I Installed some alpine speakers with tweets and an alpine amp early last year and the system sounded great but not for long. One day I noticed that the speakers would cut out when the bass hits, though they work fine at low volume when bass is minimal. I parked the car for the night and found it next morning working great again. Then after a few minutes of listening to my ipod the same thing happened, speakers started cutting out everytime the bass was introduced past a certain volume.

I checked the fuses on the amp and on the HU, triple checked the RCAs. The only thing I can think of is that something went wrong with the crossovers. However, I know nothing about these things and need help. Any info and educational links are greatly appreciated

 

Also I'd like to put in speakers behind the seats to take care of low frequencies and leave the mid-high frequencies to the front speakers and tweeters. How would I go about that???

 

Have you checked all of the wiring connections? Maybe there is a loose connection that gets opened when the higher bass shakes it? Just a thought, but I don't ever mess with audio stuff.

 

That's what I thought as well, but you can hear it in the headunit when the lows start to make the music skip. It sounds as if you put in a scratched up cd and player keeps skipping, if that makes sense.

 

The best way to troubleshoot this would be to turn your treble and midrange all the way down and turn the bass all the way up. Put it on a track that has decent bass, and then start at a low volume. Continually turn the volume up until the problem starts happening again, and that way you can isolate exactly what is causing the issue. Fade the sound to both the left and the right to see if it is one speaker or both of them. It sounds like there is a loose connection that is getting shaken with the bass like someone else already said. This could be a connection at the back of your headunit or at the speaker itself. It's really hard to say without hearing it.

To your question about putting subs or midrange speakers behind the seats, while that is doable, the space back there is a bit cramped and you'll need something custom made to fit the speakers. I would suggest you go with a modest subwoofer... maybe an 8" woofer powered by a 150W amp and put that in the tool well in the trunk. That, combined with your component system up front should give you the full range of frequencies that you're looking for.

 

^This. Also, have you been playing with the amp gain? It kind of sounds like it might be overdriven. When you do what Kev suggested above, try turning the amp gain down then the volume up to see if the "cutout" still happens. Maybe it works fine for a few minutes until the amp gets warmed up. Where is the amp located? It might not have enough air/airflow through the heatsinks.