strange audio "surging" from front speakers...
 

Hey everyone, well, I have had this AIWA head unit installed in my car for a bit of time now, and ive noticed a funny problem. It seems that the front speakers lose a lot of power if the door subs kick in, like in songs with a lot of bass, the front speakers just kinda die and get really quiet. The rear speakers are fine, and are actually a bit too loud for proper balance I think. So, any ideas what might be causing this? I have wired in the AIWA so that it uses the two front l/r powered output and have this plugged into the input on the stock becker amps, basically where the old radio tuner plugged into the amps, this arrangement is what becker auto sound does to upgrade the head unit, and I don't know if perhaps its just an inherent problem. If it means anything, the l/r channels on my becker 1432 shared a common ground, which I found quite surprising... because it would not be conducive to proper audio sound, but after hours of debating if this was the correct setup, I was left with no alternative, because the becker truly only has a 3 pin input for sound... and as far as I can tell that is for a l/common ground/right...

Your problem can be solved by using and adjustable high to low converter ( PAC works great) I think I have outlined this to you before. This should solve your problem if you haven't damaged the amplifiers.

Scott@lajollaaudio

now... I already have line outs on my head unit....I had connected the amplfied outs because everyone told me that the line outs don't provide enough power to drive the amps?? I didn't understand... but I just followed... would the converter be any different than just using line outs?

Yes it is a lot different. The adjustable high to low converter will give you a much higher signal than your line outputs so it will drive the inputs of the becker amps properly. I do it once a week, it works.

sweet... ill go to rat shack tomorrow and pick one up... thanks a bunch!

yea.... I got the high low converter and installed it today... big mistake. There was almost no sound coming out of the speakers. I played with the adjustements to no avail. To get any decent sound out of the speakers, I had to crank my head unit all the way up and then there would about medium volume with no bass at all. It sucked big time, so I took it out and wasted a good couple of hours...

I have an older alpine head unit, which is supposedly 25wx4 = 100 watts. Probably not really in reqal power though.

It is wired directly to the speakers, rears are ont he rear channel with the door subs. front dash speakers with added tweeters are on the front channel.

No problems here with sound at all. in fact sounds pretty good for what it is.

Sooner than later I'll be putting in an aftermarket ampt o drive the interior speakers, leaving the radio completely out. at the same time I'll be adding an EQ to finely tune my sound.

Sounds to me like you should just rewire the speakers directly into the headunit bypassing the stock amps.

I'm running 8 speakers or so off the alpine headunit, no ill effects so far, and if it blows its no biggie, I was planning on replacing it anyway.

Alon

nah... ill just leave it the way it is for now... I can't run the door speakers off of the amp as they are 2 ohms... that would definetaly blow out the head unit, and the sound from the stocks amps is probably better anyway... what I really want to do is power the 4 regular speakers from the head unit, and the 2 door subs with the factory amp, to do this I will be purchasing a cheapo booster amp to give the line outs from my aiwa enough "umph" to power the factory amp. I will then intercept the 4 speakers at the fader, and have a pretty decent setup, leaving space for the 10inch polk sub thats been sitting in my drawer for almost 5 months now....

hehe yeah without my 10" Sub it just wouldn't sound as good.

:)

I believe I am currently running my alpine headunit at 2 ohms, maybe less, with the rears, which are mid + 2 tweeters per side, the door subs, and 4 speakers int he dash, thats more like 12 speakers if you think about it.... :) hehe

Like I said I have not had any ill effects from this setup yet.

But I will add a 4 channel amp for the interior speakers, and am probably chaging out the head unit for the pioneer premier 840, has the cool slide down face, plays mp3 discs, and who needs a cd changer if you have 180 songs n one disc... :) hehe

Alon

yea... thats what I said.... thats the reason I bought my AIWA mp3 player, that and because it was incredibly inexpensive and had the flip open face... hehehe.... to bad it looks like a gaudy circus show...

The reason the high to low adapter didn't work is because you didn't use the right one. PAC works every time done it many times and never had a problem. The radio will run the speakers @ 2 ohms and work fine as I have done that many times also and it works quite well. If you use a pioneer unit with the mosfets it will eat up the 2 ohm speakers ( works great). Sorry the adapter didn't work but I told you which one to get.

Scott@lajollaaudio

Hey. Yea, its too bad the thing didn't work, but thanks for the advice anyway. I had contacted horst at beckers, and he informed me that the stock 1432 system is actually designed to work with an amplified input, and that the "conversions" becker's does involves high level connections to the amp. A quick question though Scott, what type of power do the heads you normally install put out? Mine is rating at 50 watts PEAK, so like 23 watts RMS... its not a whole lot, and obviosly the sound quality isn't the best, and I was just thinking perhaps the unit just doesn't put out enough power to effectively use the high-low converter...

I mainly use alpine but all the different radios I have used work fine this way. They are the same power rating as yours it is probably that the pac has more range of adjustment than the one you got.

Scott