Reliable brands for wiring?

JimAckley

I just wanted to get you guys' opinions on what brands make good up-to-spec wire. I still have a bunch of Tsunami lying around from old installs, but don't mind picking up something better since I'm about to make a new system that will hopefully last me a long, long time.

exalted512

www.knukonceptz.com

/end thread.
-Cody

JimAckley

I wanna use 8-gauge for my 15s. Should I just buy 8-gauge power wire for that? or are there any companies that make 8-gauge speaker wire?

Vital

Did you even look at the link above???

JimAckley

Apparently not thoroughly enough. I just noticed the 8 gauge in the Karma SS line They put it at the bottom of that page... weird.

exalted512

what amp, subs, and length of speaker wire are you using?
-Cody

JimAckley

exalted512 wrote: »

what amp, subs, and length of speaker wire are you using?
-Cody

Two JL Audio 1000/1's, two JBL W15GTi's, however much wire it takes to complete the install. I'm going to bi-wire each sub with 8-gauge. My last system had 8-gauge but I still used the jumpers for each sub since I had a limited amount of 8-gauge from an install I did for a friend. I highly doubt it was full-spec 8-gauge though. I just want to get new speaker wire all around. I've still got plenty of power cable, both 1/0 gauge and 4 gauge. The only thing I'm pissed about is where they put the battery in the 2011 Silverados. It's gonna be a PITA.

exalted512

Why do you want 8awg speaker wire for only 1000 watts?
-Cody

MacLeod

I was always partial to the Scoche wire sold at Walmart. 50' of 16 gauge speaker wire for $10. Same with their RCA cables.

exalted512

Scosche's power wire sucks something terrible.
-Cody

tk421

i use scosche efx wire. no problems. try to get the oxygen free copper. the copper-aluminum mixes arent good in any brand.

Vital

exalted512 wrote: »

Scosche's power wire sucks something terrible.
-Cody

Haven't used it myself but i've seen some really good feedback on Scosche's reVoPAK4 kit from people that used Kicker and Rockford wires. Supposably that reVoPAK4 kit is almost as good as Kicker PK4 and Rockford RFK4I.

exalted512

Vital wrote: »

Haven't used it myself but i've seen some really good feedback on Scosche's reVoPAK4 kit from people that used Kicker and Rockford wires. Supposably that reVoPAK4 kit is almost as good as Kicker PK4 and Rockford RFK4I.

I'm talking about the crappy walmart kits they have. Their upper line, like that kit, is actually good wire.

I should've been more specific.
-Cody

JimAckley

DSkip wrote: »

Why did you need 50' of RCA cables?

Limo? :biggrin:

tater6061

Running two 1000/1's to only two subs??? you get 1000 watts at 6 ohms to 1.5 ohms.Save the 0/1 wire and tie the subs together. It will also save some time getting them balanced.

JimAckley

tater6061 wrote: »

Running two 1000/1's to only two subs??? you get 1000 watts at 6 ohms to 1.5 ohms.Save the 0/1 wire and tie the subs together. It will also save some time getting them balanced.

JL's slash series amps regulate their output from 1.5 to 4 ohms. And I've got no problem taking my multimeter and tuning the amps to within 2/100ths of a volt at full power. I've done it more than once. It's not hard if you have patience. Each of these subs can handle peaks of power upwards of 5kW. Why limit my headroom and use only one amp?

tater6061

You are only going to get 1000 watts. you cannot strap them together like Sundown, orDiamond Audio to double the power.

JimAckley

tater6061 wrote: »

You are only going to get 1000 watts. you cannot strap them together like Sundown, orDiamond Audio to double the power.

Lmao. Each amplifier gets its own subwoofer. Thus, each subwoofer gets 1000 watts, to equal 2000.

tater6061

It is a mono amp. you willget 1000 watts. You have 2 + and 2 - side by side right????Test one side or the other it will be 1000 watts....

Vital

what??? lol

kawizx9r

On another note, did you decide what wiring you're going with?

Pics of your install! I love me some JL Audio Slash amps. Have a 500/1 powering my Polk MM sub.

EndersShadow

tater6061 wrote: »

It is a mono amp. you willget 1000 watts. You have 2 + and 2 - side by side right????Test one side or the other it will be 1000 watts....

I believe he is saying he is running one amplifier per sub. So he has a 1 to 1 ratio of sub to amp.

So his sub 1 uses amp 1 watt amp and sub 2 uses amp 2. So he gets a max of 1000 watts from sub 1 and 1000 watts from sub 2 for a total of 2000 watts combined.

kawizx9r wrote: »

On another note, did you decide what wiring you're going with?

Pics of your install! I love me some JL Audio Slash amps. Have a 500/1 powering my Polk MM sub.

Side Note Freddy: I got the Sundown amps for my Treo and Polks and good god can it thump hard now CD player is a no go per the wife :frown:

kawizx9r

EndersShadow wrote: »

Side Note Freddy: I got the Sundown amps for my Treo and Polks and good god can it thump hard now CD player is a no go per the wife :frown:

I keep toying with the idea of tossing in an SR12 or a W7, but $$$ is going elsewhere. I trust my amp to stick around for awhile though a Sundown would be nice to have.

Btw, what's going on with that KIV?

EndersShadow

kawizx9r wrote: »

I keep toying with the idea of tossing in an SR12 or a W7, but $$$ is going elsewhere. I trust my amp to stick around for awhile though a Sundown would be nice to have.

Btw, what's going on with that KIV?

Kenwood told the BB installer to suck it. Said 10 minute load time is normal and it could be longer based on how much music you have on your player. So no offense but F*&K that.

Makes no sense as an ipod takes what 10 secs to load even if its full, while a Zune with 1100 songs @ 320bps takes over 10 mins. We never even got it to load.

So the only real option if I wanted the KIV would be to get it, but then use the external Zune docks composite inputs to the KIV's video inputs. Then you wire the Parking brake sensor to read its engaged even when its not so you can do video and audio from the input and use the Zune Dock's remote to control your Zune.

Basically its a PITA and not worth it. Pisses me off since its the only Zune control capable player. Next years model is coming out so I am going to pray they might have that problem solved but at this point not holding my breath.

I got a decent boost in EQ just with the Sundowns since their crossovers are much better than the ones I had.

If nothing else I might get another 125.2 for my rears because of how much better the Polks sound (and they still dont get as loud as I would like lol, but it might be that I just want it waaaayyy to loud . I technically could wire all 4 sets to the 125.2 since it does 200x2 @ 2 ohms but I dont know how much better that would sound. Plus I have a blown crossover in my rears anyway. Its also nice to know sub wise that the 1200D is 1 ohm stable so I could get another Treo DVC 4 ohm sub and be running ~700 watts to each one

JimAckley

EndersShadow wrote: »

I believe he is saying he is running one amplifier per sub. So he has a 1 to 1 ratio of sub to amp.

So his sub 1 uses amp 1 watt amp and sub 2 uses amp 2. So he gets a max of 1000 watts from sub 1 and 1000 watts from sub 2 for a total of 2000 watts combined.

Correct.

2 subs, 2 amps, no strapping needed. The JL amps are easy to daisychain so you don't have to tweak all of the settings on both amps, only the gain. The driver-side amp powers the driver-side sub, the passenger-side amp powers the passenger-side sub. If for whatever reason an amplifier stopped working, that side will stop functioning but will not affect the other side at all.

You're right that the amp does have two outputs, but does not have two 1000-watt channels. The two outputs are really one output with two spots to hook up subwoofers, to make wiring multiple subs to one amplifier easier. I could probably get by with just one amp, meaning 500w RMS per sub, but I like the way the ground shakes with the extra power, so I bought two amps. I hope this makes sense now.

tater6061

I understand that you are feeding each woofer 1000 watts. As you have it the amps are seeing a parallel(2 ohm) signal each=1000 watts. however if you run the subs voicecoils in a series(8 ohm) and go to one amp it will it will be driving a 4 ohm load still resulting in 1000 watts. I am not triing to pick a fight, I am just wanting anyone who may be reading this to see that there is some flexability in certain amps.If I had the $700 bucks lying around, I would buy a second amp just so the install looks uniform.

EndersShadow

tater6061 wrote: »

I understand that you are feeding each woofer 1000 watts. As you have it the amps are seeing a parallel(2 ohm) signal each=1000 watts. however if you run the subs voicecoils in a series(8 ohm) and go to one amp it will it will be driving a 4 ohm load still resulting in 1000 watts. I am not triing to pick a fight, I am just wanting anyone who may be reading this to see that there is some flexability in certain amps.If I had the $700 bucks lying around, I would buy a second amp just so the install looks uniform.

Yes we understand that he could run the 2 subs off one amp since as long as his ohm load is greater than 1 his amp will provide 1000 watts. The JL he has is a regulated amp like my Slash 250/1.

But thats a discussion for another thread, not this one.

What we are saying is that 2000 is more than 1000 so running 2 subs and amps independent of each other is a better way to get more sound.

JimAckley

Okay, first off, the W15GTi is a dual 6-ohm subwoofer. I can parallel the coils of one sub for 3-ohms and be within the operational inpedance range of the amplifier. If I parallel wire two subs to one amp, with voice coils in parallel, I get 1.5 ohms, still within the operational range. The JL amplifier is going to put out 1000 watts regardless of what I have hooked up to it, as long as the overall impedance is within 1.5 to 4 ohms. JL uses a regulator inside the amp so that it maintains 1000w RMS despite different present loads. It's not like your typical amplifier that doubles power when impedance is halved. Using two subs divides the power in half, per sub. So if I use two subs with one amp, the 1000w of one amplifier gets divided by two subs, which comes out to 500w per sub. Both subs don't get 1000w out of one amplifier.

Here's the statement you need to focus on: ONE amplifier only gives me 1000w of amplification. TWO amplifiers give me 2000w of amplification. So why do you keep trying to piece this together with one amplifier? The point we're trying to drive home is that I already own two JL 1000/1s, PLENTY of room to put them, and the know-how to set them up 99.99% identically to eachother, so there's no point in using just one amplifier.

If you still don't get it, just accept it that, at least in this situation, two amplifiers are a helluva lot better than one. Case closed.

JimAckley

Now, to get back on topic, I'm currently designing an enclosure for my truck. I haven't purchased any wire yet, but I'm gonna snag some of the 8-gauge Knu Koncepts wire for the subs and and I'm debating whether or not I should replace my power wire. Currently it's Tsunami, which, as far as I understood, is good.

I might just go all Knu for this build for the sake of having it look nice and uniform. The voltage regulator in my current H.O. alt is toast, and instead of repairing it, I think I'm gonna snag a new high-current alternator, do my Big 3, get a 5-farad cap. I've also gotta get these door speakers switched ASAP. They're the super basic OEMs and they SUCK! The Bose systems in my last two trucks were half decent, but what I have now is terrible. It sounds like an animal dying.

tater6061

The Knu is good wire, i have used both the Fleks and the KCA. I did notice a little more voltage loss with the KCA bot it was only a couple of hundredths of a volt. The Cadence on e-Bay is OFC and about $2 a ft. for the 0/1 gauge. And barely over $1 per ft. for 4 gauge.
In response to the Cap, unless you are doing BURPS a cap really only cushions the voltage gap, it does not fill it like another, or stronger battery. Try a Stinger battery it it 1400CCA of pain.

tater6061

dyslexic keyboard lol