Quick ICE newb question

[revrseat70]

Ok. I just installed an alpine head unit and have been running it for a few days now. I will be installing am Alpine Type R 12" and Alpine M500 Amp very soon. I was just going to do the ski pass "base portal". I do have one major concern...

My friend installed an alpine Type R 12" in his Nissan Xterra. I know, weird car for that... Anyway he only did the sub and head unit like me and within a week, blew out ALL his other speakers from what I would consider a reasonable level for volume. I don't listen to music very loud for most of people's standards.

My question is: Do I really need to worry about this sort of problem?

He ended up replacing every speaker and installing a separate amp for all the surround speakers because the sub pulled so much power from the system. That is quite a bit more money than I have set aside for this project and want to make sure I am fairly safe to proceed.

Thanks for the time guys, Alex

[deesz]

The sub won't draw to much power from an aftermarket head unit, the only power that it draws off of the headunit is from the amp turn on which isn't anything but a signal to tell the amp to turn on, and rca's which won't affect the speakers, so you'll be fine. Just don't crank up the bass and put powerful/loudness mode on these things cause distortion.

[devlish]

i was an authorized alpine dealer for 6years, and set up hundreds of systems like yours with stock speakers... lots of people use the BASS setting in the headunit to control the subwoofer, but keep in mind, putting the BASS at +8 will put the bass up in ALL the speakers!!! that's why headunits have Subwoofer Controls, i never have my BASS setting over +1, usually it's at '0'. setup the subamp and subcontrols properly and you shouldn't have to worry about it.

one thing that might help is this... before you connect the sub, figure out what level your stock speakers can handle on the volume, usually +22 on the alpine for most vehicles. then back it off one or two, and you know your faily safe at 20-21. then once your subwoofer is connected, remember that setting. don't go over 20-21 (or wherever yours is safe) and use the subcontrol and amp to tune your subwoofer volume accordingly. lots of times the sub overpowers the stock speakers, and you find yourself loving the bass so much you crank it way up to 25-27 and don't hear your stock speakers popping over the subwoofer.

hope that made sense.. good luck!

[revrseat70]

yeah that made a lot of since. Thanks guys! I do know a guy who didn't do what devlish said and all his speaker's bass hits sound really bad. So he just uses more treble and bumps his subs ridiculously haha. Anyway those were really helpful and reassuring. THanks, Alex