This is good advice. I'm going to start by sticking a KTP 445A in my car and see how it works out. Thanks for all the great advice folks. I'll report back when its done. It will probably be a month before I can get this done.

It nothing else, this will be a nice little experiment. If you change more than one thing at a time you can't tell what helped.

Has anyone installed one of these in a ap1? Where does it fit?

 

In my AP2 I ziptied it under the passenger side dash.

 

I had a KTP-445U installed today under the passenger side dash. The installer bridged it, so I guess I'm getting 90W to each door? Right? He ran the power supply to the battery. I have used this guy before, as have many of my friends, and all the work he has done for me has been excellent. He has installed systems in many S2k's over the years. It could be my imagination, but the system seems to perform quite a bit better, both at low volumes and at high volumes. It certainly has a lot more power.

So now I have an Alpine UTE 62BT head unit, and the bridged KTP-445U amp. I still have my stock ap1 (02) speakers and tweeters. I'll leave it this way for while and see if I feel the need for anything more.

One other question, with the amp power wired direct to the battery, will there be a battery drain issue at all?

 

Should be a trigger wire, which turns amp on when in ACC. Turns off, when you switch keys to OFF.

 

So I started this thread asking about the cause of distortion at high volumes. I installed this little amp. No more distortion. If I have a good quality digital file the sound is quite good with the oem speakers. No distortion. My conclusion is that the distortion was likely caused by over running the head unit amp causing clipping, not because of a problem with the speakers. Adding the new amp solved that problem.

I am still considering new speakers. Not sure yet. It is pretty darn good as is. I get enough clean volume at high speed with the top down to make it quite satisfying. But, maybe it could be even better?

 

If you're still on stock speakers, then new aftermarket ones will absolutely make a world of difference. Welcome to the slippery slope of car audio.

 

Toss the OEM CRAP! Ok that behind us. Best upgrade is new head unit to start.(powering OEM speakers) Then speakers alone to run off HU. Then it's speakers and amp together upgraded.

The reason for distortion 99.4% of the time is because the amp is being over driven and THD(total harmonic distortion) is reaching levels which can be hear. This happens with any amp regardless of quality. The people installing the amp(if done correctly) will set it up so you can turn the volume up 3/4 or so the way up before you get to that point. If they did it wrong you can turn it to 11 and it will still not distort or you can turn it no more than 3 and it's blowing your ear drums out.

I have worked in the industry so I know the good/bad and the god awful ugly/dangerous installs.

Oh and FYI it's VERY VERY hard to overpower a speaker with too much power. That being given that the watts delivered are clean and undistorted. What burns up voice coils is DISTORTION! This forces the voice coil to heat up and possibly strike the sides causing damage.