Alright, I've had my stereo in a few weeks, tweaked settings and what not and here's my quandry. The 1000-2 I have on my subs is hearing death loud, and clear. The 300-2 on my Perfects is weak as all hell. It's running 75x2 on my fronts and the rear fill is off the deck at about 22x2 rms. That should be perfect, but I have to fade it 70% to the front because the rear is so much louder and even then I need near 70% volume to get good sound in the front, thus requiring the sub to be turned down (again I reiterate hearing death loud).

Any thoughts? The amp is working, just isn't powerful at all (it's grounded by a 4g and powered by 4g as well, both goood connects). My old fosgate 240x4 running 4 speakers on 2 channels was better. My false floor is fit to the amp too so I couldn't really change it out easily and have it fit and match the other amp.

 

swap that amp's signals and outputs to the sub and see if it's putting out the kind of power it should be.. if so, then it's your front speakers. how efficient are the Kappas? what kind of speakers do you have in the rear deck?

If you have a pair of 93dB @ 1w/1m efficient speakers in the back and some 88dB ones up front, you're going to need a TON more power on the fronts to hear them.

 

The perfects are 90db, the Bostons are probably about the same. I'll try the input swap, I doubt that kind of power will even move those subs, they gobble power like madness. The speakers sound great up front at high power, could the amp just have very little play for volume settings? Maybe it doesn't juice until high volume or somethin. Either way, I can live with it, just rather not if I didn't have to.

Thanks

Vito

 

I believe the Boston's are much more efficient than the Kappas like around 94-95dB. This might be part of the problem. I had a similar problem with some Boston RX67 coax's I had in a previous car. Iis it the entire frequency range that is louder or only part? A little tuning with even your head unit controls might go a long way. Rather than fading, try attenuating the rear speakers some.

Brett

 

Soundstream amps are also notorious for their amps being able to take huge amounts of voltage on their inputs before they'll play to full power. tweak your gain settings on the amp and see if you can get enough gain out of it to do what you want before you start getting a lot of static at low volumes.. it's always been a problem with Soundstream..

it's compounded by the fact you've got some inefficient speakers up front and some REALLY efficient speakers in the back.

 

Thanks Matt, I'm going to Bostons up front in a few weeks as it is and they will be 3ohm, so that'll make a nice difference. I just played with the amp settings and it's noticably better. I love the amps on the whole, damn clear and solid, especially the sub amp.

 

Make sure you keep them well ventilated. thsoe things don't look like a barbeque because Soundstream thought it was neat. the Class A and AB designs produce a LOT of heat, and the lower the impedance you're driving, the more heat you'll have. I have actually seen a guy cooking an egg on an old Class A 10.0 at a car show.

 

They are nicely ventilated. My false floor had covers for the amps as well as everything else so the floor looked straight carpet, but I haven't used the amp covers because it looks sweet without. I found that the ground isn't very good. The self tapping bolt my guy used slipped out of tightness and is barely touching the ground wire. I'm gonna redo that piece today. I'm already wondering about my subs now... With R&B or rap, I need to turn them down a ton to still hear, but with rock, etc, I need to boost it a lot to get punch and that's not cool.

 

that's just a tuning issue then. there's nothing wrong with the system. check your crossover points also.
if you play lots of rock and etc, then you'll need a higher crossover frequency on the subs. crap and R&B you can pick something pretty low and be okay.

It's all about the frequency content of the music.

 

True enough. I checked all the settings and the subs are crossed at about 180 or so. The components aren't crossed at all at the amp which is fine. I never had this sorta trouble with any other system I've set up, but overall it works great, I'm just more picky this time. The input level looks as though it's low and the bass boost on the 1000-2 isn't real high either. I'll work through it for sure.

 

don't screw withthe bass boost.. it adds nasty equalization and makes the car sound boomy. (unless you know how to tweak it just right).

set your crossover point to 60-100 Hz. much more likely to sound good. you don't want anything over 125hz going through the subs, or it'll ruin your staging and make the subs sound mushy because they're trying to play too much midbass.