This is what I got

amulford

now what should I do with it???:

2- SR 104-DVC
1- set of SR5250's
1- PA1200.1
1- PA500.4

It's going in a 95 Chevy extended cab. I was thinking of going with two sealed boxes for the subs. WTH do I do with these amps???

Jstas

Wire the subs to a 1 ohm load for the 1200.1 and bi-amp the SR's off of the 500.4.

Jstas

To elaborate, you wire the voice coils on the subs in parallel (positive to positive, negative to negative) and then wire the two subs in parallel. Each 4 ohm DVC sub ends up as a 2-ohm load. Then the two 2-ohm load subs end up as a 1-ohm load for an output of about 2400 watts from the amp.

http://www.the12volt.com/caraudio/woofer_configurations.asp?Q=2&I=42#results

The SR crossover allows you to bi-wire. So, grab a set of RCA splitters, take the 4 channels from the sub and run the same left and right to both front and rear. Then wire the front outputs to the high inputs on the crossover network and then wire the rear outputs to the low inputs on the crossover. Wire the speakers up to their appropriate outputs and rock out.

Either that or bridge the 500.4 to a 2-channel system and run the crossovers with a standard wiring scheme.

Hope your charging system can handle it. That's about 3,000 watts of "blow your ear drums".

arun1963

What source are you planning to run all this off? That will also play a role in how you set things up. Go with a hu that gives you a loot of tuning options and the ability to go active if possible.

eprater1

get a good quality hu and a bit one, then spend 3-4 hrs a day tuning for the next 6 months. only to then decide to rearange all your speakers and repeat the tuning.....its what i did

Jstas

arun1963 wrote: »

What source are you planning to run all this off? That will also play a role in how you set things up. Go with a hu that gives you a loot of tuning options and the ability to go active if possible.

????

That has nothing to do with how you're going to wire your amps.

Signal path is independent of power path.

amulford

How do I connect the subs to the amp? It has two set of outputs.

What do you know about Dual's?

MacLeod

amulford wrote: »

How do I connect the subs to the amp? It has two set of outputs.

What do you know about Dual's?

Dual is a flea market brand. Stick with the trusted names like Alpine, Kenwood and Pioneer. Eclipse and Clarion are also solid.

The 1200.1 has 2 sets of speaker outputs for convenience. If you're hooking up 2 subs, you have on terminal for each. This is easier than trying to fit 2 sets of wires in one terminal.

nguyendot

amulford wrote: »

How do I connect the subs to the amp? It has two set of outputs.

What do you know about Dual's?

You just connect them to the + and -. I understand there are two outputs, they're actually tied together, they're not separate. They're done that way so it's easy if you want to hook up two subs.

Basically do this - on each sub theres two + and two -. Connect a short wire from + to + and - to -. Then connect one + to the amp + and one - to the amp -. If you do this on each sub, you'll fill all 4 connectors on the amp, and it'll be wired correctly. Not a lot of amps have 2 sets, but Polk does it to be nice so its easier to hook up. Don't confuse it with a stereo amp where the two sets are separate.

Yes, stay away from dual.

Jstas

amulford wrote: »

How do I connect the subs to the amp? It has two set of outputs.

What do you know about Dual's?

Do you need a hand? 'Cause you could just say you need a hand. Phone works too ya know.

And Dual isn't what it used to be. Like other formerly great brands like KLH and Advent, Dual is now part of a massive Taiwanese conglomerate and a mere shell of what it once was.

What are you looking for in a head unit? If you want modern features then you'll have to go with something new. Kenwood, Pioneer, Alpine, Eclipse, yada, yada, yada.

Or, if you just want spectacular sound quiality: http://cgi.ebay.com/DENON-CAR-CD-PLAYER-DCT-R1-STEREO-DCT-A1-DCT-Z1-AUX-/230592590748?pt=Car_Audio_In_Dash_Receivers&hash=item35b063b39c

It'll be REALLY hard to beat that one. BiN for $375, it's a bit of a deal since I've seen them go as high as $1700 used.

jay27

eprater1 wrote: »

get a good quality hu and a bit one, then spend 3-4 hrs a day tuning for the next 6 months. only to then decide to rearange all your speakers and repeat the tuning.....its what i did

Or you could get an MS-8 and spend about an hour tuning and spend the rest of your time doing something else.

This method does encourage buying equipment more frequently, however.

arun1963

Jstas wrote: »

????

That has nothing to do with how you're going to wire your amps.

Signal path is independent of power path.

If I have a hu that lets me run active, I will bi-amp and not bi-wire or bridge.

Hence signal path is connected to power path......besides, without a good source, you're wasting your $$ elsewhere.

Jstas

arun1963 wrote: »

If I have a hu that lets me run active, I will bi-amp and not bi-wire or bridge.

Hence signal path is connected to power path......besides, without a good source, you're wasting your $$ elsewhere.

Sorry but even in your example, signal path is still not connected to the power path until you reach the amplifier.

You are way ahead of the game. The question asked was how to wire the amps and speakers in the given list. Nothing else. Not what head unit was used. If he' going competing then yeah, consider the headunit. Knowing Antny though, he's not and he just wants good tunes. He doesn't need active crossovers and time alignment and all that other garbage for a daily drive he's going to beat the hell out of.

If he wants to know how to hook up speakers to the amp, he has a few options. None of them should involve anything with the head unit. Even if you did use time alignment and other such magical trickery, any modern system he gets to use that stuff will be able to compensate for any way he is going to wire the system up.

Answer the question that's asked. Don't guess as to what you think he needs. Not everybody is looking for a perfect system nor can many vehicles support such things. Especially work trucks which need to have compromises to provide the audio enjoyment but allow for the tasks that will be demanded of it on a daily basis. What you did was tantamount to someone saying "Hey, I've got this truck and I was gonna get an RV, how should I hook it up?" Following your logic above, your response would have been "Get a Rolls Royce because it has REAL wood in the interior!"

Vital

Jstas wrote: »

The SR crossover allows you to bi-wire. So, grab a set of RCA splitters, take the 4 channels from the sub and run the same left and right to both front and rear. Then wire the front outputs to the high inputs on the crossover network and then wire the rear outputs to the low inputs on the crossover. Wire the speakers up to their appropriate outputs and rock out.

Either that or bridge the 500.4 to a 2-channel system and run the crossovers with a standard wiring scheme.

Hope your charging system can handle it. That's about 3,000 watts of "blow your ear drums".

Jstas, i'm not following your "diagrams" here. I currently have MMC6500's bi-amped with PA500.4 and have SR5250 waiting to be installed (also bi-amped) when it warms up outdside.

PA500.4 has a 2/4 channel RCA input knob that when switched to 2 channel acts as all 4 channels getting the same signal as first 2 (fronts) so there's no need for splitters, just run 2 rcs (left and right) in "front input" of the amp and press that knob. So now all 4 rca inputs of the amp are getting the same signal.
After that run (same thing as Jstas said but worded differently) 4 pairs of speaker cables (8 wires alltogether since all 4 will have 2 wires in it + and -)from amp to SR's crossover. 2 cables from amp's "front speaker output" to SR's x-over's tweeters inputs and 2 cables from amps "rear speaker output" to SR's x-over woofer inputs.

What's really the point of bridgin the amp in this case?? I'm not saying it's wrong, i'm just trying to figure out the reason to do so. Main reason for bi-amping is to control woofer/tweeter ratio which will be wasted when amp is bridged. Also with bi-amp you're still sending 90W rms to each speaker (depending on where your gain will be set ofcourse) so there's no "you'll get more output with bridged amp"
Am i missing something obvious here??

Jstas

Look, I don't have any PA amps so I don't know what fancy doodads they have or idiot proofing to keep from blowin' your stuff up. I'm just relating what I would do with a standard amp install. If you have knobs and buttons that take the math work out of the equation then fine. The example is still sound and the diagrams are accurate even if they don't relate directly to the PA amp options. Then again, that is why they ship with owner's manuals.

Vital

Jstas wrote: »

Look, I don't have any PA amps so I don't know what fancy doodads they have or idiot proofing to keep from blowin' your stuff up. I'm just relating what I would do with a standard amp install. If you have knobs and buttons that take the math work out of the equation then fine. The example is still sound and the diagrams are accurate even if they don't relate directly to the PA amp options. Then again, that is why they ship with owner's manuals.

LOL, sorry i thought you had PA amps and i my mind was "set" on PA diagram here :biggrin:

Jstas

The link to the 12volt diagram generator uses basic wiring methods to show you how things need to be wired.There is a TON of good, accurate information at The 12 Volt site I linked too. Even pros will check info there as a sanity check. It's a VERY good resource.

JimAckley

DSkip wrote: »

Stay away. Quality brands to look at include Kenwood, Pioneer, and Alpine. The Duals, Jensen's, Sony's, and other brands are all cheap for a reason (Sony may not be too cheap price wise, but their build quality is).

Sony's lineup was called Xplod for a good reason haha

arun1963

Jstas wrote: »

What you did was tantamount to someone saying "Hey, I've got this truck and I was gonna get an RV, how should I hook it up?" Following your logic above, your response would have been "Get a Rolls Royce because it has REAL wood in the interior!"

Not sure if the rant is against sq as a concept, or me in general. Probably the later, the heck with that.

Yes I went beyond what Anthony asked. That bit you'd already covered. Opening up a new side to the equation vs keeping it tightly shut, are two sides of the same coin. Tough to say who's right or wrong.

FWIW you can pretty much make any vehicle sound decent even if you're not competing.

BTW, I thought we had settled the notion about the pixie dust sq on the Denon hu in cupcakes thread

Jstas

arun1963 wrote: »

Not sure if the rant is against sq as a concept, or me in general. Probably the later, the heck with that.

Yes I went beyond what Anthony asked. That bit you'd already covered. Opening up a new side to the equation vs keeping it tightly shut, are two sides of the same coin. Tough to say who's right or wrong.

FWIW you can pretty much make any vehicle sound decent even if you're not competing.

BTW, I thought we had settled the notion about the pixie dust sq on the Denon hu in cupcakes thread

There's no rant against sound quality. My gripe is with people who try to sound more intelligent than they are and offer unsolicited advice on a situation with which they have no knowledge of. You want him to go about doing all this whiz-bang stuff and you have no clue what his intent or needs vs. wants are. You just want to spout off the typical internet audio nerd rhetoric and expect that your advice be followed to the letter no matter how unreasonable it is. You didn't even ask any relevant questions, you just assumed and spouted off a knee-jerk response with total disregard for the poster's situation. That's not helping. That's mental masturbation and you're getting it all over the OP.

It happens far too often on the Internet in general, not just here. If somebody stopped you and asked for directions on how to get to the morgue so they could pick up their dead mother would you give them directions to the morgue? No, you probably wouldn't. You'd tell them how to get to the morgue alright but you'd have to tell them where to stop for the best falafel in town along the way and then offer a good shoe repair place to fix the hole in their sneaker and then tell them about the street festival that will be there next week. Sure, eventually you'll get them to the morgue but you've gone too far with irrelevant information. It's great that you can regurgitate all of that but it's not great that you've failed to understand when to regurgitate what you should at the appropriate moment.

You can rationalize it any way you want. Fact remains you've been of very little help and in this case, you didn't even answer the OP's question. You asked a question that doesn't really matter at this stage and one that the OP probably can't answer anyway. So you've been completely ineffective. Congrats.

Don't worry though. It's not just you. Lotsa people come in here spouting off about things they know about but don't understand and just cut and paste what someone else told them. If they wanted the encyclopedia answer, google.com works great for that. You just reached rare form with your response because in the realm of "help on the Internet" you've reach a level of fail that I haven't seen here in a while. Congrats again.

Installation matters more than any amount of fancy programming and circuitry. Always has.

As far as the question of the quality of that Denon headunit, I have no clue what on God's green Earth you are talking about. There's a reason those Denon headunits are sought after. Not only do they look sharp but they were ahead of their time. Bonus, they are simple. Simple circuits, simple controls, not a whole ton of other garbage. They are geared towards sound quality and have a KISS principle applied to them. Couple that with high quality parts and you end up with a nice, high fidelity piece of gear. If I had the money and the need, I'd snap one up myself.

arun1963

I guessed right it was the later. Nuff said.

KaosTsoc

Im just trying to be helpful if I can. Ok, my question is what is you goal? Are you wanting to achive a sound quality compition style of system, or just have a good sounding system that will be for everyday driving?

If you are going to sound quality compition level, then I would go with what everyone is trying to tell you like mac, arun, dskip etc.

However if you are just wanting some tunes that sound better than the stock. Then that is the easier of the two. Installation is the most important thing. If it were me, and I was to go simple here is what I would do. Use the PA500.4 for the SR5250's. Now, as for the SR5250's and setting these up I would follow the instruction manual, and set it as passive. (This pretty straight forward from what I am looking at from polk.) Then from there you wire the postive from the crossover to the positive of the 1st channel of the amp, and the same for the negative. This should apply to both sides. Hope this is helps you there.

As for the PA 1200.1 I would use that for the subs. Now here comes the tricky part. When you add subs you are putting more stress on your battery, and alternator. In most cases the battery is what is being used to power the system, and the alt has to charge your battery back up due to current draw from the whole system (mainly the subs). So, when you are asking about wiring this is subjective really (or at least I think so). So, to put this into the simpilist way.. When you wire the subs to lets say a 1 ohm load you drawing more current from the battery, and alt. Which if your alt, and battery are not set up to take this load you end up burning them up. Not at the same time, but one then the other. So, the higher the ohm (lets say 4 ohms) the less stress you put on these things. Now, you have a 95 chevy (not sure if it is a 1500 or not), but I have a feeling you are good there. So, you have a choice really, do you want to put a high amount of stress on your alt, and battery or not.

With the SR 10's you can still get good sound if you under power them, but if you give them the RMS power that they need they will really shine more.

Oh, almost forgot. The Head Unit... Now if you want to get the denon HU, that is fine. It is a good unit, and it is more of what they call an analog or tube amp style of HU. Very warm sounding, but the only problem I see with it is it analog. Sure analog is good, especially when were are talking about the older recordings, and so on. Im not putting it down by any means so dont get me wrong. However I like the new HU that have digital sound processing, and in fact most people on here lean that way. The digital IMO is better in that it gets rid of all the unwanted recording noises that you would hear more in an analog system (this is not always true). So, as for the HU it is your choice on that one. If you are wanting to go simple get a HU that offers some basic tuning features (trebel, bass, mid, fad, and bal), and has at least two set of RCA's. One set for the front stage, and one set for the subs. Also make sure that the pre out volts are at least 4v out. This will help with sound issues such as hearing alt whine, and hissing.

So, wiring this all up. This is what I would do: Run at least a 4awg wire from your battery to a fused power distorbution block. (try to make sure that the lines out from the power block area also 4awg) Take one 4awg and wire that to the PA500.4, and the other to PA1200.1. (Try to run the power wire where you know your other speaker wires will not be. Basically isolate the power wires. I did this by running the power wires on the side of the transmission hump under the carpet on the driver side.) Now as for the ground (everything has to be grounded. Also use a 4awg wire for this as well) Find a central locatoin were both wires can be secured by a self tapping bolt or by using an actual ground bolt. (I do not suggest using a seat belt bolt or anything like that). Also try to make sure that your grounds are grounded as close as possible to the amp. The reason for grounding them in one spot is to help with ground loop noise. Now, that this is done, you need to run the remote wire (this is were having an after market HU comes in). On the aftermarket HU there is line from the HU that is for the remote wire. (So, when you turn off your car it will turn off your amps. So, if the HU is off the amps are as well. If the HU is on then so are the amps). Now, (this is were the HU comes into play again) that all that is done you now need to focus on the RCA's. What you can do is get two set of RCA's run one set from the back of the HU where it say front to the PA500.4, then run the RCA's from the back of HU were it says sub, and run that to your PA1200.1. (I would try to run your RCA's cables on the other side of your transmission hump, on the passanger side). Keeping you RCA's away from your power wire is going to help with noise interference. So, now that you have the power, ground, remote, and signal wire run, you can now move onto hooking up the speakers. Which at that point is up to you to decide on how. Keep in mind to run all speaker wires away from your power, and RCA cables.

So, I hope this helps really I do. Im not trying to make it confussing just trying to give my two cents, and make you think. It may sound elementry which is true, but that is were you want to start. This is based on my own experiances so, you can take or leave it. It also kind of helps to understand too what you end goal is. Any questions please post.

Thank you.

amulford

Ok I dumped the Dual and went with a Kenwood Excelon.

Thak you for the wiring advice. I am really looking for some good places to mount these amps...

Time to get to tearing **** out...

Jstas

Here dude, fixed your link: http://www.crutchfield.com/S-ugEcdwPGRdy/p_113KDCX995/Kenwood-Excelon-KDC-X995.html?tp=5684&nvpair=FFBrand|Kenwood

Nice unit! I like it!

What happened to the other head unit you had in the other truck? Couldn't you swap that one over?

MacLeod

Good choice Ant'ny. I've always liked the Excelon series. Good quality build and they always loom sharp as hell.

amulford

Jstas wrote: »

What happened to the other head unit you had in the other truck? Couldn't you swap that one over?

That got purloined when my truck got stolen. You still got the same number?

Thanks Mac. I kinda dig the Pandora thing, too. I hope I don't HAVE to use an I Phone and can use my 'droid.

I've been wondering about HD Radio. Anybody have any insight to that?

Jstas

HD Radio is real nice. Most of the stations in the area broadcast on an HD band. The signal is digital though so you do need a tuner that handles it just like the digital TV boxes.

The nice thing about it is signal strength is usually strong until you get out of range and then nothing. But, at the same time, the bandwidth for programming info is almost 3 times as large as the analog so they can run a full 20-20K Hz signal as well as a data path for RDS, show and track info. Very little static or interference with the signal as well so none of that typical static and white noise you get on an analog band. Sounds real nice too. It makes a significant difference. I heard Howard Stern on an HD broadcast from 94.1 a few years ago and I was switching back and forth between analog and digital. Sounded like two different DJ's but they were saying the exact same thing. Trippy.

The only reason I don't have it is because I didn't want to spring for the $400 tuner I'd need. If I was still commuting down the highways to work, I'd probably have it but it doesn't do me any good on the train so I couldn't justify the cost. Nice thing is though that all you have to buy is the tuner. The HD signal is a broadcast signal and beamed out there for anyone who can get it. You get quality close to satellite but it's free and it's local channels.

Another thing I'm told is that they can piggy back additional programming. Like the NPR HD broadcast has a companion analog Spanish broadcast piggy-backed on the alternate channels. Kinda like NJN and WHYY do with their digital signals. So some stations have 2-4 total channels of broadcasting on a single band. I haven't messed around with it though so I have no idea if anyone in the area is set up like that so it may or may not be true for us.

arun1963

Nice hu. I would definitely bi-amp via the passive xover. The hu allows you to time align the fronts and rears separately. So hook up the tweets as fronts and the mids as rears. You can then adjust for each driver independently. Something you can normally only do in active mode.

MacLeod

What is the difference between HD radio and your XM and Sirius satellite radio?

Vital

HD is basically FM/AM but with better sound quality.
You also don't pay any monthly for HD radio, only for the unit/adapter itself.

Jstas

MacLeod wrote: »

What is the difference between HD radio and your XM and Sirius satellite radio?

Signal wise, nothing. They are both digital signals although satellite is typically encrypted and you need a subscribe passcode to get the encryption key and enable service..

Service wise, HD is broadcast. Means if you have an antenna, it's out there for you to grab. Satellite is also out there for you to grab but as mentioned above, you need a subscription. Satellite will not typically have local access programming either. So like if you listened to KQED on your drive to work, you wouldn't get that station on a Sirius subscription.

You'd need an analog tuner to get the analog KQED signal but no subscription needed. If KQED has an HD broadcast signal then you need an HD Antenna and tuner/processor to get that signal but still no subscription. The HD signals are just like, say, NBC broadcasting in analog and having an HD signal as well. Same idea, just FM radio instead of VHF/UHF. The programming is ad supported based on surveyed market share like radio has been for decades.