Car Audio 101

rreign

I have messed around with and personally owned quite a bit of subs. Car audio has been in my life for about 10 years. Personally I like 10's for the quick tight bass in comparison to 12's or bigger that are mainly for heavy bass and picking up lower frequencies. Here are a few that I usually recommend for my customers... (not in any particular order)

10" MTX TR75-22 (400W RMS, DVC, great style, wide range of bass/music, great SQ, good price)

10" MTX TS85-22 (600W RMS, DVC, square design, decent price)

10"/12" Cerwin Vega stroker/pro (2000W RMS, DVC, very crazy bass, a little pricey)

10" JL W7 (750W RMS, odd 3ohm impedence can be hard to judge different adjustments, amps, etc. a little pricey and over rated. IMO)

antennahead

Are you stationed in Beaufort?

John

rreign

Yep. Came from Camp Lejeune to here 2 years ago.

antennahead

Cool, I'm in Charleston.

John

rreign

I've been waiting to get my hands on a Z so if you want a great custom install with amazing SQ hit me up sometime.

antennahead

Just sent a PM PRIOR to this post lol

bigaudiofanat

Well I start my next class for college tomorrow so I want to get this done tonight. Today we are going to talk about wire size, fuse ratings, and the difference between coaxial and component speakers.

Wire Size
So power wire is used to send power to your amp. Usually the rule is the bigger the wire the less resistance the power has going threw the wire. The normal size is usually 8 gauge or 4 gauge, the lower the number the bigger the wire....don't ask LOL. 8 gauge wire can carry power up to around 400 watts that is total from whatever your amp is putting out. If you are going to have more than that or 2 amps I would step up to 4 gauge wire. 4 Gauge is good up until 1000 watts. After that you will have to step up to 2 gauge or even the big 0 gauge. Now when you run any of these other than 8 gauge, you can use something called a distribution block. this allows you to hook up multiple amps to the same wire which is completely fine. Most of them will step down the size like 4 gauge in and 4 outputs of 8 gauge.

Ground Wire
This is a huge thing for your amp. Believe it or not DC "Direct Current" flows from negative to positive. SO your ground wire is as if not more important than your power wire. Now your ground should be on a solid piece of metal preferably on a main beam or brace of the car. Not saying that you can not use just any piece of metal just these are the better places. A lot of people like me do not like to drill holes and all so we look for bolts that we can place the wire under it. Before just drilling a hole make sure to check under were you are drilling you do not want to drill into a fuel line!!!. After you drill your hole sand or grind the paint off so your ground is a real nice ground. Before i go and install my ground I put some di-electric grease on there.

Fuse Rating
These little babies help from you starting a fire on your nice car! LOL DON'T GO RUNNING AWAY. Fuses are simply to protect the wire and the electronics from shorts weather it be on accident by touching a wire to ground or a wire slipping out of an amp. The easiest way to find out what kind of fuse you need for your amps is look at the fuses on your amp add them up and that will give you the correct fuse. Most people just run what fuse comes with the wiring kit which is fine.

Speaker Types
Let us start with component, a component setup usually consists of crossovers, a tweeter, and a woofer. This makes for the best you can get. The reason for this is because of the first component. The crossover, before that power even gets to your speakers the crossover filters the frequency's of the music and makes sure that only those frequency's that the speaker can reproduce, gets to them. The next part the tweeter, this takes car of all your high frequency's. Having it not actually on the woofer means that you can install it almost anywhere giving you the very best sound angle. Look at ti this way are you looking down at the ground at a concert is that were the music is coming from NO of cores not. That is why tweeters that can be mounted anywhere are better you can put them as if you were at a concert giving you a more true experience with your music. Coaxial, there cheaper and easier to install but not better. These are made for rear fill, or for someone who wants to do a quick and easy install. The tweeters are built right into them. This causes loss of power from the woofer as it can not move as far as one without the tweeter built in. Also it can not sound as good because there is resistance to the movement of the woofer the tweeter being right in the way is what dose this. Also there is usually no crossover to take car of the sound that calls for you to use your high pass on your amp and set it by ear.

Next time.... Well let me hear some suggestions from you!
Enjoy!!

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