Canuker

Hi all. I've been a long time lurker but little in the postings. I need a bit of advise as to some speakers and powering.

I currently have a Pioneer AVIC-N2 running in my car for nav and sirius but have finnally just ebayed the last part I needed for my amps and want to move onto a install.

I have some older PPI amps: PC 450(4x50), PC 2100(2x100) and a PC 2150(2x150 or bridged to 600 mono 4 ohms)

I wish to go three way in the front and want to know if I should go component and seperatly power a woofer/midbase(PC 2100 to the seperates and one of the stereo channels of the 450 to the woofer to fill in the front of the car). I was planning on just having a mid for the rear doors powered with the other stereo channel of the 450.

As for the sub I don't know if I should run that stereo or mono. Thats got me all twisted as it seems subs as I recall from ten years ago are far from what they are today. Ideas?

Thanks a bunch for any help.

Edwiin

iTrader: (1)

Ill start with your front 3 way option, so depending on your budget, any passive 3 way set it going to be rare and expensive roughly (400-1200) most of the time. but since you have a nice set of amps thier i would highly recomend useing a active 3 way crossover setup, you can mix and match any woofers, mids, and tweets that way, and save a load of cash in the long run. thats what i do for my three way. i run most(if not all) home audio drivers.
use your pc450 to power tweeters the pc 2100 for mids and the pc2150 for your woofers, then buy a subwoofer amp for your sub. or if you want to give power to a pair of rear speakers use the pc450 to power tweets and mids, and the pc 2100 to power the woofers and use the pc 2150 to power a subwoofer.

you will run stereo rca's into the sub woofer the subwoofer will be playing as mono but have the base from all channels. thier is almost nothing to gain that i know of by running two subwoofers on the left and right of the car and sending them left and right singels seperetly.( infact i may have heard this is a bad thing to do)

if you have any questions about running an active three way and what speakers to chose ask me ill help as much as i know

btw nice amps i wouldnt mind having them

Canuker

I could pick up a classic PPI active crossover on Ebay I'm sure but I wasn't looking to add a 4th amp to the mix. If I did then I would have to up the power and the only matching amp in that series is a PC2350(2x350 or 1400 mono). That route I would start to worry about the drain on the alt and power system.

That said I was planning on adding 2 or 3 caps, a spare battery and a isolater all the same. I was at a shop today interviewing a installer who said my lights would be dimming untill I mentioned the caps, kinda made me worried about them touching my ride as it seemed to me that running a current draw around 120-140 amps you would have to back up the power somewhere....odd I thought. They indicated that one 1 farad cap should be enough?

I'll have to drive around some more and talk to some more people. Its been 10 years since I was into car audio and it seems some things have changed. Are kick panel placements still a good idea? I was thinking this route and that way I can mount the woofer in the door using the stock location assuming it can be deadend enough to make it work.

Edwiin

iTrader: (1)

caps are useless and a bandaid at best, if any one ever recommends them my trust in their audio knowledge drops a lot, if you did run a second batt that alone is more then enough to do what any cap might do.
if you are worried about the power system for normal listening you probably would need to upgrade your alternator. but since it is unlikely you will be running your system at maximum all the time, you are probably safe as you are now. find out how many amps your current alt puts out, and in addition add up all the fuse values of your amps, see what it comes up with to give you a rough idea, but remeber that the fuse are that amps maximum power draw, for normal every day listening it is unlikely that you would have to worry about it, you could fully install your set up with good size wires and everything, and test it out see if you have power issues, the only true fix would be under your hood any ways, you wouldn't have to disturb anything inside the car, except if you deiced to add a battery in the back (as closes to the amps as possible)


kick pods: very popular way to go, but my personal preference is running a tweet on the window posts and 3.5"-2.5" mids below them on the sill. with woofers in the doors.
but the kick method works too.