- Thread Starter
- #2
Little help? Anyone?
i wouldn't be too worried about your alt. With it being a 16yr old car there is a high probability that adding more than say 600W could damage it, but an alt for that car should be pretty cheap as well. If you ruin the alt, oh well because it was probably on its last leg anyway, if you don't then good for you.
The Rs sound like a good idea, i'm sure they are easier to get in Germany than most other brands circulating on this forum. Are you willing to build a box yourself for these subs or are you just going to buy a box? I personally think this will be the largest factor on if you go ported or sealed since it is much easier to find a quality sealed box over a ported one. (fyi: ported boxes can sound just as good as sealed boxes if done correctly)
As far as output, i don't think you will have any trouble even if you use a sealed box. I believe your car is rather small? If so that is only going to help in output. Plus the Type-Rs can take an easy 500Wrms each, and if you threw a 1000Wrms amp on the pair i doubt you will be able to hear much of your speakers up front.
The Rs sound like a good idea, i'm sure they are easier to get in Germany than most other brands circulating on this forum. Are you willing to build a box yourself for these subs or are you just going to buy a box? I personally think this will be the largest factor on if you go ported or sealed since it is much easier to find a quality sealed box over a ported one. (fyi: ported boxes can sound just as good as sealed boxes if done correctly)
As far as output, i don't think you will have any trouble even if you use a sealed box. I believe your car is rather small? If so that is only going to help in output. Plus the Type-Rs can take an easy 500Wrms each, and if you threw a 1000Wrms amp on the pair i doubt you will be able to hear much of your speakers up front.
- Thread Starter
- #4
Awesome, thanks for the reply, i was begining to wonder! Yeah i dont have as much access to a wood shop so i will buy a sealed box. Yeah im not really impressed with these kenwoods. Maybe i need an amp i dont know. They sound great at medium volume but if you really start cranking they go to crap. Suppose i need a crossover. I need to look around since i just got stationed here, and i dont know what is going on with the local economy.
supraman1379
10+ year member
Lifted 03 HEMI
Welcome to the forums
- Thread Starter
- #7
No why do you ask?
- Thread Starter
- #8
Alright, i dont understand the omhs thing. 2omh and 4omh type r are the same price. I was looking at some diagrams and it seems that you can wire 2 4omh subs to run at 2 omhs. Whats the diffrence?
An Ohm is just a measure or resistance, anything that uses electricity has a certain amount of resistance. The key is to match your subs to your amp, so i would honestly suggest buying the AMP you want, then going back and buying the subs that matches best to it. ie: if you buy 2-4Ohm subs, they can be wired to 2Ohms, but if the amp gives max power @ 1Ohm then you only get half of the amp's potential (2Ohms is twice the resistance as 1Ohm). There are 1Ohm, 2Ohm, and 4Ohm amps all around so dont worry so much about that as about the one that fits you and your budget; then buy the subs.
As for your kenwoods, it is possible that you need an amp but i'm not 100% sure, i'm going to give you a crash course in something called "clipping".
- All amps have a rated power, and i'm going to pick a rating out of the air for this explination of 200W. Now, on all amps is a knob that is labled "level" or "gain", this is to match the input signal from the RCA wires to the amp itself, an easier way to say it is that if your head unit (cd player) has 2V RCA wires then you are just telling the amp to run at 2V by turning the gain to 2V. get it? good.
- Now, all gain knob have a minimum and maximum rating, so for our imaginary amp lets say a minimum of 4V (this is difficult to understand, 4V is a stronger input signal so the amp doesn't have to boost or "gain"[get the name of the knob now?] the signal as much, so the knob is all the way down hence it is the minimum rating) and a maximum of 250mV (normal for amps). So this amp has the potential of producing more volume, or "gaining" volume, by turning this knob past 2V for our amp. And now we get to "clipping" which is what this is all about.
- All power from all amps is clean of distortion until the amp reaches its maximum power rating (200W for ours). If the gain knob on the amp was to be turned even higher the amp could potentially output 400W of a clipped (or distorted) signal. Clipping is easy to see when it is in front of you, are you familiar with what a sound wave looks like? good //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/wink.gif.608e3ea05f1a9f98611af0861652f8fb.gif ! Now draw an invisible horizontal line at the very top and label it 200W, this is our power max. If the gain was cranked and you forced the amp to make more power the sound wave would increase in size like normal (raising above the 200W line) but eveything above that line is deleted, that is the trade off to more power. The harder you push the amp, the more it takes off the top until insetead of a "wave" you just get something that looks like a square. That is what clipping is, when you clip off the top of the sound wave to make more power. To your ear, clipping sounds like distortion.
Whew! Ok now that it is all explained lets get to your kenwoods. It is possible that when you turn your volume knob that you end up driving the internal amp way too hard and are just severly clipping the signal, hence the distortion you hear. If that is the case then yes adding a new amp will help a lot. If it is just the speakers themselves that can't handle the power you are feeding into them (doubtful) then a new amp wouldn't solve anything.
crossovers also help, but i would try an amp first if you can afford it.
SAG3
5,000+ posts
________
lol
- Thread Starter
- #12
You sir are the **** man. That really clears alot up for me. As a long time meber of http://www.eocf.com i understand how old answering old questions gets (computer questions of course) , and i cant thank you enough for having patince with a noob. Im gonna do the big 3 and amp those bad boys.
Ive had subs before, and i need you guys not to laugh when i say this. I had a 1800W max MA amp with four 2 omh 12" in a (yes really) coupe honda civic. I got spoiled on a stupid amont of bass, but now that i have been running logitech z-5500s and a Xtreme music sound card in my room, ive been hearing what ive been missing, and i cant have a system doing less. Ya know? SQ is the goal here but i want people to go "****!!!" when i fire it up. Should i get a cap to throw in there? I dont wanna dump money into something that is gonna be proprititary for this car if im not gonna keep it. I plan to get some REAL speakers for a new car, but im working with a budget right at the moment. (uncle sam doesnt pay like he aught to.)
Dude if, im too noob for ya, and you just wanna burn me, thats cool. IM me and blast away. But there are people that remember what its like to know nothing. You may be leet now but there was a time that you were not and people like drkodin were showing you the ropes. If you just wanna flame me, at least im me and keep my thread clean.
lol, welcome back
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