Hi, just bought new Alpine Type R 5 1/4" Components and have a rockford 350s powering them.. (approx 90W RMS per side) and when I crank it up good and loud they start to distort really bad. I have eliminated all obvious possiblilities for the problem and have determined my amp is clipping(I think :confused: ) Is 90W enough?? Amp is crossed over at approx 120Hz. It's not bass that is making them distort. Just loud vocals. The distorting sound like a really loud cracking coming from the woofer. It's not my signal going in either and my gain is around half.

That is plenty or power. Not too much for the speakers, but possibly too much power for the crossover to handle. Try turning the gain down more, or possibly getting a buds smaller amp to see what it sounds like. Usually someone would just use a 30-50 watt amp on comps like that.

turn your gain down(mids are bottoming out),that is a high volt pioneer and a kicker kq9,eh jay??either that or you've broken a tinsel lead.

[ January 15, 2004, 09:33 AM: Message edited by: Loud Brown Kicker Colt ]

Are they installed on MDF baffles?
Did you seal your doors with Dynamat (or a like material?

I don't wanna turn my gain down, I want them LOUD. I've pretty much tried everything, different speakers, different amp, bypassing my EQ and line driver. I don't have much voltage going to my amp. My deck is 2V and I've got an audiocontrol Line driver. the 2V output light on the line driver will just barely be on and I can get those speakers to distort. They aren't bottoming out either, I have almost no bass going thru them (they are hardly moving). The speakers are solidly mounted in the door panels but I did not use any dynamat. The cracking is very loud and defintly coming from the woofer.

Interesting point about the crossover though. I wonder if I replaced the cap in the crossover with a higher voltage one if that would solve the problem.

Mount them on an MDF baffle and isolate the front and back wave of the speaker with Dynamat and you will get the results that you are after. Also, check your speaker connections as it sounds like they are grounding out to the car's body. These sound like installation related problems that no amount of added equipment will solve.

[ January 15, 2004, 04:41 PM: Message edited by: KillerGrand ]

You will get them LOUD if you turn down the gain, and use the volume control instead of gain to set the level of loudness. How high does your volume have to be before the speakers start sounding like crap? Like, if it maxes at 40, does it start to sound like trash at 20? 25? 35?

Tell you what. Set the gain to minimum, set the volume at 90% of max -- whatever it is. Play the loud music you like to listen to and slowly turn the gain up on the amp until it starts spitting distortion again. Then notch the gain back 1/16th. Don't touch the gain pot ever again. If the amp or deck has bass boost, set it to 0, same with bass and treble adjustment on the deck BEFORE you do the adjustment.

If the amp is distorting, get a more powerful amp, rather than a lesser one. That way, you can set gains lower and have the dynamic range available to drive clean power to the speakers in effort to extend the speakers' life.

It's actually interesting that you tried a different amp. Was it any bit more powerful than the RF you are using? If you did try more powerful amps, I'd question the install. Maybe even the LD...after all it is the noisemaking brand we all know. [img]tongue.gif[/img]

[ January 16, 2004, 07:46 PM: Message edited by: Chadxton ]