I’m having this problem with my sub’s lately. After a few minutes of rollin around with boomin’ bass all of a sudden my bass just gets cut off. I don’t know what’s causing this. And when I lower down the volume the bass returns to normal, then turn it up again
bass gets cut off again. I only have 2 12" tornado kenwoods (160rms 600 max) and a 600 watts amp.should I add something to this setup like a capacitor, for this kind of setup?
And I’ve noticed that when I turn-off my car the amp lights are still lighted, should it go off the same time i turn off the engine?
The other day my subs would only work with the CDs and switched to FM the sub would stop. Would somebody explain what spirit possesed my stereo.??:evil:
well i dont know about the subs goin on and off but it could possibly the wiring… u might not have big enough wires to channel that much power thru the wires… cuz my bass would stay at one level… my bass would never get louder as i turn up the volume… and i have small wires for my 12v and remote… i need to upgrade them…that MIGHT be ur problem… not sure doh… but about ur amp stayin on at all times… do you have the positive wire hooked up straight to the battery? cuz i had mine like that for awhile and it drained my battery… and would stay on 24/7…
hook up the positive(12v) to the battery wire on ur stereo wire harness… then ur amp should turn off when you turn off ur car…and turn on only when your stereo is on…well hope i helped… if not then i’m sure someone else will give you better advice… peace!!
You shouldn’t need a cap with just a couple of subs. It could be your wiring is undersized, or maybe your amp has some sort of limiter/compressor on it that is designed to prevent the subs from blowing, although I’m not sure what would be triggering it if they aren’t going very loud. Also, see how your subs are wired, maybe the resistance is too high or too low for the amp or subs to handle and it’s doing something funny. I’m not super experienced with troubleshooting car audio, so I’m not too sure. As far as your amp being on all the time, does the amp have a turn on switch connecting wire? If the amp does and your stereo does, then you just connect them and the amp should turn on when the stereo turns on and off when the stereo turns off, even with it wired directly to the battery. If not, and you need more power than the power cable running to the head unit, then just put a regular switch in the line and turn it on and off manually. Oh, also, check all the connections between the head, amp and subs, if one or two of them are loose or not making clean contact, that can sometimes allow low level volumes to pass but not high level volumes. Maybe someone else will know more, good luck
i have had that problem also, it usually seems to be that my amp has overheated during the booming stage of my driving, all i do is turn the volume down and let my amp return back to normal and then bump mildly. a suggestion 4 u would be when u get home if u can bump and watch your amp and if when it cuts out that red power light goes out then it is a wiring problem, if not feel your amp to see how hot it is to the touch. if that doesn’t work the e-mail me and tell me what is happening, but i think that is your problem
–good luck 
Ok from what you are describing it seems like your amp has a voltage-protection and/or thermal protection. I’m not sure if these are the correct termilogy, but something along these lines. I’ll explain… voltage protection means your amp will cut out if too much power is drawn to it, meaning your subs are asking for more power or current from your battery than what your amp can handle so as a safe guard it shuts off temporarily until the level is decreased, that is why when you turn up the volume it cuts out and when you turn it back down the subs kick back in. Now thermal protection acts in the same way in that when the amp gets too hot it will shut itself down to avoid frying any internal circuits, resistors, etc. This is why they tell you to put the amp in a nicely ventilated area. For your problem I think it is the voltage protection that is happening.
Now to fix this problem, you can get another amp. So you have two amps, each powering a sub. I don’t think a capacitor will resolve anything as it acts like just a storage bin of power for your amp, but a steady power source and makes it much easier on your alternator and engine, battery etc.
As for your amp being on all the time, well it looks like you wired up your battery directly to your amp, which is right, but it seems you didn’t wire the remote-wire from your headunit, or CD-deck to your amp. This will turn your amp on when your headunit is on and turns it off when your headunit is off. The remote-wire slot is usually beside the power (+) where it goes in. If you did a U-wire from the power to the remote, then it will keep your amp on 24/7 as well and drain your battery. If you did run a remote-wire from your headunit to the amp, then I dunno why it would be on all the time, if your headunit is on 24/7 as well, then you wired your headunit wrong, so check that.
As for the CD to FM thing, hmmm maybe you wired up the headunit wrong? That would be my guess.
Email me if you have any questions at: asiangq@hotmail.com
and I’ll try to help out to the best that I can.
thanks for the responses. You guys are right about my amp is directly hooked up on my battery. This worked for a long time and the problem I’m having right now is just recently. And I’ve noticed that my amp is very hot when it shuts off. So from the info that you’ve all given me i think I have to do something about my amp wirings.
I didn’t do all the install thing here so I think the guy who did messed up with the wiring, but I’ve tried to tweak it myself and I got to see all the messy stuff behind the headunit but I didn’t mess with the wiring yet coz’ I don’t know heck about it.
Ok about the remote-wire is that the single thin wire running from the amp? Coz’ I saw theres 2 audio cable and 1 red thin wire. So i’m guessing the red one is the remote-wire. If it is the one, where should this wire be connected? I’ve read somewhere that you can wire it with the wirings of the power antenna? Whichever is the best way could someone tell where to hook up this remote-wire. I’m thinking of just going to an audio shop and let them fix it but I know they’ll charge me like crazy for just a little thing. And I know you guys can help me here.
you’re pushing your amp too hard. most likely your subs are wired at too low an impedance for your amp to handle. go to www.jlaudio.com and go to the tutorial section for wiring diagrams. you most likely are running in parallel to get 2ohms. run in series to get 8ohms.
you didnt mention what amp you have. if this doesnt help, your amp pretty much just sucks. a fan may help tremendously.
as for the staying on, your wiring to the amp is also fuxored. you should have a remote wire from your deck to the remote terminal on the amp. or you can rig it to one of your accessory fuses. hope this helps
EDIT: ya you can rig it to your antennae which is closer. however i forget which wire it is, so you need a multimeter for this. you need to find the one that supplies 12v only when your radio turns on. the other is constant and the 3rd is ground.
ya, theres 2 for each channel (speaker), 12v constant (power), ground (black) and the thin remote.
Ok if you bought your headunit from the store, it should have manual or a paper diagram of what all the wires in the back should be, same goes for the amp. If you got them hot, then there are other ways to finding what wire is what, but I’ll assume all is legit.
Ok for the amp, usually there are slots for power, ground and usually a remote-wire, and yes usually is a thin wire running from the headunit. Other wires would be the speaker terminals and RCA jacks (red and white usually), RCA’s are the audio cables.
I am gonna guess your red thin wire is the remote wire, I’m pretty sure of it, try disconnecting it from the amp and turn on your headunit and see if your amp comes on, if it doesn’t then hook the remote wire and see if your amp turns on, if it does, then that is the remote wire. and yes you can rig it to turn on with other things, such as the antenna, but you have a remote wire so that is most ideal.
And it would make sense that your amp would be hot after bumpin hard for a while, it’s normal. All amplifiers get hot. In your case, just like XDEep said, you are just pushing your amp too hard. That is why I suggested you get another amp if you want. Otherwise just don’t bump as loud.
Now if the remote wire is hooked up, then I dunno why your amp isn’t shutting off when you turn off your headunit. hmmm perhaps make sure that the remote wire isn’t connected to the power wire on your headunit. Take a look behind your headunit and find a wire, most likely red, and it would be the thickest wire, that is your power wire, and see if it has another wire coming from it. In other words, see if there is a wire that looks like two wires are coming from it looking like the letter “Y”. The remote wire from your amp might be spliced to your power wire to the headunit, this is the only thing I can think of that could be the reason why your amp is constantly on. Find out where your red remote-wire from your amp goes to on your headunit. Then look at all your wires and see if it is connected to the remote wire. Some headunits don’t have a remote wire so some people wire it up to the power wire on the headunit. This is my guess.
Mind you if your amp is constantly on, you will eventually drain your battery. You might want to check the voltage of your battery. Hope this helped.
Ive been away from my teg for months and finally I’m going back home in a couple of days and I can’t wait on tinkering with it again. I’ll work on it as soon as I get to be with my car and let you guys know how it went.
Now I know why I can’t start my car sometimes.
Thank you guys.
One more thing I notice my power antenna doesn’t go down when I turn off my headunit. And I have to turn off my engine when I go to a automatic carwash sometimes so my antenna would go down.
Are all integra has the same wiring color if yes what color of wire would be my power antenna so I could look it up on my cd player manual (alpine).
turn your gains down on your amp 
even if the impedance is too low turning down your gains wouldnt help…
Same thing goes for your antenna, probably hooked up wrong, if you turn off your headunit it should turn off the amp, and the antenna should come down. Are you using a factory deck (the tape deck)? hmmm wait, that don’t really matter, ummm I may have the wiring color scheme, hang on let me check.
Ok, I’m not sure if these color schemes are for the factory deck or my headunit I have in right now, but I think these are the for factory.
Power (ignition): yellow/red
Power (constant): white/blue
Power (antenna): yellow/green
Illumination: Red/Black
Ground: Black
For the speakers I’m not sure, I can’t read the writing here, but it’s not too hard to figure out.
My antenna motor was wacked when I bought the car, so I don’t hook up the antenna. I don’t listen to the radio anyways. Hope this helps.
I think someone is on the same page as me…
“turn your gains down on your amp”
I can almost guarantee that you are driving your amp into clipping and causing the protection circuit to shut down the power supply's output/transistors. Turn up your gead unit to 3/4 volume and watch the amp as well as listen... does the protection light come on? Does it sound awfull? Square waves sound crappy... Turn the gain down to about a 1/4 turn if not far less. If it's a powerfull amp and you are concerned about clipping, turn those damn gains nearly fully off.
Please let us know if your listening experience or the ringing in your ears improved. When your ears feel tired, it’s usually from a clipped signal. A clipped signal is likely causing your amp to cut out.
As far as your ant connection, it sounds like you have it hooked to a switched 12V circuit triggered by the ignition… You do need a switched circuit but it should be switched internally in the head unit. What hu do you have?
HTH
Andrew.
“turn your gains down on your amp”
i third that, seeing as how you said everytime you turn up the volume it cuts out… just like Neex said your driving into clipping. And as for the amp not shuting off after turning the key off, some amps when drivin into fault mode will stay on even if you pull the key like soundstream amps. But it could also be inproper install…hth
Regarding your amp not shutting off:
This is likely caused by wiring your amp’s main power input AND remote turn-on lead to an unswitched power source. You should make sure that the remote turn-on lead is either taken from a switched source such as the ant lead from the OEM deck or an actual turn-on lead from an aftermarket deck designed to by used with an outboard amplifier. If you choose to forgo this, you should at least put a switch inline with this constant 12V source. This will serve two purposes:
- it will protect your amp
- it won’t leave you with a dead battery
You should also fuse the cable from your battery that’s powering your amp within about 6" - 1" of the battery. This is none other than to prevent a disastrous fire should you get in a front-end accident.
If you need any more help or suggestions, etc, let me know and I will be glad to help…
time for coffee… ooooooooooohhhhhh oooooooooooooooohhhhh… I hate the Oprah show… LOL
Andrew.
btw…
please tell us exactly what amp (manuf and model#) you are running the Kenwoods with… My absolute best guess is that you aren’t getting 600W RMS but I could be wrong.
Please let us know if anything has changed for the better… How is it that I feel like you have left the thread now?? LOL
A.
gain control, what it is and how to set it
http://www.eatel.net/~amptech/elecdisc/gaincon2.htm
series vs. parallel wiring
http://www.eatel.net/~amptech/elecdisc/srsparll.htm
in fact, everyone should skim through the entire faq then go school all those pitiful audio shops in basic car audio
You probably either have one of two things wrong or one thing. The first could be your ground. It might have a bad ground connection, this causing it to turn off all of a sudden. my amp did the same. Or you could havewires touching somewhere. Wiring might be touching some ground and causing a short. This is really bad for your amp and for your speakers. I already blown some of my front speakers too! If you want or need any stereo equipment, like caps, or ther wires or even a new deck, email me. I sell the stuff for hella cheap.
sorry guys if I haven’t responded for a long time. Got very busy when I got home here. Well when I get to finally drive my baby everything seems to work just fine. Bass doesn’t go off while I’m driving. Amp is off when I turn off engine now. When I left my car for 2 months I just disconnected the power and ground wire and when I put them all together everything just works fine.
So fine that I didn’t even hear my front right side discs brake grinding on my all gone brake pads!!! Didn’t notice that for 3 days until I finally decided to drive w/o music to enjoy the sound of my only modification (intake). DAMN!!! Those scrathes on my disc are deep!!! I just hope it can still be resurfaced.
Back to my subs, well I think the 110 deg. temp. here on summer made my crappy Boss amp overheat easily making it shut off easily. Right now the temp. gets pretty cold now making the amp works in a cooler place. Maybe wrong but it’s makes sense.
Appreciate all your help, and I gained so much knowledge on your responses about car stereo. If I get this problem again next summer time to get better amp.
I’m glad to hear that you found some resolution to your problems. Did you ever look at or adjust those pesky gains though? They really will mess up your ears if you don’t have them set properly. Often level setting has more to do with having a good or excellent-sounding system than does equipment. Don’t get me wrong, there’s no substitution for quality components but… the best gear with mismatched levels will sound like chowder everytime.
Good luck!
Andrew.