royta

I'm 31 and recently got my electrical contractor's license. I bought my '97 to serve as my work truck. I have a ton of CD's from my younger years, and I want to play them on a nice clean system.

I play a lot of different music (The Doors, Led Zepellin, Slayer, old Metallica, John Denver, Gustav Holst-The Planets, Beastie Boys, the occasional Ice Cube or NWA, the whole spectrum) , so I prefer SQ over SPL. I enjoy the rear fill from my stock stereo, as it improves the bass sound. But I don't have much to go on as far what a real system would sound like. I really need some help/advice on proper wattages for front, rear, and subs.

What I've decided on so far, is an Alpine 9831, CDT CL-62 (components) in the doors, and CDT CL-5X (coaxials) in the rear panels. I don't want to spend the time to build them myself, nor the money to have it done, on kick panels. Eventually, I'll probably put a single RE8 (is this enough?) in a sealed enclosure under the rear seat. It would be great if I could find a pre-made box with the correct volume for an RE8, but there aren't too many pre-made boxes for 8's. I should probably add that I don't like harsh sounding tweeters. When your blaring a Slayer song, the last thing you want to hear is a shrill, harsh tweeter making your eardrums bleed.

The amp for the front and rear will be installed under the driver's seat, and the amp for the sub would go under the passenger seat, and they are both limited to 16" front to back, and 12" side to side. I was leaning toward an Alpine MRV-F340 (55RMS x 4), but heard that I should drive the CL-62 with more power as it improves the midbass response. I definitely want as much midbass as I can, but if there are other 6.5" components out there that can provide more midbass with less power, I would certainly consider them. However, I lack the room for a higher powered (100 x 4) amp. Not only that, an MRV-F540 (80RMS x 4) would be a lot more money to only turn the rear gain down to a suitable level so I don't over power the rear speakers. So, I was thinking an Alpine MRV-T420 (110RMS x 2) would be great for the front. However, this limits me to the 18 RMS watts from the head unit for the rear speakers. Is this enough, or will the rears be underpowered? Am I going overboard with the 110x2 for the front speakers?

I was thinking an Alpine MRV-T320 (80 RMS into each coil) for the RE8 sub. I also received the suggestion of wiring the coils in series (8 ohm) and running a 2-channel amp in bridged mode OR wire the coils in parallel and run a mono channel amp with the gains turned down. I don't want to have too powerful front speakers as compared to the sub, and vice versa. I also don't want to under power the rear speakers.

Any suggestions on amp power for the front, rear, and sub? Yes, I am choosing a lot of Alpine amps, but I want the cleanest and best sound power possible, within reason.

Thank you very much for the help.

-Roy

pind

This may or may not work for you, but....

About 8 years ago, I built a system for a 91 chevy silverado extended cab.

As follows

Alpine CD head unit
alpine amp, small power, I believe 30w x 4 channels or so, powering the front end, which consisted of 2 alpine 6.5" mid-bass, mounted low in the doors, and two 1" alpine titanium dome tweets mounted high and forward in the doors.

Between the amp and the front speakers, I installed two passive crossovers on the kick panels under the dash, to cut the highs from the mid bass and so on. Both were alpine components.

For the rear,

Alpine 50w x 4 with sub out

4x10 sub box with JBL woofers.

2 6x9 full range alpine speakers in custom enclosures.

Under the seats, both amps, a power distribution block, with direct hookup to battery through the firewall, with a 30 amp inline fuse, cable used was #4.

Power Mouse capacitor, to allow for strong clean bass hits, time after time, with no fluctuation in power supply.

I would have to look through my old work orders to see if I can find model numbers for all this stuff, but...

The end result was a system, that was clean at all power levels. Not a show system, but a real world system that you could enjoy while driving, but it would still pound hard enough to make your ears bleed.

the best part was, other than the 4x10, the entire system took up very little room in the cab. Later on, we installed 2 10" subs in custom boxes under the rear seat area. this improved the low end sounds, while opening up the rear area for cargo etc.

Good luck in building your system.

msing

I run the CDT cl61 with the enhancemnt tweeters with 125w rms/side and just love them . best sound for the money. they do like the power. I molded in some 6x9s for rear fill . and 2 10s in sealed under rear seat .

HOHN

You can do quite a bit better than Alpine, both in absolute quality, and in bang for the buck.

I've been out of the game for a little while, so my comments will have to be generalities...

First, noise reduction. If you want to get ANY kind of SQ out of your truck, you need to deafen the roar of the CTD. Dynamat is just the tip of the iceberg. I'm talking lead sheeting and other things like that. TDR member LSFarm has made his truck VERY quiet though quite a bit of effort.

See here:http://www.turbodieselregister.com/f...ad.php?t=63647

and here:http://www.turbodieselregister.com/f...oise+Reduction

Once you get the noise reduced to sane levels, then you can talk about stereo uprades.

For head units, I've preferred Eclipse and Clarion ProAudio, but I haven't shopped in years. Keep a close eye on S/N ratio and Dynamic range when selecting head units....these are most important, imho. A noisy preamp section means more hiss later. S/N should be over 105dB.

For speakers, I LOVE the sound of MBQuart and JL Audio separates! The Quarts probably have the best midbass. They are also a very smooth tweeter. I haven't heard a set of JLs in a while, but the last set I heard was very smooth and balanced-- highs were clear but not harsh-- very nuanced.

There are other good subs on the market, but JL Audio is as good as I have seen. Just a single JL 10" sub is all it takes for a quadcab.

For power, 100W is plenty for the sub, and 50W is plenty for the separates. More is always nice, but you'll quickly hit the point of diminishing returns, so it's not worth the money.

Keep in mind that a Premium 40W amp will smoke a cheap 200W amp any and all times.

For amps, I've used Rockford, HiFonics, US Amps, and others that used to be big on the IASCA circuit. Now that I'm a little wiser, I'd just use an Infinity Reference and be done with it.

The passive crossovers included with high-end components are pretty good, and usually matched to the drivers. A lot of times they end up sounding worse if you try to "improve" them with an active crossover matrix.

I've built systems between $1500 and $12K. But I could do a REALLY nice system now for a lot less.

The key is matching things as a SYSTEM, not just a collection of high-end gear.

Justin

royta

So, you're saying I do need the 110w RMS to each front CDT CL62? It's not overkill? I just want a clean sounding system, with the option of turning it up loud.

You think the 18w RMS from the HU is enough for each rear CDT CL-5X?

msing

I would run them with that kind of power. For the cl-5x try the HU alone it mite be fine if not you can always find room for a small 50w amp somewere to run them.Rear fill is just that fill. front stage is were you want it to happen.