I need more. It's not loud enough.

phantom240
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I'm kinda at a loss for what I can do to make my truck louder in the non-sub department... I know I need more amp and enclosure volume to tackle that, along with a HO alt. It's an '02 Avalanche, with my highs powered by a Zapco ST-4D running a set of JBL P660C components up front doors and some dookie JBL GTO629 coax in the rear doors. I need more though. I'm not sure if I'm running out of amp and clipping (don't have any way of measuring the waveform), or the speakers just can't take the wattage, but right when I get into the sweet spot of where I want to be when the music starts getting rowdy, I start to get some crackling in the front, and I'm sure I can hear some mild clipping on certain songs. Of course, I occasionally get that sweet smell of roasting coils as well, but never on any songs where I can hear distortion, as I back off of it. Should I  build pods on the doors for twin 5.25 components? Add a set of kickpanel pods? Step up to a 3-way system? The truck's doors are already deadened, and have MLV and a decoupler layer between the door and the door panel. Any ideas?

Forgot to mention the front stage is high passed at 120hz/12dB, rear 120hz/24dB

 
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I'm kinda at a loss for what I can do to make my truck louder in the non-sub department... I know I need more amp and enclosure volume to tackle that, along with a HO alt. It's an '02 Avalanche, with my highs powered by a Zapco ST-4D running a set of JBL P660C components up front doors and some dookie JBL GTO629 coax in the rear doors. I need more though. I'm not sure if I'm running out of amp and clipping (don't have any way of measuring the waveform), or the speakers just can't take the wattage, but right when I get into the sweet spot of where I want to be when the music starts getting rowdy, I start to get some crackling in the front, and I'm sure I can hear some mild clipping on certain songs. Of course, I occasionally get that sweet smell of roasting coils as well, but never on any songs where I can hear distortion, as I back off of it. Should I  build pods on the doors for twin 5.25 components? Add a set of kickpanel pods? Step up to a 3-way system? The truck's doors are already deadened, and have MLV and a decoupler layer between the door and the door panel. Any ideas?

Forgot to mention the front stage is high passed at 120hz/12dB, rear 120hz/24dB
the crackling is your amp running out of clean juice.  my buddy had a soundqubed 90.4 bridged to a pair of jbl p660cs and they took every last bit of it and got decently loud. 

However you really want an increase in volume, do a whole revamp with an active network setup. What head unit do you have?

 
the crackling is your amp running out of clean juice.  my buddy had a soundqubed 90.4 bridged to a pair of jbl p660cs and they took every last bit of it and got decently loud. 

However you really want an increase in volume, do a whole revamp with an active network setup. What head unit do you have?
Hmm.... I have a PPI Phantom P900.4 in my garage that I'm not sure if it works or not. Should put out even more power, according to dyno tests. Headunit isn't the best, lol, it's a Kenwood Excelon KDC-X599 I believe. I'll check after work. 

You'll also want actual loud efficient drivers as well that can handle some real power.  Those JBLs usually dont last long, the reliability rate on the p660c and ms62c are pretty bad.
Any suggestions? 

 
How do you like that budget zapco? 
Dunno if that’s a jab or a legit question, but considering I bought it second hand for $75, it’s the best amp I’ve ever owned lol. I think build quality isn’t up to the zapco standard, but for what these sold for new, i suppose it can be overlooked. It seems fairly efficient, sounds pretty good. Can’t complain about anything but the hpf/lpf selector switches, they’re ass. I recently had to open the amp and clean those switches because they got some corrosion or something and would make the speakers crackle like a dirty vinyl record even with no input, and occasionally one or both front channels would die out entirely. A bit of contact cleaner and they’re good as new.

 
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Correction: KDC-X500
yikes, thats a cause for concern. My buddy has the similar generation of kenwood, the sound quality in those 16 bit dac chips are horrible. You wont have much loud drivers options because kenwood head units are not active network capable and most loud mids and tweets require an active crossover to sound good. Its good that you have that PPI, it'll be useful for later on. The kick panel ideal would be good with some loud midrange there, some good midbass in the doors and tweeters up high AND rear speakers, you need 10 channels of output for that. which would require a dsp using low level input signals with the front channel of your head unit giving you 8 channels out and you can use the rear channel of your head unit for the rear speakers.  Will need to use both your ppi and zapco to power everything.

 
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I have to chime in here... the 13 band EQ in these eXcelons is kinda weird. I own the KDC-X998 and it sounded like ass. The volume would hit a brick wall at 25ish out of 35 and not get any louder. It was distorting and just ******. The EQ is centered at 0db on each band and like mine, your X500 should be -9 to +9 on each of the 13 EQ bands. What I found out is if you set the EQ anything above the 0db on each band, it IS sending an over-driven signal out to the amps.

Do me a favor before you give up and or buy other items... set any and all enhancements in the head unit to off, set all 13 EQ bands to 0db. My volume on my X998 maxes out at 35 and I think yours does too. Set it to 32... "leaves some headroom." Set your amp gain for the mids and highs for that volume with a 1Khz tone. If you have a digital multimeter, you can set the voltage at the speaker out terminals close to a specific wattage. If your speakers are 2ohms then your amp says it can do 160w x 4. If they are 4ohm then it says 100w x 4.

They are 2ohm so look for approx. 15.8v at the speaker terminals of the amp. Should be close to 125w to the speakers.

When you go back in and start using the Kenwoods EQ, don't go above 0db... keep all bands below or just at the 0db mark and you should be able to crank your eXcelon to max volume and it shouldn't distort and if you haven't ruined your voicecoils before, you shouldn't smell the coils anymore.

 
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Dunno if that’s a jab or a legit question, but considering I bought it second hand for $75, it’s the best amp I’ve ever owned lol. I think build quality isn’t up to the zapco standard, but for what these sold for new, i suppose it can be overlooked. It seems fairly efficient, sounds pretty good. Can’t complain about anything but the hpf/lpf selector switches, they’re ass. I recently had to open the amp and clean those switches because they got some corrosion or something and would make the speakers crackle like a dirty vinyl record even with no input, and occasionally one or both front channels would die out entirely. A bit of contact cleaner and they’re good as new.
Not a jab at all, curiousity. Can't really expect Zapco to produce something at that price range that represents their older much higher quality designs.

I've been watching the Zapco ST-4 for a while and this:

https://www.mmatsproaudio.com/site/product/ls800x4/

In case I ever want to buy a few to upgrade. The LS800x4 is especially a good deal I just wish they'd list RMS instead of peak. I even emailed them about it and the owner got back to me stating it was for marketing because it's a budget product

 
Not a jab at all, curiousity. Can't really expect Zapco to produce something at that price range that represents their older much higher quality designs.

I've been watching the Zapco ST-4 for a while and this:

https://www.mmatsproaudio.com/site/product/ls800x4/

In case I ever want to buy a few to upgrade. The LS800x4 is especially a good deal I just wish they'd list RMS instead of peak. I even emailed them about it and the owner got back to me stating it was for marketing because it's a budget product
Even as a "budget" Zapco, the price of the ST-4D new was over $600 if memory serves me right. I haven't seen the ST-4D on a dyno, so I can't verify if it's RMS ratings are true or not, but I know that my P900.4 outperforms in the wattage department. 

yikes, thats a cause for concern. My buddy has the similar generation of kenwood, the sound quality in those 16 bit dac chips are horrible. You wont have much loud drivers options because kenwood head units are not active network capable and most loud mids and tweets require an active crossover to sound good. Its good that you have that PPI, it'll be useful for later on. The kick panel ideal would be good with some loud midrange there, some good midbass in the doors and tweeters up high AND rear speakers, you need 10 channels of output for that. which would require a dsp using low level input signals with the front channel of your head unit giving you 8 channels out and you can use the rear channel of your head unit for the rear speakers.  Will need to use both your ppi and zapco to power everything.
Yes, and I'm sure that I'm not feeding the amps a top quality signal either, as most of my listening comes from streaming. I'm not expecting it to win SQ competitions, but it does sound pretty great for what it is. Not sure I'm going to go active in this truck, seeing as it's about to turn over the 300k mile mark, but we will see. 

I've been eyeballing the Alpine CDE-HD149BT, would that 24 bit DAC really improve the ability to get a clean signal to my amps?

I have to chime in here... the 13 band EQ in these eXcelons is kinda weird. I own the KDC-X998 and it sounded like ass. The volume would hit a brick wall at 25ish out of 35 and not get any louder. It was distorting and just ******. The EQ is centered at 0db on each band and like mine, your X500 should be -9 to +9 on each of the 13 EQ bands. What I found out is if you set the EQ anything above the 0db on each band, it IS sending an over-driven signal out to the amps.

Do me a favor before you give up and or buy other items... set any and all enhancements in the head unit to off, set all 13 EQ bands to 0db. My volume on my X998 maxes out at 35 and I think yours does too. Set it to 32... "leaves some headroom." Set your amp gain for the mids and highs for that volume with a 1Khz tone. If you have a digital multimeter, you can set the voltage at the speaker out terminals close to a specific wattage. If your speakers are 2ohms then your amp says it can do 160w x 4. If they are 4ohm then it says 100w x 4.

They are 2ohm so look for approx. 15.8v at the speaker terminals of the amp. Should be close to 125w to the speakers.

When you go back in and start using the Kenwoods EQ, don't go above 0db... keep all bands below or just at the 0db mark and you should be able to crank your eXcelon to max volume and it shouldn't distort and if you haven't ruined your voicecoils before, you shouldn't smell the coils anymore.
Yeah I know it is centered at 0dB, and with how I have my EQ set, it starts to distort on most music around the 30-32 mark. Whether that's a distorted signal into the amp, or clipping coming out, I can't speculate. I'll definitely whip out the DMM and reset the gains once I reset the EQ. I just gotta remember how to calculate output voltage to approximate wattage output lol. The speakers are all claimed by JBL to be 3ohm, to combat impedance rise. I do want to set the gains lower in the rear a tad just so I don't have to play with the fader to keep from smoking the poor speakers in the back, and really I don't need rear fill until I need it rowdy, so seems like a win-win lol. I should probably reset the sub gain as well. 

 
get an 80 prs instead and future proof yourself. That alpine is still half @ssed in the tuning department.
Futureproof? That headunit is like a decade old lol. Had one in my 240sx way back in like '08. Does it still work with modern iOS devices?

EDIT: Nevermind, that was the 800PRS or the 880PRS

 
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Thanks for the suggestions I will look at all this when I get home from work!
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