wet sounds pro 60s and kmt60s on tower are distorted

[bryce2320]

I just added a pair of 07 kmt60 kicker speakers to the tower and already had a pair of pro 60s up there. I have a kicker 450.4 amp running the two kicker pods bridged and running 3/4 the way up. I got the high pass on and bass down. The wet sounds are hooked up to the kicker 350.2 amp. It sounds like the speakers may be clipping when the system is turned up even if it isn't very loud. I wonder if a wire got stretched or the coating tore off while pulling them through the tower. I thought both speakers are supposed to be good speakers. I heard a boat with Polk mm component speakers and it sounded way better than mine. I'm thinking about running all new wire through tower and boat to the amp. It was really hard to get 4 wires through the fiberglass between boat and tower and may have stretched them yanking them??? Its on an 04 21i with stock tige tower. I can't get up there to drill the hole bigger because the interior piece won't come off because the screws are stripped and the Allan head to the tower bracket is so tight! Any ideas on getting back there? Any troubleshooting before I assume its the wiring? Thanks for the help!!

[chpthril]

Bryce,

Per your original stereo thread, the two Pro60 were wired to two chnls of the Kicker 350.4. Is this still the case, or did you pull the Clarion sub off the other chnls and wire the Pro60 bridged on the 350.4 in 2-chnl mode?

Your plan was to pair the KMT6 up on a zx450.2, is this still the case?

What is "running 3/4 the way up"? Gain, head-unit volume, frequency, Bass-Boost, Etc. Details about settings are important. As noted in your other thread, your problem was not the gear, but how it was utilized. We need to divide the system up and address each amp and the speakers they are driving and get them wired and set correctly, one at a time. We need to know exactly what amps you have, what they are driving and how they are wired. Once everything is correct, we can move on to tuning.

[bryce2320]

Yea chpthril, the kicker kmt6 are bridged to the zx450.4 and I wired the wet sounds to the 350 bridged to 2 channels. The clarion sub got replaced by a rockford and has its own JL amp pushing it and it sounds great. The original wiring to the tower has splices in two or three spots so must have been attempted by someone who just didn't care.could that cost the clipping sounds? The gains on the amps are about 3/4 the way up. Hi pass switch is on on both kicker amps and the bass gain way down. Are the pro 60s a speaker built for mid bass as well? I wanted to put the amp to full pass but definately didn't want to blow these speaker so I was kind of leary of that. Thanks again for the help!

[philwsailz]

Curious.....

Kicker does not make a 450.4 so not sure what amp you are using there.

Statements of fact:
Gain 3/4 of the way up is too high. Gain controls are not volume controls and will usually not be set higher than half way.

Crossover set to hi pass is good but you also need crossover frequency control set, always over 100 and often around 150



You do not mention your head unit tone controls or if loudness is on but your stereo will be loudest with eq settings close to flat with bass boost off. The symptoms you describe sound in all likelihood like you are at least driving both tower amps to hard clipping based on gains setting. We also need to clarify what amps you really have and what they are driving. I will not recommend using a bridged 4-channel amp on KMT60 speakers due to amp stability issues.

Ports verify the exact model numbers of the amps and CHP and I can talk you through a proper system setup during the week when we are typing at computers and not cell phones....

Phil
Kicker

[bryce2320]

Ok I ran out and double checked and its that zx450.2 pushing the kmt6's and the 350.4 bridged on the wet sounds. I'll start with the frequency around 125 and try to tune from there on both amps. I'll also turn the amps down to a little under half gain. I have the clarion xm radio head unit that was in the boat when I bought it. I had it set to flat and I don't think it has a bass boost or loud on it but ill research it to make sure. It'll be Friday before I'm back home to work on the boat but will post what I come up with. Thanks a lot!

[shawndoggy]

turn the gains down ALL THE WAY. Then with the stereo OFF unplug the rcas from all of your amps but the one you want to tune. Now turn on the stereo. Headunit should be at about 3/4 volume. Now SLOWLY turn up the amp gain till the speakers just start to break up. From there, turn the gain back down to where the speakers are clear. Now turn the stereo off, and repeat the process on your other amps.

If you need to balance the amps to blend with one another, turn the gain on the stronger amp DOWN, don't turn the gain on the weaker amp up.

[philwsailz]

SD-

Awesome response. This is very succinct! Better than the "book" I often write on gain setting.

Bryce. General settings for your particular setup:

KMT6
Use the ZX450.2 in stereo, one speaker per amp channel. Do not bridge it mono
BASS BOOST totally off
CROSSOVER SWITCH set to HI PASS as you wrote
CROSSOVER KNOB, (Hz) set to somewhere above 100 but usually not above 150
GAIN set like Shawndoggy wrote



PRO 60's
Use the ZX350.4 in bridged stereo, one speaker per on AMP1 and one speaker on AMP2. NOTE: If you want stereo performance from the bridged amp you need to use two y-cords; connnect the LEFT RCA through a y-cord to both inputs of AMP1 and connect the RIGHT RCA through a y-cord to AMP2. Set the FADER BUTTON to its OUT POSITION
BASS BOOST totally off
CROSSOVER SWITCH set to HI PASS as you wrote
CROSSOVER KNOB, (Hz) set to somewhere above 100 but usually not above 150
GAIN set like Shawndoggy wrote


A NOTE ON SOURCE MATERIAL FOR TUNING

Things may change soon, but for the moment your best quality reference source for setting up your stereo is a store-bought CD, and in particular one that has really dense signal material. A band that usually makes it to my tuning sessions is NICKLEBACK, not for their music, but for the way it is recorded. See the three different pictures of two different audio recordings. First two are of Nickleback's ANIMALS. The first pic is of the whole song's waveform, the second is a closeup of a section of the song. The third is a snapshot of a Diana Krall song, Quiet Nights. See the difference? One was made to be loud, (Animals). The other song was not recorded and mastered to be loud.

The reason for Nickleback is that their stuff is compressed and hard limited, meaning that the entire song is compressed so that its quiet parts are a lot louder than natural and the loud parts are consistently and equally loud. That is why the first two pics below that looks so square. It is recorded mechanically and electronically as loud as the digital signal can be recorded while still maintining listenability, (some would argue that point! ).

You can use a recording like this and know that you are tuning with a digital song source that is as loud as it can be, through basically the whole song, giving you a more reliable means of setting gains.

As a comparison, if you used a poor-quality accidentally quiet MP3 song as a referenace material, you will turn the gains up higher to get everything where you think they need to be, and then when you play a louder song from a different source you will find that you are clipping everything. The other artifact of this is that due to gains being too high, you will have more hiss coming out of the speakers.

Find a CD of some material that is loud over the whole frequency range, not just booming bass like hip-hop... Or get one of the Nickleback CDs and know it is full-frequency loud because I have studied it and know it is so. You don't have to tell your friends, just hide the CD when you are done tuning if youre crowd would tease you for owning it... Use the CD and set teh gains EXACTLY as Shawndoggy wrote.

I hope that makes sense, provides a little extra technology know-how while telling you why. Hopefully I wrote it in a way that makes sense.....

Phil
Kicker


p.s. if you study the screen shots, you will see that they show the waveforms of mp3 files... So someone might argue I am using an MP3... I am only showing you the waveform comparison between two songs, and using the MP3 version of both, (ripped from store-bought CD at the same resolution by the way) was the most convenient means I had of showing the difference. FYI

[bryce2320]

Thanks for the responses! I will definately start tuning the amps as instructed and let you guys know how it sounds after that. Thanks a lot!

[bryce2320]

I tuned the amps first thing Saturday morning seperately and the system sounds awesome! Thanks for all the help!!!