5 Channel amp upgrade on 2013 JK w/ Alpine

[utiadam]

I'm going to preface this with I owned a car audio shop for a while and still build custom audio products for people now and again and I'm a licensed commercial sound contractor... and this is going to sound like I'm being an ass... but I don't mean it that way so I'm sorry in advance

So let me get this straight here... you kept your factory HU (For what reason?) and factory amp (Again for what reason?) and then installed another amp downstream from the factory?? Assuming I followed that correctly....

You understand that by doing that you are taking a crappy source signal from the garbage factory HU, feeding it into a crappy factory amp that is amplifying that crappy signal... only to feed that now amplified crappy signal into another amp to amplify it again.... then out to your speakers.

I didn't know you used to own a car audio shop. You definitely do great work with wiring based on your build thread! I kept the factory head unit as well but it's only as a am/fm source. The JL cleansweep has an AUX input that I use for my iPad mini. If you really want clean sound then you need to use FLAC files. That starts taking up a lot of disc space though. I have some Norah Jones songs that are around 60MB per file. A normal mp3 has around 128-320kbps and those Norah Jones FLAC files are upwards of 2500kbps.

 

[darkknight1999]

I didn't know you used to own a car audio shop. You definitely do great work with wiring based on your build thread! I kept the factory head unit as well but it's only as a am/fm source. The JL cleansweep has an AUX input that I use for my iPad mini. If you really want clean sound then you need to use FLAC files. That starts taking up a lot of disc space though. I have some Norah Jones songs that are around 60MB per file. A normal mp3 has around 128-320kbps and those Norah Jones FLAC files are upwards of 2500kbps.

Wow those are large files! You do realize you're riding in a jeep right… pretty much the worst sound stage you can get… at least not without doing some serious work building a custom system and sound deadening the whole thing… mostly since they are made like a tin can.

Cleansweep works for a lot of applications. Its a fairly proven unit really.

Well I'm not sure weather or not you can hear the differences in those 2 files or not, but if you like it, that's all that really matters. I used to have clients come in and say "oh my friend these speakers are great" then I would ask them what car his friend had them in, I would say 80% of the time they had never even listened to them… they just saw the brand and price and assumed it was awesome. To which I would say, maybe you should grab a CD or your MPS player and bring it in here and give your favorite track a listen. Speaker sound is highly subjective to each person. Once person may love Focals or Rainbows or Morals… and another person will just not hear the differences enough to warrant the extra $$$$, and they will love the $100 Infinites. Back when I had the shop, we used a Honda S2000 for our show car… I used both Alpine and Alphasonic in it. Both systems sounded great for what they each were. The Alpine system was very high end, where as the Alphasonic system was their top of the line but didn't compare in quality, but still sounded great. Each system could be turned up loud enough to make the people in the car pop earplugs in. Its was just stupid loud.

It all came down to proper tuning. You can build an amazing system for less than $1500 bucks. Sometimes people forget that they are limited with car audio in terms of sound quality. Jeeps are like a tin can… rusty ones half the time, The S2000 was a convertible… also a terrible sound stage. I would have clients wanted to spend thousands of dollars on all kinds of stuff, which was fine its their money. Once the install was done they were always happy. and for me that's all that mattered. A happy client. You can teach them more as time goes on… you needed to earn their business and trust first.

I just realized I've been babbling here… lol :cheesy: :crazyeyes: :icon_crazy:

 

[utiadam]

Wow those are large files! You do realize you're riding in a jeep right… pretty much the worst sound stage you can get… at least not without doing some serious work building a custom system and sound deadening the whole thing… mostly since they are made like a tin can.

Cleansweep works for a lot of applications. Its a fairly proven unit really.

It all came down to proper tuning. You can build an amazing system for less than $1500 bucks. Sometimes people forget that they are limited with car audio in terms of sound quality. Jeeps are like a tin can… rusty ones half the time

I think the audible difference is noticeable. Im sure that I cant take full advantage of the flac files because of the sound stage but the bass is tighter and everything seems clearer. BTW, Im not sure if you remember the pics from my build thread but I have about 120 sqft of Dynamat Extreme as well as about 70sqft of Dynaliner throughout the interior of the jeep :rock:

 

[darkknight1999]

I think the audible difference is noticeable. Im sure that I cant take full advantage of the flac files because of the sound stage but the bass is tighter and everything seems clearer. BTW, Im not sure if you remember the pics from my build thread but I have about 120 sqft of Dynamat Extreme as well as about 70sqft of Dynaliner throughout the interior of the jeep :rock:

oh right! lol That would help! :rock: