I bought a brand new pioneer deck and cooked it. It played sound good for 3 seconds cut out, had to be turned off and on, did the same thing until eventually it stopped speaker output. The whole time the rca's worked.

Luckily I was able to exchange it for a better pioneer DEH-1500 50wattx4 that can handle 8 ohms, just like my old delco tape deck did.

I used to have the delco, sony 2-way 5 1/4" 8ohm fronts, ultimate 6x9's, Coustic crossover set at 63hz, sony 200watt amp hooked up mono, filter off to a 12" ultimate 300watt sub. Driven by a sony diskman.

Sofar the head unit is my biggest investment, the sound quality is much better, but it doesn't sound as good at high volumes, event though the pioneer goes louder.

do ya think because I exnayed the cross-over and started using the amp filter @ 80hz, Godsmack doesn't sound as good pounded anymore. Bassyier music sounds better but doesn't hit as hard anymore?

one way to find out..... but i'm sick re-wireing my car (the wires are getting very short) and all I do is work and sometimes sleep these days.

Do i need the cross-over anymore?, I thought it only use was providing RCA outputs from the delco to the amp. It does have a slope adjustment, whatever that is.

 

To answer your last question first, the slope adjustment determines how quickly the dB cut from your crossover point occurs. Basicly, it's like this, you set the crossover at say 100 Hz. What happens is that the signal above 100 Hz is cut off, altho not completely, so say 105 Hz will still play, but at say half the volume, so that by 110 Hz there is no signal. So you can set the slope to determine how steep the cutoff is. At max you may get no signal at 105 Hz. But I wouldn't really worry about that right now.

The pioneer head unit is probably rated at 4 ohms. Any head unit can play at 8 ohms if it's rated for less. See, the lower the ohms, the less resistance, the more power the head unit/amp tries to put out. That's why some people notice a difference in volume when they put in aftermarket speakers with their stock head unit. They cut the resistance from 8 ohms to 4 ohms, so the head unit puts out more power. Now your stock unit is designed to put out X watts RMS into 8 ohms. Your pioneer head unit (this is according to crutchfield) is rated at 22 watts rms into 4 ohms. If you're actually using 8 ohm speakers that could explain some of it.

The other thing to think about is headroom. That's how much clean power you can put out. Every amplifier (including the one in your head unit) will start to distort the signal at high volumes, it's just the nature of amplification. So your head unit may say 50 watts max, but you may run out of clean power at 30 watts. So you can drive it all the way to 50, but it'll be badly distorted at that volume.

The simple answer is that you aren't going to get a good sound or SPL out of the equipment you have. There are a few things you can try and do to get it to sound better. First, you don't need the cross over. Sell it to a friend or use it as a paper weight. Now, if you're going to listen to stuff like godsmack, adjust you crossover to ~ 100 Hz. Make sure you switch the amp to LPF, or your crossover won't be doing anything and you'll damage your sub. Second, find out if your amp is bridgeable. Also, you will need to know the RMS power output for the amp and RMS power handling for the sub. I'm guessing both of the numbers you gave are max power. If there is a big discrepency, i.e. the amp puts out 50 watts rms at 4 ohms and the sub needs 85 watts rms, and the amp can be bridged to give you the extra power you need to drive the sub properly. You may find though that you're already at all the limits. If so, the best advice I can give you is start saving for better components.

Good luck.

 

In a few months I plan to buy a better amp and sub, after i add more sound deadning and get rid of a few rattles First I should pick up some 4ohm 4x6's for the front.


I guess I just assumed that the old new deck only handled 4ohms, i didn't get the munual with that one, the new manual says 4-8ohms alowable. The new deck seemed almost twice as heavy as the first. whatever happened to bass and treble ajustments. I got some sort of funky e.q. that i can't seem to get sounding right.

The older sony amp i have is bridged, and LPF says 80hz beside it, it not adjustable to 100hz. Its the same size as the explode 222 watt, and it's grey. With the delco and crossover Godsmack sounded deadly, the drum bass could tingle your hair, now only electronic bass does that.

From what you say it seems like i should use the cross-over, it can be set at 100hz, and slope adjustments sound useful to me.



thanks for the detailed response

later

 

If the crossover on the amp can't be adjusted, that sounds like your problem. In my experience most kick drums in rock music are somewhere around 100 Hz. So yeah, I'd plug crossover back in, turn off the LPF on the amp.