System blown... I blame it on my know it all friend

[haydenm315]

The friend whom I helped build a subwoofer enclosure for blew his subs. I hope he still has a warranty. The subs are quite top of the line. I dont' remember the brand, but they are square shaped and are quite heavy dual voice coil speakers. The box sounds like a deployed parachute flapping in the wind. I blame it on my know it all friend who tried to "tune" his amplifier a few weeks ago. I also blame it on my friend who owns the system. Unfortunately when you have 2 turkeys that want to turn the head unit up to 30-35, and wait for distortion, shit is going to blow. It disturbs me that they damaged this equipment. Does anybody know of a good site for describing the features and functions of stereo amplifiers. I'm not an audio major and don't know what everything does.

 

[yamahaSHO]

Square, then I would say they were Kicker's. As far as understanding amps you can go to www.howstuffworks.com , or you could ask a question. I went to school and now am employed in the component level of electronics.

 

[LOUDSHO92]

They proably turned up the gain which is what is used to lower distortion most like to use it as a volume control. The other featured that amps have are bass boost or crossovers. Crossovers do not have the affect of destroying a system as all they do is cancle out signals below a certain frequency.
If they turned up the bass boost and then turn up the gain then well you have morons for friends cause that is asking for trouble. Also I find that not allowing the lowset bass helps in sound.
My system rarely sees past 20 in volume on mine and i usely keep it around 14 as it is quite a loud system. Anyone who goes to those levels is going to blow stuff.
Oh yeah this may help in some education of stereo stuff: http://www.mtx.com/caraudio/education/index.cfm

<small>[ April 25, 2003, 07:45 PM: Message edited by: LOUDSHO92 ]</small>

 

[FordSHO90]

How did he manage to blow them. I have two kicker L7s and i cant blow them. I have tried. I turn the gains all the way up, have the bass boost on max(12), and my kenwood excelon deck at 33 (35 is max) and dammit they wont blow. Althouth they are so damn loud at that volume that i cant stand it. He must have hooked them up to a ****** deck whcih with its distortion caused them to blow. That is the only way i can think of that can blow those speakers unless he only has the L5s? Shoot me back an answer as i am curious how this happened.

Thanks
Bryan

 

[ATXSHO]

I find it difficult to blow that speaker. I think it's just an unfinished (homemade) box. Go buy some wood glue and glue all the cracks inside the box so no air will seep through and cause that "deployed parachute flapping in the wind" any more. thumb

<small>[ April 27, 2003, 01:09 PM: Message edited by: ATXSHO ]</small>

 

[LykeSHO]

Sounds to me like your friends we're trying to set the gain on the amp because to do that you turn the deck up to where you hear distortion then you turn it down a couple notches below that then you turn the gain up until you hear distortion again and turn that a little down. As for the "flopping in the wind thing" that doesn't sound like its blown. If it was blown it would be a lot of distortion or if you completely fried the voice coils it would be nothing. Check the signal coming out of the deck. My pre-outs have fried before, see if another set on the same deck works better.

 

[haydenm315]

LOUDSHO92:
They proably turned up the gain which is what is used to lower distortion most like to use it as a volume control. The other featured that amps have are bass boost or crossovers. Crossovers do not have the affect of destroying a system as all they do is cancle out signals below a certain frequency.
If they turned up the bass boost and then turn up the gain then well you have morons for friends cause that is asking for trouble. Also I find that not allowing the lowset bass helps in sound.
My system rarely sees past 20 in volume on mine and i usely keep it around 14 as it is quite a loud system. Anyone who goes to those levels is going to blow stuff.
Oh yeah this may help in some education of stereo stuff: http://www.mtx.com/caraudio/education/index.cfm

Thanks for the site. That looks like a good place to get started. My system isn't extremely loud. I've only got an underrated alpine mono amp with bass computer and 300watt output. I've got the pioneer speakers I mentioned earlier in the doors and just the bandpass box with the 2 10's in the trunk. The box thumps pretty good in the back with the 10's wired in parallel. The bass is tighter but not as deep as the 12's in the bigger box. It's more than enough for me. It sounds very nice even without the 6x9 polk's mounted yet and the deck fully cut out. I don't know exactly what my friend did with the amps, but my guess is that he turned them up. I dont' know the amp specifics but it's a new jl audio 1000 watt amp. Judging by the price, it probably has more bells and whistles than mine. His don't have computer controlled settings like my alpine amp. I like the digital tuning ability. No need for a little screwdriver. Keep in mind, before he touched the amp, my head felt it was going to fall off. You really couldn't turn up the subwoofer level much past halfway without hurting my ears. 1000 watts is a lot of power to try and max out on the amp with high gain. I can't believe he cranked the received up over level 30 with all speakeers amplified. I wonder if he turned off the preouts on the head unit. Maybe it's automatically done, but it wasn't like that on my unit.

 

[haydenm315]

yamahaSHO:
Square, then I would say they were Kicker's. As far as understanding amps you can go to www.howstuffworks.com , or you could ask a question. I went to school and now am employed in the component level of electronics.

Yes... They are kickers solo-baric He most likely blew them by the way they sound similar to flapping parachutes. I know the box wasn't given sufficient time to seal and it did have a minor leak out of the place it should leak due to premature use. As soon as it was wired they wanted to bump it. I advised against it, but it wasn't my car, and why does my one friend care if it's not his car? Such a shame. They have to be atleast a few bills a piece. It reminds me of running my radio control truck with the new transmission. I forgot to use threadlock on some of the differential housing screws. They came undone and ate up my gears. It's not nearly as expensive as this mistake. Who do you think should be blamed? Is it the friend who jacked the amps or the friend who jacked the head unit. Keep in mind the person jacking the amp also jacked the head unit volume.

 

[haydenm315]

FordSHO90:
How did he manage to blow them. I have two kicker L7s and i cant blow them. I have tried. I turn the gains all the way up, have the bass boost on max(12), and my kenwood excelon deck at 33 (35 is max) and dammit they wont blow. Althouth they are so damn loud at that volume that i cant stand it. He must have hooked them up to a ****** deck whcih with its distortion caused them to blow. That is the only way i can think of that can blow those speakers unless he only has the L5s? Shoot me back an answer as i am curious how this happened.

Thanks
Bryan

I just got back from a shindig near frostburg, maryland. It was a blast. I watched drunk people walk across fire. One drunk bastard walked into the middle and started drinking his beer. He stayed in way too long. I'm surprised he didn't catch fire. I'll talk to my friend in the next day or two. I let the poor fella borrow my tempo because my reckless friend somehow talked him into lending him the firebird to go to new jersey. I don't know what kind of amplifier you're using, but my friend has atleast 1,000 watts going to the 2 speakers. They might even be wired in parallel. I'm not sure.

 

[haydenm315]

ATXSHO:
I find it difficult to blow that speaker. I think it's just an unfinished (homemade) box. Go buy some wood glue and glue all the cracks inside the box so no air will seep through and cause that "deployed parachute flapping in the wind" any more. thumb

I thought the broken seal in the box could contribute to the noise, but the box worked perfectly fine when we first went out. There wasn't any flapping. Maybe the condition of the box worsened, but even before the "amp tuning" weeks later, the box was subs sounded fine.

 

[haydenm315]

FordSHO90:
How did he manage to blow them. I have two kicker L7s and i cant blow them. I have tried. I turn the gains all the way up, have the bass boost on max(12), and my kenwood excelon deck at 33 (35 is max) and dammit they wont blow.
Thanks
Bryan

He's got a JL Audio 1000 x 1 amp, and a JL Audio 300 x 4 amp that are both new models. He's also got 4 boston acoustics 6.5 sets with 2 tweeters. The boston acoustics speakers look pretty expensive and they weigh a lot. Still, with a 300 watt x 4 amp, why would you need to turn up the volume near the max on his alpine headunit? Apparantly the starter is broken on his firebird now, futher delaying the arrival of the friend the firebird was loaned to. I'm willing to bet that my friend is going to try and dick the other friend over for the starter bill. If a part breaks somewhere during your trip to new jersey is it the owner of the cars responsibility or the person who's temporarily using the car? How difficult do you think it is to find a 96' firebird starter? My friend fed the other, the ******** train and said he couldn't find one. How typical. He said something about sealing the box but my friend didn't tell me if he said it sounded better.

 

[haydenm315]

My friend sealed the box up for him when he was in newyork, but now the subs don't play at all. How typical? I'll get to the bottom of it sooner or later, but I still need to get my car squared away. It's depressing not having the rear speakers and deck finished, though it sounds better even with just the new pioneer speakers on the doors. I never knew what I was missing!

 

[ATXSHO]

Any update, Hayden?

 

[shadow102]

well first off just from some of the post on your friends you rly need to find some with a decent number of brain cells j/k. neway that 1000x1 jl amp is prolly pushing out more than that in the wattage. check the birth sheet that came with it if it is a new amp it will tell you what jl tested it at (i would assume somewhere in the 1200watt or more range). also you rly need to check if the subs were wired correctly with the amp. if the impedence is not matched correctly that may be the reason the blew also cranking the gain and bass boost on an over rated amp and the rms on the subs is 750 peak is 1500 so if the amp spiked it may have blown them. o well i would send them back to kicker if they are brand new they will prolly have a warrenty on them. BTW for some good car info check out caraudioforum.com or sounddomain.com

 

[haydenm315]

ATXSHO:
Any update, Hayden?

Sorry it's been so long. I've been dealing with school and other issues. I had a decent session with my friend who owns the firebird and the $4,000+ system yesterday. When he brought it to me, the subs were popping with fairly low volume and weren't making good bass. He was quite upset. I was outraged that my friend borrowed the car for a weekend trip to new york, but didn't have the time or courtesy to correctly tune the system. My unreliable friend did make an attempt to seal the box, but was half ass if anything. My friend pushed on the sub and you could hear some air leaking out of a different place. I'm no pro with amplifier tuning and his 2 amps coupled with a seriously complicated head unit are difficult to understand without reading the books. I did notice that the know it all friend had turned ALL of the filters off. What a dumb piece of worthless sh*t!!!! How can you expect a box to play correctly when it's being fed 1000 watts and no frequencies are being filtered out except for what is leaving the head unit. Unfortunately the head unit takes a degree in rocket science to figure out so I did the safety tuning on the subwoofer amp. haha. After turning on the filters and playing around with the levels a bit, I was able to get the car to sound worlds better. It was bumping very loud and not popping for our sub-par box. I'm his newfound hero once again. I'm one of two people that he trusts with his firebird. I think he's gonna give me the job of doing plugs, wires, and optispark when he gets the dough. I could tell he was happy by the smile on his face.

e told me that my know it all friend said the system sounded a lot better without the filters on. I think he's full of bs I only did tuning on the sub amp, as that was his biggest problem. The bass computer was disabled on the subwoofer amp as well. I think I did a good job without reading any of his books. It's definately not popping now on all the songs we threw at it. I initially set the filter level at 24db but that seemed to lessen the output of the box a lot. Setting it to 12db made a substantial difference in thump thump power, and kept the popping at bay. We are both learning that it's not wise to let the one friend or his brother work on our cars. His brother is an installer at circuit city and is very respectable from what I've heard. Unfortunately it's not the same from what I've seen. He installed a fairly complex alarm system but ended up scratching the plastic cover for the gauges pretty damn good all because of the little led that goes on the top of the cluster. He was courteous enough to leave more than half of a dozen interior screws in the door pockets. I'm glad it wasn't my car.

I'm glad my friend's $4,000+ system sounds half decent now. I'm probably going to build him another box when time permits. I'd love to figure out all the bells and whistles of his system, but the current configuration is something to be proud and happy with.