sound system?

Yup, 6x9's for kids, get componants and a 12" sub, 10" if you cant afford the bigger one.

Decent Amp, Ebay will kit you out for next to nothing, to drive the sub buy one of them cheap powerfull amps, like 70 quid for 600watts, that will drive the sub fine, make sure it has a low pass filter, Make sure the CD HU is mp3 compatible, and use the amp built in to power the componants for now, should be more than enough.

Make sure he spends a good wedge on cables, thats the most important part imo, good quality cables, specially the AMP +

Ronny

You miss-understand me, we dont know how to match sub's to amps (I dont know what the different class's mean but I think it has somthing to do with the power supply of an amp?) or understand what cross overs do or power caps. It's not that he can't afford a 12" sub, he wants punchy bass, not deep reverberateing low end like 15" and to a certain extent 12" provide.

Cables, unless they're terrible, make f*ck all difference on a Hifi. How on earth can they make a difference in a car?

use unshielded cheap cables and find out :) i did!

In article , snipped-for-privacy@none.com spouted forth into uk.rec.cars.modifications...

I know of people who use solid cable 2 core household electrical cable for running speakers in a car.

It sounds fine in a car. A stationary engine off car is not an accoustic environment. A car with it's engine running is even worse. As long as you follow the basics of running audio and power leads away from each other it should be fine..

Things like Monster cables are a con for the wannabee audiophile who doesn't know enough yet, and the max power generation.

THeres a really nice one for sale somewhere...as stolen two months ago out of my saxo :o)

cheered me up no end that.

Step 1 - Buy as powerful an amp as you can afford. Step 2 - Buy as powerful a sub as you can afford.

The tricky bit is learning to use the volume control. Just because it spins all the way around does not mean you should turn it all the way around.

Nothing you really need to worry about.

As above. You won't need a capacitor or external crossover, all you basically need is an amp with a built in sub function.

Maybe a pair of tens would be better then (in which case you'd need to make sure the amp could drive two subs).

That was the advice of Quad Acoustic, who should know how to wire speakers to an amp, years ago. Simply use good quality large diameter cable and make sure that the connections are clean at each end. You can piss about with fancy cables as much as you like, but the real sound killer is oxidised contacts.

The only reason I can see for buying a specialist cable is that some suppliers sell flat cable which is useful for leading under carpets or headlining.

TBH I think any kid who fits a sub-bass unit in a car should have his head stuck in a galvanised bucket which is then hit with a hammer until his ears bleed. Because I'm pissed off hearing doom, doom, doom, doom, frpom passing Saxos. Besides most of them listen to complete repetetive s**te. That's not music, it's industrial noise.

Hardened fans of Industrial-Noise, like myself, find your comparisons to 500 BEST MAX ANTHEMS EVER (as heard in a Saxo near you) highly offensive. ;o)

Im not talking about sound cables so much, more the fact you need good, thick amp cables, and proper earthing points,

yep, thats why we like it, its not music, its physical motion, we are the ecstacy generation after all...

Hey, stop dissin' industrial noise. That s**te coming out of saxos aint industrial noise, just a dull boomy bassline.

I bought an amp from maplins a couple of months back, made by shark, it was half price down to £50. Bargain, handles white zombie, ministry, anything you throw at it. Sure had the right effect on the woman who called the cops on me when I parked outside her house in London. bought a sub there too, everything runs beautifully off the one amp. Get an amp that has a sub output (lowpass filter) as well as a full-range or highpass filter for the rest. Can't afford a head unit as yet, so me discman's running through it. Get your cables there too, the thickest 2 core (non audio snake oil) cables you can get your hands on for the speakers and something even thicker for the amp power.

You're dealing with pretty high currents at low voltage with a powerful car amp, so the power cable needs to be low resistance for minimum loss - ie chunky. The power (mains) cable in a similar power domestic setup carries small currents due to the much higher voltage.

Car speakers may also be a lower nominal impedance than domestic, so again require a lower resistance cable, like for like.

A car is a pretty hostile place interference wise, so any interconnects should be well screened - or preferably balanced - not necessary in the average domestic installation.

in news: snipped-for-privacy@uni-berlin.de, "Doki" slurred :

The currents involved in car HiFi are higher. A typical HiFi speaker will have a nominal impedance of about 8ohms. A typical car sub will have an impedance of 2-4 ohms. To get the same power from a 2ohm speaker requires about twice the current required for an 8ohm one, and requires a correspondingly larger cable cross-section.

The power supply cable also has to fairly beefy - the amp can be drawing anything up to a hundred amps peak, so a cable resistance of more than a few milli-ohms would result both in the cable heating up and the amp being voltage deprived, giving a crappy sound.

Finally, a car can be electrically noisy - especially in petrol engined cars, where the whole ignition system is pretty much designed to produce interference. Depends on the car, but some do need you to use shielded cable for the head-unit to amp run.

Quad (The Acoustical Manufacturing Company) actually recommended *flex* of a suitable current carrying capaicity, ie resistance. IIRC, it was that the loop resistance of the cable should not exceed 5% of the nominal impedance of the speaker. So for an 8 ohm speaker, this would be some 0.4 of an ohm. For normal domestic cable runs, 1mm cable will easily beat this. However, going to something thicker will do no harm.

At the sort of frequencies and impedance that speakers operate, it makes no difference whether the cable is flex or solid core. But flex is rather more convenient. And specialist 'flat' speaker cables might be easier to route and conceal in the home.

In a car, the speakers are always 4 ohms or less. So the same formula will apply, but cables will therefore be about twice the size for the same resistance. However, cable runs will probably be shorter in a car, so that can be taken into account.