I.C.E for a RA?

[sti wrx]

I Bought a ra with no sounds a few months back and have finally finished buying parts for a decent setup

First i had the problem of choosing a head-unit, there is just so few ones around the 400 dollar mark that offer 4v or higher preouts

So i settled for a PIONEER DEH-7250SD and got it at just $349 although it took weeks to arrive from singapore, with a wet and crushed box aka not happy

Next it was the fount speakers, this was a tough one for me, ive had many different pairs of high end pioneer components over the years and have almost always felt disappointed with there performance and sound quality so this time i went for alpine, just got to hope to god that i can get them to fit in the doors with a spacer..

So i settled for these Alpine SPR-17S and bought them for $240

I then spent a few weeks deciding on weather or not i wanted to buy a 4 channel amp and run back speakers for passengers so its not just bass from the boot, after like 3 weeks i found a alpine mrp-f450 for only $220

For the boot i decided on a FUSION POWERPLANT BASS pack..... i know fusion is kinda not that great but for the price of $600 you get everything you need, ive had one before and it went really well.

I have also bought a Dynamat extreme bulk kit $350 to sound deaden the doors and the boot, and anywhere else it can go, the car is just so noisy, at 100kph you can barely have a conversation.

Also bought some wiring kits and a fused distribution block, now I have just got the massive job of installing it, and were to put everything. not keen on using factory wiring at all, and being a ra the car has no boot liner and has a rear sway bar, so that prevents me from pushing the sub box back into the boot to clear the spare wheel, and also i have no idea were to mount the alpine amp, its quite big and its not going to go under the seat because its just to big and dont want to risk someone spilling their drink on it etc.. and i cant decide on a decent pair of 6.5 speakers for the rear parcel tray, kinda need them as-well because i will have two gaping holes at the top of the tray letting all the air through from the sub in the boot... any ideas and thoughts would be great.

Cheers

[wrx_lou]

Those type R speakers are some good kit. I've got a set of components in the front on my rex and they sound really nice. Getting a bit old now though (about 5 years).

[viperguy]

that amp might be a bit light to properly power those speakers...i can highly recommend powering the tweets and mids seperately off the amp (so using all four channels for just the fronts) and using the network mode (which gives you a sub/mid crossover and a mid/high crossover) if the headunit has it, it really cleans the speakers up getting rid of those dirty passive crossovers

its not all bad having the holes in the parcel tray...it'll let the sub air movement into the cabin so you can hear the sound not just feel the vibrations

[wrx_lou]

Nothing wrong with those crossovers.

[viperguy]

better than most im sure, but not as good as none

[sti wrx]

the amp puts out 70w rms per channel wouldn't that be overkill for individual components eg.. the tweeters?

[Swindog]

Na...you use the negative decibel slot in the crossover. reduces the power slightly.

[Scoobydoo]

 Swindog said:

Na...you use the negative decibel slot in the crossover. reduces the power slightly.

It doesn't reduce the power, just reduces the output from the speaker. You can wire speakers and tweeters directly to the amp, but you would need to lower the gain on the amp for the tweeters.

But TBH I wouldn't bother about going active. Active is a PITA to tune properly and takes quite a bit of time to get right, but using crossovers is plug n play. And unless you've looked up the model number of the speakers, how do you know the crossovers have a -3dB option for the tweeters?

Viperguy, stop trying to complicate things

[viperguy]

haha, ive got a 90x4 rms alpine amp and that is powering the tweets and mids directly, just need to lower the tweets level in the headunit a couple of notches as theyre a bit bright otherwise. Yes with more power at hand if you crank the system to ear bleeding levels theres a better chance you could blow speakers, but whats worse for speakers is clipping the amplifier output at high volumes and pumping DC into them, which there is more of a chance to do with a lower rated amp...but frankly in the real world it really doesnt matter too much, you'd be deaf first

[sti wrx]

shitty as iphone camera

[viperguy]

ooh nothing like a swag of toys, wish i had new things....

I'm working on a carputer at the moment but dreading having to spend a grand on the touchscreen

[Scoobydoo]

 viperguy said:

ooh nothing like a swag of toys, wish i had new things....

I'm working on a carputer at the moment but dreading having to spend a grand on the touchscreen

Use an iPad

Or a netbook?

[viperguy]

 Scoobydoo']

[quote name='viperguy said:

ooh nothing like a swag of toys, wish i had new things....

I'm working on a carputer at the moment but dreading having to spend a grand on the touchscreen

/quote]

Use an iPad

Or a netbook?

a nettop (viewsonic VOT132)...$570 for the computer, 90 for the power supply (DC to DC), 700 australian for the screen, fairly cheapish for an off the shelf computer in the car with 320 gigs of music and videos. The only issue is how to maintain power when cranking

[Scoobydoo]

 viperguy']

[quote name='viperguy said:

ooh nothing like a swag of toys, wish i had new things....

I'm working on a carputer at the moment but dreading having to spend a grand on the touchscreen

/quote]

a nettop (viewsonic VOT132)...$570 for the computer, 90 for the power supply (DC to DC), 700 australian for the screen, fairly cheapish for an off the shelf computer in the car with 320 gigs of music and videos. The only issue is how to maintain power when cranking

You mean if / when the car is not going? If the car is going then you can just use an invertor? Otherwise you can get a power supply to provide voltage to battery if car isn't going. I do know of one that is for sale, it's a really good one that is voltage adjustable. it used ot be mine before I sold it (to the guy who is selling it now). It's 100A so is heaps powerful enough for pretty much anything. Wants about $400 for it.

[viperguy]

heh nah, got the power sorted with one of those car laptop power supplies...its just that the output of the dc to dc laptop power supply drops from 19 nominal volts to like 4v when you try and start the car.

Will likely solve the issue with a little secondary battery with an isolation relay/diodes or maybe see if one of those 1 farad caps could do the job, do you know if theyre good up to 19 volts?

[Scoobydoo]

Ah cant say I know a lot about capacitors. I never bothered with them for car audio use. A good battery is heaps better.

[viperguy]

 Scoobydoo said:

Ah cant say I know a lot about capacitors. I never bothered with them for car audio use. A good battery is heaps better.

sounds like the capacitor theory is debunked anyways, i read a post that calculated that the time for a 1 farad cap to drop from 13.8 to 10 volts was like .44 seconds

[SimJen]

just adding weight in my opinion......don't need no stereo

an RA's supposed to be light!

with all that stereo you might as well have a Ford Explorer

[sti wrx]

just had the car in all day getting it all installed, like 7 hours labour. just to find right at the end that both the fusion rcas are faulty and that the inner and outer core a touching at some point in the cable but only on the white side, same with both cables from 2 different kits. now another further few hours taking everything to bits to get them replaced. fuck fusion seriously not happy at all.

[Guest]

That stinks dude, looks like a nice set up tho, oh and yea the lack of sound deading in that car sucks aye haha.

[sti wrx]

i reckon aye, should sound mint as after another few hundred dollars of labour haha

[viperguy]

 sti wrx said:

just had the car in all day getting it all installed, like 7 hours labour. just to find right at the end that both the fusion rcas are faulty and that the inner and outer core a touching at some point in the cable but only on the white side, same with both cables from 2 different kits. now another further few hours taking everything to bits to get them replaced. f*** fusion seriously not happy at all.

sounds fishy that 2 cables from 2 different kits have the same fault, I'd be looking at either amp or headunit at fault but then again stranger things have happened

Whats the symptoms, no sound out of the left channel? could be something as silly as L/R faders being set hard to one side in the headunit, or the amp input gains set way too low on one of the inputs

[sti wrx]

tested the cables with a multimeter and found them to be faulty the other channels work fine with the other side of the rcas. i really wish it was something as simple as that