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Need Help with Subs and Amp:


Nick1234
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In the Impala i have the stock HU with an RCA converter hooked up to my rear 6x9s. Kenwood 800 watt amp, 2 rockford woofers

 

Last week i upgraded the power wire, ground, and speaker wire between amp to the terminals, and then from the terminals to the subs inside the box. Everything worked fine.

 

I had the key forward to accessories, was listening to the radio while cleaning garbage cans. Everything is fine. Get in the car, turn the radio down, start the car, turn the radio up, and no subs. Fuses on amp are good. Amp is getting power. Ground is good. The speakers in the car sound fine. Re-checked speaker wire inside box. Double checked all connections for the rca converter to the 6x9s. The subs work, but one sounds terrible, like that "loose rattling" and the other one seems fine. Seems like there is little power. If i turn the bass up all the way on the HU, they get louder but sound bad. I can't find anything crossed wiress.

 

Could it be amp, rca converter, blown woofer? I don't think i should have to check too many wires considering, it worked just great and 2 seconds later is dead. Any ideas.

 

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Either blown sub, bad channel in the amp, or a number of other things.

 

First thing first. What do each of the subs ohm out at? If they meter fine, turn your meter to AC voltage, and meter the left channel and the right channel of the amp. Your meter will go all over the place, but thats normal. If one has significantly less output, or no output, possible bad channel.

 

If both of those test out fine, we will go from there.

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i had to work all night. But, i know its not the rca adapter. A guy from work has some MTX road thunders he is giving to me for nothing. I will put those in. For some reason last night, all of the sudden they were louder....yet the one sub has to be gone. Plus i don't really know how to use a meter. Maybe tomorrow i can work on this more.

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im going to find the problem by swapping out the amp, and then subs. A little trial an error type of deal.

 

Chris, and anyone else, if it is the subs, any reccomendations. Nothing too expensive. Still want to keep my kenwood amp. 10"

 

Not looking for anything great, but good. JL? MTX? Good bang for the buck.

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RE Audio, Massive Audio, Arc Audio, Focal, Elevation Audio, Treo Engineering.

 

RE Audio will probably give you the best bang for the buck. Just go with there RE Audio RE series.

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You don't know how to use a meter?? Seriously. You claim to be a car guy and can't use the DMM that I know is in your garage? :lol:

 

You had better post some pictures of those eD's

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hey you shut your mouth. I never have to use one. The eDs are in and working good. Wired the dvc's in series and from the amp to the speakers is parallel. Comes out to 4 ohms resistance and my amp is stable at 4 ohms bridged so all is good. Ill break em in tonight and see how they sound later on.

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Well i got the new stuff in, but i can't go nearly as loud as i want to without the subs getting all distorted. Even with all levels down, i cant play certain songs? And if you try to turn the gain up, to make sure they are not under powered, then its just even worse at the lower frequency. I have the the voice coils wired in series and the amp to the subs parallel. So brigded my amp only puts out 460 watts which is not nearly close to the limit of the subwoofer. Do i just wire the whole thing in series? The rockfords never gave me any problems.

 

help.

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Still didn't help eh?

 

To give everybody else some info...

 

The Subs are DVC 4 ohm. Apparently they are hard wired [from eD] so that they are in series, which to me means that each sub is showing an 8 ohm load to the amp. He then wired them bridged, in parallel so the amp would get a 4 ohm load [we believe that to be the lowest stable load of the amp].

 

He was running everything in series, showing a 16 ohm load. It is my understanding that that will just limit power to the subs, and not damage the amp like running lower-than-stable loads.

 

There is also some concern about what has happened with the RCA's and their converter. I don't know what could happen with the RCA's to damage the amp, but that's my guess. Nick, maybe elaborate more on what you did with the RCA's...

 

If you haven't already, I suggest you

1. Get your Digital Multimeter [DMM], set it to one of the resistor settings try each one until you get a magnitude that works. Connect the positive lead to the positive wires of the subs (where they would ordinarily connect to the amp +) Connect the negative to the negative wires of the subs (where you would ordinarily connect to the amp -). What load is it? we calculated 4 ohms. Is it different?

2. Try your amp with my bro's subs, and try your subs with my bro's amp. Or, take your amp out, take it to like Best Buy or somewhere and have them test it.

 

Also, make sure that your subs are hitting at the same time...from earlier conversations, I'm not convinced that you had that right. I'm betting that isn't the root of the problem, but that would kill your volume, and force you to turn up volumes to where the subs would destort for no apparent reason.

 

I'm thinking that either there is some resistance issue with the subs, or more likely...u dun did sumthin bad to ur amp

 

did I mention I made mine "spontaneously" combust the other day?...speaking of that, this whole things started with a "spontaneous" problem didn't it...your amp could have crapped in the first place like mine did...

Question: could a bad but not out channel cause this problem when trying to run bridged?

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so you have a kenwood 800 watt amp? thats one of the worst amps ever made. on a par with sony xplod 1000 rms amp or krako, realistik, pyle, pro-sony, craig, rockwood, volfenfag.

 

scrap-metal

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so you have a kenwood 800 watt amp? thats one of the worst amps ever made. on a par with sony xplod 1000 rms amp or krako, realistik, pyle, pro-sony, craig, rockwood, volfenfag.

 

scrap-metal

I dont know if I would go that far. But I would never own one after my brother had his start his truck on fire due to leaking internal capacitors.

 

Kenwood speakers, amps, subs and decks = Entry Level

 

Kenwood eXcelon Amps = Average

 

KenwoodeXcelon Decks = Well Above Average

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  • 3 weeks later...

well just an update, there was nothing wrong with th amp. I found the adjustments on the rca converter, turned them down, adjusted some settings, and the eD's sound pretty good.

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well just an update, there was nothing wrong with th amp. I found the adjustments on the rca converter, turned them down, adjusted some settings, and the eD's sound pretty good.

Agreed.

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Did I hear someone mention eD's? :lol:

 

MIne gets meterd on Sunday!!! :willynilly:

 

SO?!?!?!?! Lets here the result!!!

 

 

and yeah about the eD's... what are you running?! I read the post and maybe I missed it somewhere... :dunno:

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Did I hear someone mention eD's? :lol:

 

MIne gets meterd on Sunday!!! :willynilly:

 

SO?!?!?!?! Lets here the result!!!

 

 

and yeah about the eD's... what are you running?! I read the post and maybe I missed it somewhere... :dunno:

Today I hit a 137.6 before my car decided to shut down during testing.. :damnit1:

 

While testing I discovered that my output only differs by 1db between 38hz and 48hz! :willynilly:

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Did I hear someone mention eD's? :lol:

 

MIne gets meterd on Sunday!!! :willynilly:

 

SO?!?!?!?! Lets here the result!!!

 

 

and yeah about the eD's... what are you running?! I read the post and maybe I missed it somewhere... :dunno:

Today I hit a 137.6 before my car decided to shut down during testing.. :damnit1:

 

While testing I discovered that my output only differs by 1db between 38hz and 48hz! :willynilly:

 

:eek: :eek: :eek:

 

Deff cannot complain about that! wow! I bet mines not even that good! But next time keep your car running! :lol: did it just shut down cause of the system going or some other problem?! I mean you should be right where I am in terms of dB

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