the amp is bridged dual mono, which is fine because he is using it
to drive only two speakers.

 

The speaker wiring is ok. The RCA wiring "may" not be right, depending on what the amp requires. Some amps require y-cable to split L into 2 and R into 2 RCA inputs to the amp (total 4) for the dual bridged mono to work properly. If not, it can result in only 1 side of speakers playing. The manual is no help here.

See
http://www.kicker.com/06/tech-support/manu...20d01%20web.pdf

Best would be for shouldibuy to tell us what he hears from the listening test, otherwise, it's just going to be trial and errors and there are just about 10+ other things to try to fix the problem.

 

^^ What RS2000 said...check out the pics, the RCAs are both going to a single channel, the amp is trying to play mono. Unless the spare RCA jacks are output, the amp is not going to reproduce the sound properly...

Dual mono also comes with sound stage issues, and that could be part of the problem. Stereo > dual mono.

 

Thanks guys for helping but I'm sorry that I'm confused.

So I did the sound check, both speakers L and R work and both tweeters work as well.

I reset everything, and it still did not sound good. One thing that helped was turning off the amp in the alpine unit itself.

As to the exact problem, the high frequency sounds are not very clear. Its loud and almost hisses- not quite but you can tell its almost trying too hard. There's no natural clarity to it.

Problem 2, for some music the bass just kicks in way too hard. Its almost like I have a subwoofer. Its as if the amp was kicking too much, and the bass just overcompensates most of the higher frequency, so I hear mostly boom boom boom rather than vocals. That's not what want to accomplish, I just want good clean sound.

I'll try to take some more pictures. And yes the wiring looks like its super low quality.

Does anyone live near Los Angeles that I can drive to? I'm really clueless about this but all I know is that it doesn't sound very good. Most of you are right, it might not be equiptment related.

Thanks

 

it looks to me like it is a four-channel amp, arranged front channels on
left, rear channels on right, with one RCA into the left input of the front
(bridged) channels, and one into the left input of the rear bridged channels.
That is likely the correct way to bridge this amp, assuming it's happy with
only one RCA per bridged channel, which the manual in the link above implies
it's ok as long as the "fader" button is not depressed. As for "dual mono" I
didn't intend to imply that it wasn't stereo, but rather that since the amp is
labeled "amp 1" for the front and "amp 2" for the rear, it implies that there
are two totally separate amps in the amp (unlikely in reality) and that by
bridging, the left channel is going into the front mono amp, and the right is
going into the rear mono amp, but each channel remains separate and you
still have stereo.

 

shouldibuy, good findings & description, this is very useful. The next step according to the troubleshoot manual :-) says...

1) How did turning off the amp in the alpine unit help. Does the tweet start playing with less hiss/more high? Sound became less muddy? .etc

2) Is the high more clear when you were playing only the L side or the R side instead of both sides at the same time?

Looking at the pic, I "think" you have the Kicker SS since it has a blue ring (btw, looks like the phase plug is missing - not a big deal. Time to take off the door panel (it's pretty easy to do, do a search on forum) to find the crossover box. If you read page 20 of the manual, there is a tweeter attenuation switch. If you can find the crossover box, try setting the jumper to +3db to see if that helps. Also, check to ensure that the wires going into and out of the crossover box have no short-circuits. Looking at how poor the install job is, I have no expectations of quality of wiring.

Manual:
http://www.kicker.com/06/tech-support/manu...ks%20Manual.pdf

Take a few pics once you have a door off. Would definitely be easier if there's someone in your area to help out. If you don't mind driving up to nocal, I can help you.

My guesses of what likely is happening:

1) HU Amp out Short circuit somewhere, affecting the HU and/or speakers. I had an episode of that years ago while testing some speakers and the symptoms sound familiar. Checkout the HU harness, loose stock wires going to speakers, in/out to xover box, etc.

2) Tweeter(s) were overdriven/blown

3) Problem with xover box (or lack of

4) You have a coaxial/woofer running in door low, another pair of tweeters in door pods. One powered by the amp, the other powered by the HU I didn't think that was possible but the original wiring inspired me to believe that is

These are also probably/common causes, but harder to say:

5) Speaker wiring problem e.g. reverse of +/- in/out of xover box or speakers or both

6) Amp wiring problem described above

 

Thanks for the responses, I will have to take my time and read through it as I am a real novice and check for what you have all suggested and will report back.