Help: 07 Altima, KDC-X792-Kicker 08ZX350.4-Infinity Kappas = NO BASS

[Blood1]

This past weekend I had everything installed.

Items:

Front: Infinity Kappa 63.9i $90/shipped eBayINFINITY KAPPA 63.9I 6.5"

Rear: Infinity Kappa 693.9i $115/shipped eBayNEW INFINITY KAPPA 693.9i 6x9"

6.5" Front Speaker Adapter off of eBay:BTW This thing worked amazingly well. Custom fit for larger speakers!!6½" Front Speaker Adapters for 1998-2008 Nissan Altima

AMP: Kicker 08ZX350.4 $184/shipped from 6thAVE on AmazonAmazon.com: Kicker 08ZX3504 4X90 Head Unit: Kenwood KDC-X792Kenwood Excelon KDC-X792 CD receiver3x 4V RCA Outs: Front, Rear, Sub

Wiring Kit:BOSS COMPLETE 4 GAUGE AMP INSTALL KIT NIC - KIT 10 - Buy.com

The install took all day. I took it to 6th Ave Electronic, NY Carl Place.

I had to add RCA Noise Reduction/Loop dampeners b/c when i drove away I heard a horrible winning noise over the speakers. Allan the installer threw two of these onto the Front and Rear outputs on the head unit and the noise went away.

Anyway, I was very disappointed in what I was hearing and not feeling. No BASS. I was seriously shocked that the stock speakers and head unit was pumping out much more bass than this.

So the next day I checked the AMP and I turned off the amp's x-over feature so the amp sends the full signal. Since the speakers have their own built in cross-over inline. That hopefully would give me more bass. :It did but not much. With the stock speakers my mirrors would shake when I played bassy music (Rap, 92.3 NOW {sorry}, metal, etc...) I'm barely feeling any bass at all.

I checked the head unit and disabled/turned off it's built in amp and turned up the Bass +5, Mid -1, Treb +6. I went through every sub-menu and tried tweaking as much as I could but not much changed.

At moment not very pleased with spending this much and not getting what I thought would blow away the stock system.

Yes the highs are incredibly much clearer, no distortion and crystal clear but I'm surprised at how little bass I'm getting.

Do these speakers need some time to be broken in before they loosen up? Any tips here on how to tweak this system?

All feedback really appreciated!!

Manuals for all items:KDC-X792: http://akamaipix.crutchfield.com/Manual ... F08ZX350.4: http://akamaipix.crutchfield.com/Manual ... .PDF693.9i: http://akamaipix.crutchfield.com/Manual ... 08429I.PDF

Things left to do:I do want to do the Big-3 upgrade. My brother got me welding cable which is {I'm pretty sure} larger than 0-gauge and incredibly flexible. I just need someone to do the replacement of the cables. I tried looking where things went and was like this is way to cramped to do anything. Anyone have a place who did it for them?
Modified by Blood1 at 9:21 PM 6/20/2009

[bostonsftl]

I have had some Infinity Kappas in the past and from my experience they are a quality speaker, but not bass monsters at all. You are probably going to need to add at least an 8 inch subwoofer to your setup to get the bass that you are looking for.

[rjdmmfl1]

the stock speakers use paper cones and paper/foam surrounds... at low wattage, those can produce decent bass, but try putting power to them and the would fall apart after bottoming out a few times...

going with aftermarket setups, if not done properly, does NOT necessarily reproduce sound well at all...

I mean, if your goal is to make your current setup sound better, then you will need a good audio processor and at least an 8" subwoofer to reproduce those lower frequencies accurately...

however, before you waste more money trying to make this current setup sound better, I would scrap all of your equipment and start over.

Top be honest, none of the audio equipment you installed is considered high quality, save maybe the headunit which is decent !

Infinity doesn't really make great speakers.. its hard to make them sound really good.. the highs are too harsh to ever reproduce sound very well, even with an audio processor.

Kicker makes decent subwoofers (solobaric L5, L6, L7), but their amps aren't quality amps!

also, for your front speakers, you went with full range coaxials.... that is NEVER a good idea. you can't send every frquency from 20Hz to 20,000Hz to a speaker and just expect it to figure them out on its own.... you should have gone with a component setup up front, and just remounted the tweeters in the stock 3.5" positions...

again, I would scrap everytyhing except the headunit and start over... if you're looking for a nice sound quality setup that is...

but if you just want more bass, I would start with a 10" sealed woofer and an additional amplifier to power it.. and see if that's to your liking...

[Blood1]

Thanks for the replies.

So for the front replacements then from this list, what would you suggest?Front Door Speakers: http://www.crutchfield.com/g_4...l?l=CPasting component URL isn't working?

What do you think of the Polk Audio MM5251:http://www.crutchfield.com/p_1...p=105

And what suggestions for the Rear?Rear Deck (6x9):http://www.crutchfield.com/g_4...+&l=E

Thanks....

[Blood1]

Holy s***. Look at the price of these:http://www.crutchfield.com/p_0...p=105

Check out the video as well, I love the packaging on these in the video:http://www.crutchfield.com/App...p=105

[Blood1]

Okay today was a PITA!! I went back to the install place, 6th Ave we spent several hours trying to eliminate the noise coming over the system. I purchased high end RCA cables to check if that was the cause but no. We pulled the deck out disconnected the old RCA and i directly plugged in the much better ones into the head unit to the amp and we still hear that terrible noise when we pressed on the gas.We checked the AMP ground and we actually moved it to a bolt under the rear seat where the seat belts were held in by.. Still noise.We even tried running a ground wire into each RCA, then out attached to the grounding point and still Noise.I looked at the head unit, and saw it was grounded by being screwed into the metal bar running behind the HU, right under the AC vents.

One thing I noticed but didn't think about till now was, I have an SL so there's that digital read out on the AC controls.We ended up putting the noise loop isolators back on b/c nothing was helping, but as we put them back in, when we moved them towards the right the noise would get worse, when we pulled back out it went away.Now that i think about it, could this noise be coming from the power line of the Antenna? We would of wrapped the RCA's in Aluminum foil to protect them more but we didn't have on hand.

Does anyone have any suggestions as to get this g-dam wine under control?I didn't do the Big-3 upgrade yet but that's on my list. It's just extremely annoying not being able to figure this out.

BTW I given up on the bass for the rear speakers. I think I'm going to do a Kicker 07VC124 enclosure with a 08ZX300.1 amp in 2Ohm.

[AppleBonker]

Does the whine change pitch with RPMs? If so, big three would probably be the solution.

[Blood1]

thanks Apple. Yeah that horrible f-in noise is there and does change pitch with the more gas i give it. I drive sometimes just with the Volume @ 0 to hear this aweful hindrance plaguing my system. I'll give everything a shot from everyone who's responded so far. I like the just put a thick a** cable on the battery's (-) terminal and have (my wife) hold it to see if it goes away...

[AppleBonker]

Bah, it's all the ground. No more dangerous than touching the metal of the car anywhere while it's running. Additionally, there's already a ground cable in place, so it'd be pretty hard to zap yourself.

I'm guessing the ground will help a lot, but not completely eliminate the whine. The other two parts of the big three *should* take care of it. I really hope it works, because I don't want you to come back with the same problem after doing all this work I recommended.

[Blood1]

Hi Apple, if you can check out the latest status. Still noise.. Thinking it might be the HU.http://forums.altimas.org/zerothread?id=434030