the install for similarly low profit margin. Anyways, a couple people brought up key points.

Two of the three quoted items seem excessive/unnecessary

Needs an alt an alt/big 3

Needs serious sound treatment

Needs a good hu

Needs a front soundstage that can compete with bass

Now it's entirely possible that in addition to the extremely high quoted pricing on things like 0/2 amp kits they can in almost checklist style wait till they got him ***** (car in shop) to present each of these challenges and in the panic and excitement of getting his car a good sounding finished product get him to shell out gobs of additional money (that they missed out on when he bought his amps and subs). Just a theory but doesn't sound far fetched. Would be nice if someone from Ohio can get him networked with a local member and honest installer.

 

[JonM]

Thanks for the replies guys. So it looks like I'm getting burnt here. I tried another place and they wanted $1800 including 4 smaller car batteries before I bought the XS batteries. Another shop refused to do it because I wasn't buying the equipment from them. The box is made of birch wood. As far as deadener, they said after the install, they find the vibrations and rattles and add deadener as needed. I'm not sure if it's included in the price, I'll have to ask. They explained since there's a lot of power here I'll need to run 0 gauge wire. I assumed they needed 2 amp kits because I'm running 2 amps for the subs. Thank you for explaining the differences in loudness between an suv and a trunk system in terms of loudness. I wasn't aware of that. For the mids and highs I'm running fosgate P2 T2652-S components in the front and fosgate P1 6x9s T1663 in the rear powered by an APCL 2004 audiopipe 4 channel amp. My head unit is a kenwood DDX67025 double din touch screen which I think runs 4-5 volt pre-outs.

 

[Jeffdachef 5,000+ posts]

Thanks for the replies guys. So it looks like I'm getting burnt here. I tried another place and they wanted $1800 including 4 smaller car batteries before I bought the XS batteries. Another shop refused to do it because I wasn't buying the equipment from them. The box is made of birch wood. As far as deadener, they said after the install, they find the vibrations and rattles and add deadener as needed. I'm not sure if it's included in the price, I'll have to ask. They explained since there's a lot of power here I'll need to run 0 gauge wire. I assumed they needed 2 amp kits because I'm running 2 amps for the subs. Thank you for explaining the differences in loudness between an suv and a trunk system in terms of loudness. I wasn't aware of that. For the mids and highs I'm running fosgate P2 T2652-S components in the front and fosgate P1 6x9s T1663 in the rear powered by an APCL 2004 audiopipe 4 channel amp. My head unit is a kenwood DDX67025 double din touch screen which I think runs 4-5 volt pre-outs.

One change i'd make there is to BI amp the T2 components using all 4 channels to the front. have the rear on head unit power. Makes a huge difference in Sound quality if you do so. Any power towards the rear is damaging to the sound stage and imaging.

Let me explain to you how the install goes AGAIN.

17 feet from front battery to rear battery

3 feet from rear battery to ground

3(x2) feet from rear battery to amp positive

3(x2) feet from rear battery to amp negative

You dont need two 17 foot runs which is usually how long 0 gauge kits are. They are MILKING you and shoving it up your @ss without any lube with the two 0 gauge kits. NOT EVEN A REACH AROUND!

What I recommended is 2/0 or 3/0 which is 00 and 000 aka triple zero gauge which is much thicker whatever 0 gauge kit they offer for much cheaper and better quality.

I have no qualms on how they will handle the box build and the rattle treatment as long as they get rid of every rattle. Toyotas are rattle traps.

Head unit should be fine since you have t2 components. Too bad its missing time alignment but it will do for now.

 

[Boomin_tahoe 5,000+ posts]

Dynamat after sound system is installed?? Lmao omg what has this world come to. That is completely *** backwords. I wouldn't go back to that shop EVER.

Dynamat 1st then install everything. Ask anybody here. I've seen plenty of pics of people's builds and they lay down the sound deadening material 1st then the build comes second.

 

[JonM]

One change i'd make there is to BI amp the T2 components using all 4 channels to the front. have the rear on head unit power. Makes a huge difference in Sound quality if you do so. Any power towards the rear is damaging to the sound stage and imaging.
Let me explain to you how the install goes AGAIN.

17 feet from front battery to rear battery

3 feet from rear battery to ground

3(x2) feet from rear battery to amp positive

3(x2) feet from rear battery to amp negative

You dont need two 17 foot runs which is usually how long 0 gauge kits are. They are MILKING you and shoving it up your @ss without any lube with the two 0 gauge kits. NOT EVEN A REACH AROUND!

What I recommended is 2/0 or 3/0 which is 00 and 000 aka triple zero gauge which is much thicker whatever 0 gauge kit they offer for much cheaper and better quality.

I have no qualms on how they will handle the box build and the rattle treatment as long as they get rid of every rattle. Toyotas are rattle traps.

Head unit should be fine since you have t2 components. Too bad its missing time alignment but it will do for now.

im going to check out the other 2 car audio shops here in Columbus. How exactly would you wire up the batteries and amps to one amp kit. I have a feeling they might see me coming so I want to be able to explain exactly how I want it wired up. Also how would BI amping help with the imaging? I don't think the head unit has enough power to push the 6x9s. And how is poer to the rear damaging to the sound stage and imaging. The 6x9s don't sound as good as the component, but I thought it was because they don't have their own crossover. Also if anyone knows of a good car audio installation place around Columbus Ohio that's trust worthy, I'd appreaciate it.

 

[JonM]

Dynamat after sound system is installed?? Lmao omg what has this world come to. That is completely *** backwords. I wouldn't go back to that shop EVER.
Dynamat 1st then install everything. Ask anybody here. I've seen plenty of pics of people's builds and they lay down the sound deadening material 1st then the build comes second.

I was kind of wondering about that. My car is 18 years old so I'm sure there's going to be some rattles that need deadener. They told me that after the build, they find all the rattles and add deadener. I guess they spot deaden it?