I'm putting a system in my 2000 SE.

- MTX Thunder 801D Amp
- 1 12" Audiobahn Alum12Q

Need:

- Advice on a good capacitor and its size
- Whether I should use a bandpass box or a sealed box and what size
- Where I can pick up a signal to use for my RCA converter to give a
good clean signal to the amp. (I am keeping the stock HU)

PLEASE HELP!!

Thanks Guys.

 

Just tap into one of your signal wires. Usually left and right channels. People that I've known to have done this ran them from their rear channels.

For the capacitor good rule is to use a 0.5 farad cap for anything up to 500 watts RMS, from then on it is recommended that you use 1 farad for every kilowatt of power. Since your amp will push over 500 watts I would recommend a 1 farad cap. As far from which company, any of the better known companies should be ok.

As far as the box. It depends on what sound your after, as the different enclosures will provide different sound. A sealed box is more accurate(can distinguish more of the nuances, and silent parts) and can play lower frequencies than a typical bandpass box. A bandpass box is more efficient, which means that it can get a lot louder than a sealed enclosure within a narrow band with the same amount of power(gets kind of hard to distinguish nuances in sound as the start of a music passage and the end of another tend to blend together). For sound quality the sealed box would be better. If you want to just slam, a bandpass would be more for you. There is a lot more to this, but this is the simple version. I myself prefer the sealed box sound. I am currently running one Solobaric S12L7 powered by a Kicker KX600.1 that puts out 740 watts RMS. No cap though(I might get one in the future).

 

Yeah the amp is a mono block so should I take the left or the right channel? Does it matter? I'm using the Audiolink Powerlink II to convert. Do you have any better suggestions?

The amp is going to be running 800watts RMS so would a 1 farad cap be good enough? My friend was saying that its safer to go higher because its easier on the eletronic systems in the car. Also, what are the better known companies for caps? I really haven't heard of many.

I'm still torn over the box. I'm running a pretty good quality subwoofer that has enough power to bump. I value accuracy and quality heavily but I don't want to sacrifice too much of the boom coming from the sub. What would you recommend based on the equipment that I'm using??

 

Yeah the amp is a mono block so should I take the left or the right channel? Does it matter? I'm using the Audiolink Powerlink II to convert. Do you have any better suggestions?

The amp is going to be running 800watts RMS so would a 1 farad cap be good enough? My friend was saying that its safer to go higher because its easier on the eletronic systems in the car. Also, what are the better known companies for caps? I really haven't heard of many.

I'm still torn over the box. I'm running a pretty good quality subwoofer that has enough power to bump. I value accuracy and quality heavily but I don't want to sacrifice too much of the boom coming from the sub. What would you recommend based on the equipment that I'm using??

 

sealed box over bandpass anyday. much easier to sound good.

 

With some amps that are monoblock they still require the inputs from both channels. They then make a monoural signal from both of the inputs. My monoblock Kicker amps ouput gets cut in half if one of my channles is disconnected(it has connections for both left and right channels). This also happens when I play around with the balance control. Your MTX may be different though, but if it has inputs for both then I would hook up both channels. I can understand why they do this. On some recordings, especially older ones, some sounds are mostly heard from one channel, and some from only one channel. One example are some of the Beatle's songs. Now if you had the bass coming out of mainly one channel, your bass would be drastically lacking compared to the rest of the music or gone if you chose the right channel and most of the bass is coming out of the left channel.

You will be fine with a 1 farad capacitor as I already have explained in my first post.

I've had vented encloures, bandpass enclosures, freeair enclosures(using the trunk as the box, but isolating the front of the speaker from the back), but my favorite is a sealed enclosure. You can get a good amount of boom from a sealed enclosure, specially if your amp is putting out 800 watts. Just make sure that the box you build, or have made is the correct size for you sub, and even then there is sometimes some room to tune the box for the type of bass that you want by either increasin the box size or decreasing it(you will have to check your speaker's owners manual for this info). My system puts out some serious bass when I turn the settings up(this is of course subjective, but all of my buddies think the same). I can get my sideview mirrors shaking pretty hard. I mainly have my bass pretty leveled out though. I do not want my bass drowning out the rest of the system, I prefer loud and clear, not just loud.

I would highly recommend for you to put some Dynamat or other sound deadening material through out your entire trunk, even the trunk lid. Nothing worse than spending money for good components and then having it sound like trash due to all of the rattling.

Some companies for the capacitors that come to mind are Lightning Audio, Rockford Fosgate, Stinger, Phoenix Gold, and Monster Cable. There are others, but these are the ones that come to mind.

 

1 farad is all u need. Bandpass will make the spl real high. If you have a small sub bandpass will work but bandpass can sound sloppy. I like the sound of sealed. You want good clean sound? Junk the stock head. Don't do line converters......thats kinda ghetto

 

A good quality LOC will sound as good as a new headunit. The best aftermarket head units out there only have 8 volts RMS output. But a speaker level output to LOC is significantly higher, and lower impedance as well. Both or those are good things. Cheap LOC's will use a resister to drop the voltage.