I finally bought another a600.2 and should get it in a few days, I'm so stoked.
I'm going to be running a pair of them, one for the left (f/r) speakers and one for the right (f/r). It is going to sound awesome! Now I can use fader to adjust front and rear loudness to make the soundstage just right, and the channel seperation will be amazing. I even have a 5.1 SRS half din parametric eq I will be trying to see how much ambience it can add. It has outputs for front and rear l/r and center and subwoofer. (I'll have to figure out something to run the center speaker) Its cheap but may sound great if it doesn't make too much hiss or add any engine noise.
Now my only issue is which amp to use for the subs... I have to decide between the earthquake phd2 (small yet powerful and efficient) and the ppi pro mos 50 that is similar to the a600.2 amps in size and power output. (bigger and heavier than the phd2 and less efficient, but will complete an all ppi amp system)
Can't wait until the amp gets here, I'm so excited. Sorry, just had to tell everyone
I'm going to be running a pair of them, one for the left (f/r) speakers and one for the right (f/r). It is going to sound awesome! Now I can use fader to adjust front and rear loudness to make the soundstage just right, and the channel seperation will be amazing. I even have a 5.1 SRS half din parametric eq I will be trying to see how much ambience it can add. It has outputs for front and rear l/r and center and subwoofer. (I'll have to figure out something to run the center speaker) Its cheap but may sound great if it doesn't make too much hiss or add any engine noise.Now my only issue is which amp to use for the subs... I have to decide between the earthquake phd2 (small yet powerful and efficient) and the ppi pro mos 50 that is similar to the a600.2 amps in size and power output. (bigger and heavier than the phd2 and less efficient, but will complete an all ppi amp system)
Can't wait until the amp gets here, I'm so excited. Sorry, just had to tell everyone
junglejuice said:
Well, I did this setup in a 79 280zx once, and all I did was use the + leads of a two channel JVC (real victor japan model) amp to create a "phantom" center channel. The car already had one speaker in the center stock. I had variable power resistor to adjust the volume of the center channel, it actually sounded pretty cool. The SRS eq I have now also has a center level control too, its supposed to be a "surround" effect. Who knows, if it sucks I just run normal 4 channel. Both a600.2's are white, too bad my car is so small and they are going under the seats.
Clipped said:
Haha, but it is just SO powerful, and the crossover is excellent. When I use the ppi for subs, I have to use the crossover in the deck. Maybe the SRS eq will work some magic. Who knows?
Well I got my newest amp installed today and it sounds great. I just don't have the sub amp installed because I had to run its wires to the trunk and didn't have time to get it in. I'm running both amps at 40hz highpass to take it easy on them until I get the sub amp installed. I've got someone who is supposed to buy my 12's in a few days so I will buy a set of shallow subs then. I'm going to wait until the shallow subs come to reinstall the sub amp. I tried connecting the srs eq:
-Used a center speaker sitting on the dash to experiment
-I liked the center frequencies on the eq and it made everything seem more "alive" and crisp when the srs was on, also made some crazy echo effects with songs that already had synthesized echo
-the eq worked whether the srs effect was on or off
-no high pass for the front and rear outputs, and my amps don't have crossovers, but the eq did have a low pass for the sub output
-had a slight whine in every speaker no matter how I played with grounds. Seems like there is a ground loop between the eq input stage and its audio ic's. Maybe I should have checked to see if the eq input grounds were the same as the outputs. The deck's shield grounds are all ok. The eq was mounted in the same metal iso frame directly connected to the deck and obviously all power wires were shared.
Without the eq there was absolutely no whine, like before, so I left it out of the circuit for now. I may mess with it later but it sounds great without it.
-Used a center speaker sitting on the dash to experiment
-I liked the center frequencies on the eq and it made everything seem more "alive" and crisp when the srs was on, also made some crazy echo effects with songs that already had synthesized echo
-the eq worked whether the srs effect was on or off
-no high pass for the front and rear outputs
, and my amps don't have crossovers, but the eq did have a low pass for the sub output -had a slight whine in every speaker no matter how I played with grounds. Seems like there is a ground loop between the eq input stage and its audio ic's. Maybe I should have checked to see if the eq input grounds were the same as the outputs. The deck's shield grounds are all ok. The eq was mounted in the same metal iso frame directly connected to the deck and obviously all power wires were shared.
Without the eq there was absolutely no whine, like before, so I left it out of the circuit for now. I may mess with it later but it sounds great without it.
That is usually the problem with the cheap processors and crossovers. I would try a class D sub amp if you could, though I have limited experience with them. The power savings are nice for my application....thought the good old AB always seems to work nice.
You can play with some filters and try to clean it up, sometimes you can get them clean. You may have to do each wire into it but the ground, the remote wire can also carry noise even though the HU does not have any.
You can play with some filters and try to clean it up, sometimes you can get them clean. You may have to do each wire into it but the ground, the remote wire can also carry noise even though the HU does not have any.
I checked with a meter and apparently the eq's jack shield leads are all floating ground type. None of them are grounded to the chassis or the power ground.(should be less prone to noise ) I'll try it again with a set of double ended male rca connectors, since I used a 3 ft cable to connect the deck rca output to the eq. Maybe that short distance was picking up a voltage difference, but I doubt it since the chassis of both the deck and eq are bolted into the same steel iso frame. I took a drive to go visit friends and it sounded great. Now I just need to pull out the temporary pioneers install my other polk component mids into the back deck. I won't be using the tweeters though, saving them in case I burn the fronts.
) I'll try it again with a set of double ended male rca connectors, since I used a 3 ft cable to connect the deck rca output to the eq. Maybe that short distance was picking up a voltage difference, but I doubt it since the chassis of both the deck and eq are bolted into the same steel iso frame. I took a drive to go visit friends and it sounded great. Now I just need to pull out the temporary pioneers install my other polk component mids into the back deck. I won't be using the tweeters though, saving them in case I burn the fronts.You must have bought the same 5.1 processor/EQ with SRS Circle Surround that I did. I also had an electrical noise problem that was caused by mounting it using the supplied L brackets. I tried soft mounting it with velcro to keep the case from being grounded and the noise went away.
I also noticed that all 5 channels are driven full range so the switch underneath is just a 60/90/120 LPF switch for the sub output. It looks like proper bass management is restored if a complimentary HPF is used on the other five channels.
Coming from quite a bit of home theatre experience, having something like SRS Circle Surround to liven up my dull-sounding XM sat radio was worth $40 to me, But, if the center channel isn't voice matched to the mains, matrixed surround sound just sounds terrible. Now that everything is installed, the real work begins.
I've already spent days tweaking my Alpine SBS-05DC to improve bass response but it still can't match the other four channels in bass output. Even a full octave below the HPF cutoff, bass output is still easily apparent from the other four channels but not at all from the compact DIN-sized Alpine, and that will adversely affect the surround effect.
The SRS Circle Surround II spec I found at http://www.srslabs.com/consumers/technologies.asp explained that the center channel bass is managed independently with frequencies below 200hz sent to the L+R channels and the subwoofer as needed, which would solve this issue but it looks like the NJM2199 IC in the unit is a first-gen Circle Surround processor. Independent center channel bass management is new in CS II. It seems that most of CS II is identical to CS I though.
I also noticed that all 5 channels are driven full range so the switch underneath is just a 60/90/120 LPF switch for the sub output. It looks like proper bass management is restored if a complimentary HPF is used on the other five channels.
Coming from quite a bit of home theatre experience, having something like SRS Circle Surround to liven up my dull-sounding XM sat radio was worth $40 to me, But, if the center channel isn't voice matched to the mains, matrixed surround sound just sounds terrible. Now that everything is installed, the real work begins.
I've already spent days tweaking my Alpine SBS-05DC to improve bass response but it still can't match the other four channels in bass output. Even a full octave below the HPF cutoff, bass output is still easily apparent from the other four channels but not at all from the compact DIN-sized Alpine, and that will adversely affect the surround effect.
The SRS Circle Surround II spec I found at http://www.srslabs.com/consumers/technologies.asp explained that the center channel bass is managed independently with frequencies below 200hz sent to the L+R channels and the subwoofer as needed, which would solve this issue but it looks like the NJM2199 IC in the unit is a first-gen Circle Surround processor. Independent center channel bass management is new in CS II. It seems that most of CS II is identical to CS I though.
I still haven't had the chance to play with it again. It would be a little difficult to isolate the chassis on mine since it iso mounts into the same factory bracket the radio does. Maybe I could cut the trace on the board that grounds it to the case internally. Still.. I'll probably just put it back up for sale because of the lack of hp filters. I could always just run the front output on my deck high passed into the processor, and then use the sub output of the deck to directly drive the sub amp. This way you keep sub control on the deck. But that would eliminate being able to use the parametric bass eq on the processor.... argghhh
Without an active high-pass filter on the amp, I'd resort to passive filters at the speaker level or preferably RCA in-line filters so I could keep the sub connected to the processor's sub output. That way the bass is properly mixed with the other five discrete channels.
The SRS effect with XM radio is an improvement IMO. It helps hide the compression artifacts and flat dynamic range to some extent.
The SRS effect with XM radio is an improvement IMO. It helps hide the compression artifacts and flat dynamic range to some extent.
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