Fhrx

I didn’t say low volume distortion hurts speakers. Extreme volume distortion damages them. When it comes to in-car audio issues, I reply basing my answers on twenty years of installation and journalism (testing etc for magazines) experience rather than scientific formulae. We (installers) run with what does work, not what should in theory…

Okay, there is a long reply and a short, the short is; No, having little power won't harm your speakers if your sensible with the volume knob. The long answer is this; In most systems when you hears the speakers ‘distorting’ it’s not the speaker that is struggling, it’ the amp. Speakers are quite simple devices, all they do is reproduce the sound given to them regardless of what that sound may be. When you ask an amp to do it’s job, it takes a relatively small sound wave and amplifies it before sending that bigger signal to the speakers. If you ask it to do more than it’s capable of (by turning the volume up full blast), it still tries to do what you have asked, but the new amplified sound wave becomes rough and sketchy. This sketchy sound wave jerks the speaker engine around violently and erratically which causes it to heat up and / or break… Imagine for a second a weight lifter. He is on the bench doing bench presses. With 100 pounds his movement will be nice and smooth and he’ll be almost faultless in his technique. Now you throw on another 300 pounds. He may still just be able to do it, but his arms and legs shake, his breathing becomes irregular and it looks woeful to watch. You amp does the same, it still attempts to do what you have asked of it, but it sounds dreadful and you get that ‘distortion’ everyone talks about. And here lies the biggest problem – most people assume the speakers are dying, so they go and get a SMALLER amp and as you can imagine from reading above, the problem is just amplified (sorry, couldn’t resist throwing that pun in! ). Anyway, it gets worse. Now don’t get me wrong, you can fry your speakers with too much power, but there is only two ways – bottoming the voice coil out damaging the speaker internals and believe me, you will hear when you do that. The other way is to thermally overload it – in other words cook it, fry it, burn it – say it how you will. But the volume will be way louder than your comfortable with I imagine before that happens.

Yeah they certainly have some expensive stuff. I run a CD-700 in my car. They retail for over $3000.

True. One of the better sounding decks around for under a grand. I think they retail at around $899?

No probs dude.

Like any subwoofer of this genre it could always use more power but that amp is certainly enough to get it thumping away!

Looks nice. How does she sound dude?

Fusion is certainly not too bad for their price.

You should always solder AND heatshrink terminals for extra protection! Click here for examples

Again guys I do apologise for the apparent 'grumpiness' above. I should also make it clear that this is in no way directed AT 95GTST and his issue. It's just that day in and day out we have numerous (usually young) customers coming in with the same problem and all I do is change their RCA's, redirect them or put in one of our amps temporarily to show them and nearly every time the issue is solved. They sit there with a mountain of electrical textbooks looking for some magical explanation on why they have this noise when the real issue is that they have gone for the cheapest stuff they could find. I know in theory cables shouldn't make a whole lot of difference but everytime I switch an old set of Aerpro RCA's with something like Stinger Dream's the results speak for themselves...

We'll need a little more info before giving you an accurate answer... Which deck did you buy to start with justin?

Oh, and there is no polite way to say this so if it's okay with people I'll just come right out and say it; and I mean this with all respect to you guys... If you start with cheap products like Jaycar, expect problems... Sorry about my bluntness tonight guys but I have had one of those days where every second phone call today has regarded home installed system noise and the one common thing in all of them has been a cheap amplifier. Thanks for understanding.

Right oh guys, time to bite the bullet and throw the physics lessons out the window. I'm calling on 15 years of experience as an installer to answer this one... I have done enough installs (many of which have been Skylines) now that I can confidently add this too the discussion: 1. I have never had any kind of interferance from a remote wires or speaker wires even when they're bundled with the signal cables. 2. You should always run the singal cables perpendicular to power cable when they HAVE to cross. 3. I have installed amps on both sides of Skylines and never had a problem with system noise. 4. Get some DECENT quality RCA's like Streetwires, Stinger etc... ie no Aerpro / Jaycar / Fusion / Schneider stuff - I know this should not make a difference but I said forget physics for a second. 5. Make sure when you bundle up the excess RCA cables you don't coil them into a circular pile - this tends to make them aerials... bundle them in long lengths... If none of these solve it I'll drive down there from NSW and sort it out for you for free... :P Seriously, sometimes it pays to forget physics and call on experience from real-world experience instead...

Being an audio store I can mail order one too you for our special 'skyline forum buddy' price ... Email me on [email protected]. BTW, WAD sells them for $625...

Where does the dimmer on the head unit go to dude? If this is the case and everything is connected properly, take the deck out and take it to your nearest audio store and ask them to check it out. We don't charge anything over here to simply check things like this out and nor should any professional audio store over there.

Hertz ESK-165 dude. They sould very nice for what they are. If you can go co-axial's over splits you could always try Boston and Rainbow - both are very well built drivers.

You have the negative of the deck connected to the dimmer switch. See the dimmer shows negative continuity (like the earth) when the lights are off. However when you flick the lights on it then runs 12volts. As you can imagine we quite a few decks coming in where the owner has made this simple err. Run a new earth to the body dude.

What is your budget for your speakers? I would choose many different brands before Alpine and Cadence...

They're not too bad. There are better brands around though for a minimal amount more if you can stretch your budget....

Yes, the crossover is a frequency filter. I'm not the biggest fan of Sony stuff but for the price that looks quite nice. Just be careful to make sure you have quality cables. Remember the old analogy; Top Fuelers don't run on quarter inch fuel lines. Amps don't pump power without the appropriate sized cables.

If you ever have to cross the RCA over the power wire make sure it crosses it perpendicularly. That way the power wave has trouble interfering with the signal wave.

When mounting splits and achieving the best staging you'll find every car is different. Sometimes the tweeter ends up over in the kick panel where as other times we build little tweeter bridges to hold the midrange over the woofer, like this: I would let the gap between them get any larger than 300mm though. This is why people often experience channel separation when the tweeter is in the sail and the mid is in the bottom of the door.

True, I'm not a fan of that Media Expander either... I'd rather custom tune it myself.

With the dimensions you gave above I can tell you now your enclosure is about double the size it needs to be. Halve the volume if it's sealed and see what the bass does. Set the crossover at 100 to start with and set the slope to 24db if you can.

Baffles are what we use to hold the speakers down on the door giving them a solid base to work from and removing the need to cut metal in doors. See this image here: