17gtblackintx

Anyone have a loc for a aftermarket amp in their mustang that can give me advice on which one to use? Amp is gonna be between 300-600 watts depending if I go with one 10 or two. Have jl audio subs and have used audio control lc2i in my Acura but had nothing but trouble with that one. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thx in advance

Kotenukimen

My best advice would be to use the best quality wire you can. 100% copper nothing else. This way you have a better flow of current and better flow means less heat less chance of your setup to catch fire and also it means less power drawn from your battery. A capacitor is also a good bet for large setups as it delivers an equal amount of current. Lastly my past experiences told me that it never pays off to go cheap with car audio, from the wire to the speakers.

Joeywhat

There is absolutely zero need for "high quality wire". Just use an appropriate gauge for the amount of power you are running. Running too small a wire will lead to heat.

There is no difference between the super special ultra 110% copper wire and the "regular" stuff. It sounds the same, it transfer the signal exactly the same. Save your money and buy a better amp or sub or whatever else. You can use a coat hanger if you want, if it's large enough to carry the power being supplied it'll sound just the same as anything else.

Source: went to school for audio recording.

I don't have any input on LOC's, but also check out signal processors. Gets about the same thing done, but generally sounds better and is more versatile. Also, more expensive. Something to consider.

Jazzman442

I am an engineer and been doing High end Audio and Pro Audio for more than I would like to say. Joey's so right..

Cavero

What factory radio do you have? Does it have factory subs?

I used a JL Audio Cleansweep as a LOC / sound processor in my DD Focus, feeding into a 4 channel amp. Worked great, really clean outputs. It takes in speaker-level inputs from the back of your stock head unit, runs each of those 4 channels through a 30-band equalizer and flattens the signal out before outputting them as your standard RCAs. You can control when it goes into standby either by setting it to signal sensing or remote turn on. I tapped into my antenna's power line for the remote turn on signal (which I think you could do the same for the S550's).





The cleansweep is supposed to flatten out a signal to correct for the factory head unit's built in EQ. The idea JL Audio sells is that factory speakers are usually made out of cheaper materials, and most manufacturers will calibrate the EQ in the factory head unit to make cheap speakers sound better, possibly even to protect them too. Maybe the cheap paper speakers are peaky around 2000Hz, so they dial that back. Maybe they're flat at 800, so they boost it. And maybe they can't handle bass at high volumes so the EQ rolls the bass off as you crank it. Works for a factory setup, but once you swap those out for aftermarket amps and nice speakers that respond differently, suddenly your factory stereo's EQ sounds like crap.

In practice with my Focus, it was somewhat true when I added my amp and speakers, although I can't say it sounded horrible. But it didn't sound right. It was was too high around 800 Hz, and very thin in the low end. I calibrated the clean sweep and it was much better, much fuller -- although it sounded a little flat (because that's exactly what the Cleansweep was doing - flattening it out). You can tweak that though -- I ripped the calibration CD to my computer, tweaked it, burned that to a new CD and calibrated the unit to that. Much better.

Anyway, the reason why I'm going on and on about it is my cleansweep's been sitting in my basement since I sold the Focus, so I'd rather sell it and see someone else use it. JL Audio replaced it with the FiX 86, but its basically just a newer version of the same thing with a few more features (and 2 extra channels). I'd definitely sell mine a lot cheaper than the FiX 86.