gwizzzzz

Hey everyone,

I really need your guys' input on how to install this my system. Like many in this forum, I wanted a little more bass. I bought a Rockford Fosgate Punch P3 10" subwoofer and an Alpine PDX-1.600 mono class D amp. Though they're not top of the line, I've read many good reviews on both of these products. The amp produces 400 RMS watts, 800 peak and the amp is 600 watts.

Anyways, I had them installed at a local Car Alarm/Stereo place and it seemed to be working fine. It just so happened that when they first demoed it, a Kid Cudi song of a with a lot of bass was playing from my iPod. It was almost ghetto bass. I thought if the volume is barely up and the bass in the EQ was only 25% it would be way too loud. It was just the song that had a lot of bass. I found it pretty weak in every other song because I told them to keep to tune the amp low power. About an hour later, I was listening to my iPod, engine off and all of a sudden the iDrive shut down. I thought it was going into standby but I was wrong. When I went back into my car a little later, my screen stayed on the BMW logo. Radio, Navigation, and everything that had to do with entertainment didn't work. Kilometers did not convert to miles in the dash, clock time was 0:00. Seat warmers and AC still worked. Luckily, I had them take it out, told BMW it wasn't working properly for whatever reason and they swapped out the whole iDrive computer completely because it was not responding to a system reset. It took 3 days for them to do because they needed to verify a replacement!!! My installer thought I blew a fuse but my screen turned on, Bluetooth still connected to my phone, and the beeping of the PDC still worked. Next day, I called my local Bimmer dealer about "hypothetically" installing a subwoofer to find out what happened. They said that if the car uses too much power for the amp, it will go into a safe mode, which turns off everything except the ability to start your car, which is exactly what happened to me. I got my money back but I still want to install this setup without the worry of this happening again. Unfortunately, I do not know anything about car audio, so I just let the guy do the work. I remember he added a hi-lo converter and some fiber optic cables. He said that he can use a capacitator to prevent this from happening again, because he assumed I blew a fuse, though I didn't.

I was wondering if any of you have heard of or encountered this problem. Do I need a capacitator, especially considering the amp was tuned low? Will using a capacitator prevent it from happening again? Will it dramatically effect the subwoofer's sound? Please help me out with all the information you know. Thanks a lot.

cleung

I don't have any experience with audio in my e60 but I have done lots of car audio in the past. If the bmw tech is correct in that the vehicle went into safe mode because of the over draw in power from the amp, I would suspect that this happened because you were listening with the car off so the amp was draining the battery without any input from the alternator. I capacitor will help only to smooth out the power spikes when a big bass note hits and a large draw is requiered by your amp, otherwise in terms of power use the capacitor needs to charge as well so it is still pulling power from your battery. I think your system should be ok 600 watts isn't really that much esspecially if you don't have the gain turned up on the amp, I would suggest not using it with the car shut off in the future.

gwizzzzz

Thanks for your advice cleung. So it should work fine so long as the car is turned on? i.e. when driving?

bruce_miranda

I would suggest that you power the amp using a remote power line that comes on only when the engine is running e.g. lighter socket in the boot. Next, I don't understand why you need and hi-lo convertors and fiber optics. All you need is the Line level outputs from the amp in the boot and use that as inputs into your own amp, unless you have L7 which still doesn't explain why you need fiber optics. Are you sure your installer is not using BIG words to make it sound complicated? Definately use a capacitor but make sure that you don't have the amp turned up too much. I suspect you have it turned up too high because you have it stuck in the boot which is very well sealed. So you need to open the boot up into the car somehow. If you have drop down seats then its easy.