custm2500

iTrader: (10)

I always had loud systems when I was 16 till 22 or so. Then kids and responsibilities take you budget away for toys.

I decided it was time to turn up the volume again.
I had the 10" Directed that pounds hard for a little guy so i bought a JL JX1000/1D their mid grade amp and put it under in the area that the factory sub went. I also bough their JX400/4D to help out with the highs that were replaced with a decent set of 6 1/2s. I was told by a few people that Alpine pre-out as good as it gets so I went with a unit that doesn't play CDs.


The next step is going to be upgrade the bass. I really wanted to go with a slash amp but kinda dumb to have a 600/1 running a little 10" and not have the budget to upgrade the highs. I will probably end up with a 600/1 and either an alpine type R 15" or may spring for a W-7 13.5". I prefer my system to be louder in your car sitting next to me, then your own system but again being an adult budget sometimes has to compromise ultimate goals.

Suburbazine

Looks like you're getting all squared away. My only suggestion would be to use a Pioneer DEH-80PRS as it has vastly better signal processing (it's actually second only to the outrageous $1100 DEX-99PRS) than any of the Alpine units and at least equal pre outs in terms of line voltage and sound quality.

I don't even use the built in amplifier in mine, I have a networked speaker array in my truck but I'm still running in F/R/S mode instead of H/M/L.

FFDP

iTrader: (2)

Carpet cleaner be lacking too.

custm2500

iTrader: (10)

Forgive me ignorance but what is F/R/S vs. H/M/L?

Not sure why but i have to set all pf my gains very high even with the 4 v pre outs. It sounds good and is very loud but i have most of the gains above 3/4 and have the settings turned up on the radio too.

I am going to stop in to the shop i bought the equipment from and see if they can explain why I have to have them so high. The whole point of wanting the 4v pre outs is to allow my gain levels to be set lowern

custm2500

iTrader: (10)

Front
Rear
Sub

High
Mid
Low?

custm2500

iTrader: (10)

I haul greasy truck parts. Thankfully not too often any more but still when i have too. The greas stained carpet is a rug so it can be pulled out if hauling clean stuff.

Suburbazine

Yeah, networked mode lets you run multiple speaker groups as individual frequencies, I run Mid/High pairs in my doors and my single sub is my Low. The 80PRS has a physical switch on the bottom to set the DSP from normal to Networked mode.

The 80PRS has 5v pre outs, I run my Class A amps at less than 1/2 turn and I still exceed the speaker's capacity at max volume. (My speaker RMS is 60w and the amp is 80w). The pre-out voltage curve is pretty gentle, 4v over 55 steps, but the last 5 steps go up 1v more to 5v. The 80PRS also has a darn good auto-tune program, the calculated frequency curves and speaker distances are usually spot on (the DSP uses time alignment to offset each channel for positional audio). My sub is rear-firing and it actually calculated the sound distance from the sub to my rear door, to my head in the front seat within 2 inches.

The only complaint I might have with the DEH-80PRS is the VERY convoluted programming routine. It only has to be done once, but Pioneer stuffed a dozen separate programming layers (from 4 different buttons) and it takes studying the instructions carefully to get the initial setup completed. That said, you should never need to repeat it. The radio retains all the difficult settings in safe memory so even if you leave the battery disconnected for weeks it powers back up like it was before, albeit the clock and surface options (display type, etc) need fixing.

And if you're really serious about getting your system properly calibrated:

http://www.wccaraudio.com/smd-distor...ctor-dd-1.html

The CC-1 isn't necessary with modern DSP head units since all the crossovers are managed digitally. But it's a great idea if you're going old-school and using analog crossovers.