EDL
Junior Member
Hiya,
Just signed up and making my first post.
I have a specific question, but first a little about me...
I have installed systems before, but only head units and speakers. I've never installed an amp or crossover.
What I lack in install experience I think I make up for in technical knowledge...to a degree.
I know all the parts of a speaker, I know how they work. I understand impedance (3 years of electronics when I was in high school), I know the laws like ohm's law, how to calculate amperage, voltage, etc, etc.
I understand single vs dual voice coils, wiring series vs parallel to achieve desired impedance, etc.
I know what an amp is, line level vs pre-out from the head unit, what a cross over is and how it works and what it's for, etc.
I understand the thiele small parameters and what they indicate.
I understand the theory of sealed, ported and band-pass sub boxes (and with nearly 25 years of woodworking experience and my own full shop, building a sub enclosure won't be difficult).
But...I have a question about line converters...specifically to use one or not, and here's why...
My Dodge Ram 2500 pickup still has it's stock system. Head unit/cd player and 4 speakers. I'd love nothing more than to rip it all out and go crazy and just take it to a shop and let them do it up (because frankly I HATE running wires and doing wiring...probably why I didn't pursue electronics, heh), but as with all things it's always about the money. I just dropped almost $9,000 on the truck in the last couple months replacing front end parts (ball joints, track bar, u-joints, a lift kit, 35" tires and about $1700 in repairs at the shop I couldn't do myself)...sooooo dropping a couple grand on an all new system is out of the question...at least right now.
So, at this point in time I have $200 that I can use on whatever I want and I decided that some bass would be better than no bass at all. I want to add a sub to my stock system.
So I figured a mono amp, a sub and a box at minimum. I'm not kidding myself that all the components are going to be cheapy, so I apologize to all the enthusiasts ahead of time.
In looking around I discovered that I can possibly add a pair of tweeters, crossovers for the tweets and and a 7 band equalizer (personally I like equalizers).
So far I've looked at the Orion CO500.1 mono amp, an MB Quart 12" sub, some cheap tweeters and crossovers and a 7-band equalizer that will fit in the budget.
The only thing I need to decide is whether or not to use a line converter to run pre-out signal to the amp or just go ahead and use line level (the amp accepts both)?
Since the converter is obviously going to have to be a cheap passive converter, will it make a difference in sound quality vs line level? If so, is it enough to worry about or bother with? So, go with the converter or not?
Just signed up and making my first post.
I have a specific question, but first a little about me...
I have installed systems before, but only head units and speakers. I've never installed an amp or crossover.
What I lack in install experience I think I make up for in technical knowledge...to a degree.
I know all the parts of a speaker, I know how they work. I understand impedance (3 years of electronics when I was in high school), I know the laws like ohm's law, how to calculate amperage, voltage, etc, etc.
I understand single vs dual voice coils, wiring series vs parallel to achieve desired impedance, etc.
I know what an amp is, line level vs pre-out from the head unit, what a cross over is and how it works and what it's for, etc.
I understand the thiele small parameters and what they indicate.
I understand the theory of sealed, ported and band-pass sub boxes (and with nearly 25 years of woodworking experience and my own full shop, building a sub enclosure won't be difficult).
But...I have a question about line converters...specifically to use one or not, and here's why...
My Dodge Ram 2500 pickup still has it's stock system. Head unit/cd player and 4 speakers. I'd love nothing more than to rip it all out and go crazy and just take it to a shop and let them do it up (because frankly I HATE running wires and doing wiring...probably why I didn't pursue electronics, heh), but as with all things it's always about the money. I just dropped almost $9,000 on the truck in the last couple months replacing front end parts (ball joints, track bar, u-joints, a lift kit, 35" tires and about $1700 in repairs at the shop I couldn't do myself)...sooooo dropping a couple grand on an all new system is out of the question...at least right now.
So, at this point in time I have $200 that I can use on whatever I want and I decided that some bass would be better than no bass at all. I want to add a sub to my stock system.
So I figured a mono amp, a sub and a box at minimum. I'm not kidding myself that all the components are going to be cheapy, so I apologize to all the enthusiasts ahead of time.
In looking around I discovered that I can possibly add a pair of tweeters, crossovers for the tweets and and a 7 band equalizer (personally I like equalizers).
So far I've looked at the Orion CO500.1 mono amp, an MB Quart 12" sub, some cheap tweeters and crossovers and a 7-band equalizer that will fit in the budget.
The only thing I need to decide is whether or not to use a line converter to run pre-out signal to the amp or just go ahead and use line level (the amp accepts both)?
Since the converter is obviously going to have to be a cheap passive converter, will it make a difference in sound quality vs line level? If so, is it enough to worry about or bother with? So, go with the converter or not?
