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Preparing Yourself and Your Vehicle for a Car Audio Installation

Car Audio Installation

If you’ve scheduled an appointment with a local specialty mobile enhancement retailer to have your car or truck upgraded, there are a few things you’ll want to know to make the most of this opportunity. Whether the upgrade involves a new set of speakers, a multimedia receiver with a backup camera or a remote car starter, having the vehicle in a condition that will ensure that the technician can get to work quickly can save a lot of time. We’ve put together this simple guide to help make you a better customer and ensure that your project is completed on time and budget.

Please Arrive on Time

Mobile enhancement retailers work on a schedule. They’ve scheduled your car or truck for a certain amount of time to accomplish a task. In most cases, other clients are scheduled before and after you. If you show up five or 10 minutes late, that’s not only frustrating, but it can affect the entire day’s schedule and put other customers’ projects behind.

If you have an appointment, we suggest showing up about 15 minutes early. This extra time will give you and the product specialist a chance to confirm the details of the installation and allow the technician to pull the car or truck in and get the product prepared. If you’re having a new multimedia radio installed, the shop may have questions about where a USB connection for CarPlay and Android Auto should be located. If the upgrade is a remote starter, you and the specialist might want to review options like trunk or hatch release or automatic rear window defroster activation. In most cases, these items would have been covered before the quote was provided, but it’s always worth talking about as it’s easier to add them at the time of the installation as opposed to a few weeks or months later.

Car Audio Installation
Arriving 10 or 15 minutes early for an appointment will help the technician complete your upgrade on time.

Please Bring What’s Required

In the rare case where you have the equipment to be installed in your possession before an installation appointment, please be sure to bring it with you. This applies to audio installations as well as remote starters. Many times, the starter and accompanying installation have been purchased in advance so the system could be presented as a gift. Make sure you bring everything with you on installation day. If you’ve opened the package, be sure to put everything back. A missing harness or remote might prevent the project from being completed and could result in additional costs.

Speaking of remote car starters, the specialists at the retailer you are working with might have asked you to bring both keys for the vehicle. This may be necessary to program the interface module to the vehicle. Without them, the installation can’t be completed. If you aren’t sure if you need to bring both keys, please bring them anyhow.

Would You Mind Taking Your Stuff Out of the Vehicle?

This is one of the biggest frustrations for installation technicians. Imagine you’ve scheduled your car or SUV for a subwoofer system installation, but the cargo area is full of sports equipment, work supplies or tools, or even purchases from a recent shopping trip. The technician will need to spend time moving these items before they can start work. This extra work can easily add five minutes to the beginning and end of each project. By the end of the day, it’s not unreasonable for them to have wasted half an hour just moving personal belongings when they could have spent that time upgrading client vehicles.

If you have an appointment, empty your vehicle. Start at the front and work backward with a basket or bag. Empty the center console, the storage compartments in the doors, items from the floor and the back seat. Clear out the cargo area of any items as well. Please do these things even if you don’t think those areas will need to be accessed. Sometimes a technician will have to run wiring through the vehicle for a remote starter or audio system installation. Anytime there’s stuff in the way, time is wasted. Trust us when we say that they appreciate you having the vehicle ready.

Car Audio Installation
Please empty everything out of the vehicle so technicians can work efficiently.

Give the Vehicle a Quick Cleaning

It only takes 15 minutes to run a car or truck through a touchless car wash before an installation. Getting dirt and debris out of the door sills will help a technician installing a remote starter stay clean. Clean fenders and the area around the trunk or hatch can prevent scratches, even if a fender cover is being used. The technician working on your vehicle will need to access the battery if an amplifier installation is involved in an upgrade, so they will be moving all over the vehicle.

If you can, vacuum the interior before you show up for an appointment. Some of us are fanatical about keeping the interiors of our cars and trucks clean – some aren’t. Nobody wants to work around old drink cups, food wrappers, stray French fries or used straws. If you can vacuum out sand and gravel, our floor mats will be cleaner for the next client.

Car Audio Installation
Working on a vehicle that’s clean and tidy is much more enjoyable – and efficient – than one that’s cluttered or a mess.

Winter Installation Appointments

You can do a few things to help us work more efficiently when it’s cold out. First, if possible, please visit the car wash just before you arrive. Getting as much slush and snow off the vehicle and out of the wheel wells reduces dripping and puddles as the vehicle warms up in our bay.

If we have to remove interior trim panels from the vehicle to install a radio or speakers or run wiring, things go much better if the car has warmed up. Plastics are more fragile when they’re cold. The last thing we want is for something to break. If we’re having a busy day, it might be difficult to factor in time to let the interior warm up. If you’ve got the car up to temperature and the heater’s been on, we can get to work right away and ensure that your vehicle leaves our bay in the same or better condition than when it arrived.

Car Audio Installation
A few minutes at a touchless or coin-operated car wash can make a world of difference to the technician working on your vehicle.

Your Local Specialty Mobile Enhancement Retailer Says Thanks

It’s not easy to run a mobile enhancement business. Anything you as a client can do to help every project run smoothly and efficiently is genuinely appreciated. If there’s an audio component that needs to be replaced, if you’re interested in getting better sound from your stereo or are shopping for a remote car starter to make your vehicle more comfortable, please drop by one of the specialty mobile enhancement retailers near you. They’d be happy to help!

This article is written and produced by the team at www.BestCarAudio.com. Reproduction or use of any kind is prohibited without the express written permission of 1sixty8 media.

Filed Under: ARTICLES, Car Audio, RESOURCE LIBRARY

Car Audio Subwoofer Amplifier Strapping

Car Audio Subwoofer Amplifier Strapping

Let’s say that you are building a car audio system intended to produce as much bass as possible. In that case, you are going to need subwoofers capable of handling vast amounts of power. You’ll also need amplifiers capable of pushing those subwoofers to their limits. It’s not uncommon to see cars and trucks with more than 5,000 watts of power being sent to a single subwoofer. In these systems, it’s common to see a pair of amplifiers in what’s called a strapped configuration driving a single speaker. This article explains how the concept of strapping works to deliver massive amounts of voltage and current to your subs.

Strappable Car Audio Amplifiers

First and foremost, you’ll need to make sure that the subwoofer amplifiers you have chosen are capable of being strapped. Making this assumption without checking the owner’s manual can result in a lot of frustration. If you try to strap two amplifiers that aren’t designed for this application, you will damage one or both of them.

Second, don’t assume that a subwoofer amp model is strappable because it has a master/slave switch or an audio signal input and output separate from the standard RCA input connections. Those inputs and outputs may exist to make it easy to daisy-chain multiple amplifiers together, so only a single sensitivity control, crossover adjustment, infrasonic filter and remote bass boost setting works for several amplifiers.

Strapping a subwoofer amplifier involves using two identical amplifiers. The amps must have some sort of master/slave switch, and depending on their design, might also have a polarity or phase control switch. For our example, we’ll assume we are using a single voice coil high-performance subwoofer, just to keep things clear. In reality, as long as the load impedance doesn’t exceed the rated limits of the amplifier, you can wire up as many subwoofers as you want.

Amplifier Strapping
The ARC Audio X2 1100.1 amplifiers can be strapped together to deliver more than 2,200 watts into a single two-ohm voice coil.

Wiring Two Amplifiers to One Subwoofer

Image Caption: A pair of Rockford Fosgate Power T2500-1bdcp amplifiers wired to a single T3S2-19 19-inch Superwoofer. Individually, these amplifiers can produce at least 2,500 watts of continuous power into a 1 ohm load.

Amplifier Strapping
A common configuration when strapping a pair of car audio subwoofer amplifiers to a single subwoofer.

The drawing above shows the positive and negative speaker wiring, along with the required jumper wire that runs between the two amplifiers for this pair of Rockford Fosgate amplifiers. Your installer must obtain the correct strapping information from the amplifier manufacturer for the models you have chosen. Unfortunately, that information is not universal or transferable.

Aside from the right speaker wiring, these particular amplifiers have to be connected using a bd-Sync cable and a set of RCA cables. The top amplifier is set to master mode. This amplifier will be responsible for gain adjustment, low-pass crossover filtering, infrasonic filter selection and the remote Punch EQ control function. When set to slave mode, the second amp takes the audio signal from the output of the preamp stage of the first amp and feeds it to the output stage of the second amplifier. This configuration bypasses all the adjustments on the second amplifier.

For this configuration to work, the polarity of the second amplifier has to be inverted relative to the first. On the Rockford Fosgate amplifiers, this is achieved by setting the phase switch to 180 degrees. With this setting engaged, if the audio signal from the positive terminal of the first amplifier is increasing in voltage, the same terminal on the second amplifier will be going more negative. The result is twice as much voltage being applied to the subwoofer as would be available with a single amp, up to the current delivery capacity of the amp design. In the case of these two amplifiers, that would be 5,000 watts of power into this 2 ohm load.

Load Impedance Matters

Just as when your installer bridges a stereo amplifier to a subwoofer, the minimum load impedance decreases compared to when speakers are connected to a single channel. For the Rockford Fosgate amps, the minimum load impedance is 1 ohm when each amp is run independently. However, when two amplifiers are strapped to a single subwoofer, the minimum load impedance is 2 ohms.

The minimum load impedance is cut by half because the power production attempts to quadruple. Allow us to explain.

If a single T2500-1bdcp can produce 2,500 watts of power into a 1 ohm load, the maximum current it can supply to the sub would be 50 amps, and the voltage would be 50 volts. Strapping the amplifier now presents the subwoofer with up to 100 volts across the terminals. If we apply 100 volts to a 1 ohm subwoofer, the power would be 10,000 watts, and the load would draw 100 amps of current. While impressively powerful, these amplifiers can’t supply that much current, so we need to double the impedance to cut the load current in half. Delivering 100 volts across a 2 ohm load results in 50 amps of current flowing through the subwoofer.

Amplifier Strapping
A pair of T2500.1bdcp amplifiers from Rockford Fosgate can be strapped together to deliver more than 5,000 watts to a single two-ohm voice coil.

Things to Think about When Strapping Amplifiers

By the way, you will want your installer to run at least eight AWG power cables from the amps to the subwoofer. By way of an example, the voltage drop across 12 feet (6 feet for the positive lead and 6 feet for the negative) of eight-AWG copper wire that is passing 50 amps of current is 0.404 volts. So it wouldn’t be crazy to make two runs, or upgrade to six or four-AWG cable if it’s available to reduce that drop and deliver more power to your subwoofers.

Not to sound all preachy, but a potential of 100 volts is a very high voltage. The electrical outlet in the walls of our homes operates at 120 volts. We know it’s not safe to play with those circuits. Make sure your installer has secured all the electrical connections to your subwoofers properly. You don’t want a wire coming loose or shorting. You also don’t want anyone to be able to touch those terminals when music is playing. Quite simply, the results could be lethal.

Amplifier Strapping
Two Hertz HP3001 amplifiers can be strapped to a single subwoofer to produce more than 7,200 watts of power.

If you plan on competing in a car audio competition where maximum output matters, then look into car audio amplifiers that are strappable. This configuration delivers more voltage to your subwoofers and will increase the efficiency of your system compared to using low-impedance subwoofers. A specialist mobile enhancement retailer near you can help you choose amplifiers that will deliver thousands of watts to your subs. Drop in today to find out what’s available.

This article is written and produced by the team at www.BestCarAudio.com. Reproduction or use of any kind is prohibited without the express written permission of 1sixty8 media.

Filed Under: ARTICLES, Car Audio, RESOURCE LIBRARY

Your Installer Should Aim Your Car Audio Tweeters

Aim Tweeters

The staff here at BestCarAudio.com look at dozens of installation photos each day and continue to see tweeters that aren’t installed in a way that will maximize the listening experience. Our goal is to help consumers get the best performance possible from their car audio system upgrades, so we’re going to perform two tests to demonstrate the importance of understanding speaker dispersion patterns. This information is vital to optimizing the angle at which tweeters are installed in a car audio system.

Let’s Talk About Speaker Directivity, Again

The term directivity describes where the sound created by a speaker goes. For the purposes of this article, we are going to talk specifically about tweeters. (We’ll follow up soon with another article about midrange speakers and woofers.) A clear understanding of these concepts for all speaker sizes is crucial to proper car audio system design and installation.

As a caveat, we want to make it clear that directivity occurs with every type of speaker from every company at every price point. Inexpensive speakers are no different from those that cost thousands of dollars. For this test, we used a 1.5-inch audiophile-grade automotive tweeter. We choose this driver because we know it has a flat response and minimal distortion.

When we talk about speaker directivity, we need to compare the circumference of a speaker to a wavelength of sound. Wavelength is calculated by dividing the speed of sound (343 meters per second) by frequency. As an example, a 1 kHz tone has a wavelength of 34.3 centimeters or about 13.5 inches. A 40 hertz tone is 8.575 meters or 337.6 inches. The length of the pipes in a church organ is calculated using this wavelength information. The same holds for wind instruments like trombones or trumpets.

For speakers playing low frequencies relative to their circumference (and proportionately, their diameter), energy radiates forward, backward, sideways, up and down. You can think of this in the same way that light radiates from a candle. Candles aren’t brighter to the side or above. The light created by a candle is a point source that radiates outward and evenly in all directions.

At extremely high frequencies, sound radiates from the speaker similarly to light from a flashlight. If you are off to the side of a narrow-beam flashlight, you won’t be illuminated. For speakers, the same thing happens. Off to the side of a speaker, high-frequency information can be attenuated by 24 decibels or more compared to being directly in front of the speaker.

Speaker Diameter Affects Directivity

The directivity characteristics of a speaker depend on the size of the speaker cone or diaphragm. Keep in mind that the advertised “size” of a woofer or midrange doesn’t describe the diameter or circumference of the actual speaker cone. For example, a 6.5-inch speaker doesn’t have a cone with a diameter of 6.5 inches. It’s usually closer to five.

For our 1.5-inch tweeter, the diaphragm has a circumference of roughly 4.712 inches, which is the wavelength of 2.865 kHz tone. Each speaker has a unitless value known as ka. The ka value is the driver’s circumference divided by wavelength. Directivity can be described as multiples of ka. For our tweeter, ka is equal to 4.712 kHz; ka = 0.5 is 1.43 kHz; ka = 2 would be 5.7 kHz; and ka = 5 would be 14.3 kHz. Above a frequency where ka = 1, the speaker becomes increasingly directional. Below this frequency, sound radiates evenly in all directions — even behind the speaker.

Aim Tweeters
Approximation of Speaker Output at ka = 0.5.
Aim Tweeters
Approximation of Speaker Output at ka = 1.
Aim Tweeters
Approximation of Speaker Output at ka = 3.
Aim Tweeters
Approximation of Speaker Output at ka = 5.
Aim Tweeters
Approximation of Speaker Output at ka = 10.
Aim Tweeters
Approximation of Speaker Output at ka = 20.

The graphs above represent a generalization of how the output of a speaker changes as you move off-axis from being directly in front of the driver. As can be seen in ka values of 1 or less, you would hear almost as much of that frequency when standing behind a speaker as you would being directly in front of it. By the time ka = 3, you don’t hear anywhere near as much to the speaker’s side, and it only gets worse as frequency increases.

Directivity Testing

We set the tweeter up on a pedestal and took a series of measurements at 12-degree increments. The graph below shows how the tweeter output decreases at high frequencies as the listing angle increases.

Aim Tweeters
Frequency Response versus listening angle.

The red trace represents being directly in front of the speaker. Frequency response is within 5 dB from 1.5 kHz to above 20 kHz. Since we don’t have an anechoic chamber and are using windowed FFT measurements, these are adequately accurate results for this article.

The blue line has the microphone positioned 12 degrees to the side and directly on-center. At a meter, that’s a distance of only 20.9 centimeters or roughly 8.2 inches to the side. There are some minor changes in response up to 15 kHz of about 1 dB. At 20 kHz, the output has decreased by about five dB.

The dark green trace now has the microphone located 24 degrees off-axis. Overall output is down another dB or two between 3kHz and 15kHz, but the output at 20 kHz is down 13 dB. As we move farther and farther to the tweeter side, the output decreases more and more.

Think back to the math we did to calculate that ka = 1 frequency of 2.865 kHz. All the frequency response measurements are nearly identical at that frequency and below, and they start to separate more and more at multiples of that frequency. It’s almost like the math works!

Option 2 – The Tweeter Bounce

It’s not always physically easy to position a tweeter so it aims equally at the driver and passenger. One option in these instances is to install the tweeter near the base of the windshield and point it upward. The sound from the tweeter will bounce off the glass and radiate into the listening area.

While this sounds ideal, there are drawbacks. In this configuration, you effectively have two sound sources with different path lengths. This difference in path lengths will cause a certain amount of constructive and destructive interference called comb filtering.

The graph below shows the response of our audiophile tweeter at zero degrees in red, at 48 degrees in blue and measurement at 90 degrees off-axis in green. The fourth measurement is still at 90 degrees, but we have added a large piece of glass in front of the tweeter and angled it at 45 degrees. This last trace is in gray and shows us the measured response off of the glass.

Aim Tweeters
Measurements showing on and off-axis performance versus response reflected off a piece of glass.

Bouncing the tweeter output off our windshield analog, the response above 4 kHz is as good as if the tweeter were installed on-axis directly with the listening. But, unfortunately, everything comes with a price. We now have a dip of about 8 dB at 2.7 kHz. Yes, we could fix that with an equalizer, but that would require driving the tweeter with more than six times as much power around that frequency range. We could raise the crossover point to 3.5 kHz, but now we might have frequency response problems with the high-frequency information from the midrange speaker.

The Takeaway on Aiming Tweeters

If you want to hear all the music your stereo reproduces, then it would be ideal to be within plus or minus 15 degrees of on-axis with the tweeters in your car audio system. Any effort you might have put into reproducing the highest audio frequencies with better amplifiers or high-resolution audio players is lost if you are beyond that angle. You can also explore how your system behaves with the tweeters in the corners of the dash. You’ll sacrifice a bit of stage width and may have to deal with some frequency response issues at lower frequencies than sail panel locations, but it might require less fabrication.

We’d never argue that installers and technicians have different tuning and installation methods. With that said, and in spite of their best efforts, they can’t change the laws of physics. Choosing a tweeter location that has both of the tweeters pointed at the middle of the car between the driver and passenger’s head will ensure both can enjoy extended frequency response with good symmetry from both sides of the vehicle. Drop by your local specialty mobile enhancement retailer today to discuss how they can aim the tweeters in your car or truck for the best performance.

This article is written and produced by the team at www.BestCarAudio.com. Reproduction or use of any kind is prohibited without the express written permission of 1sixty8 media.

Filed Under: ARTICLES, Car Audio, RESOURCE LIBRARY

A Look at Series and Parallel Subwoofer Wiring

Woofer Wiring

It seems do-it-yourself installers have taken a liking to our discussion about wiring multiple subwoofers to a single amplifier. The popularity makes sense, since many car audio enthusiasts aren’t familiar with series and parallel wiring. A question came up on Facebook a few weeks ago asking if it was better to wire a pair of dual voice coil subwoofers in series with their coils in parallel or vice versa. We thought it might be fun to turn that question into yet another experiment and dive deep into the options of series-parallel wiring.

Wiring Dual Voice Coil Subwoofers

Unless your installer has access to some very low impedance subwoofers, most installations will see the subwoofers you have purchased wired in parallel. For example, say you’ve chosen a pair of 10-inch subs with dual 4-ohm coils. In that case, your installer could wire all four coils in parallel to present a 1-ohm load to a monoblock subwoofer amplifier. What if you’re after a solution that will offer the best sound quality possible, and you’ve chosen a two-channel Class-AB amp to power your subwoofers? In most cases, these amplifiers want to see a 4-ohm load when bridged. It’s not difficult to wire a pair of dual 4-ohm subwoofers to present this load, but there are a couple of options.

Series the Coils’ Woofers on Each Driver, Parallel the Subwoofers

Your installer’s first option is to wire the voice coils on each subwoofer in series. For our dual 4-ohm subwoofers, this wiring configuration would add the voice coil impedance on each driver to produce a nominal 8-ohm load. Next, your installer would wire each subwoofer in parallel with your amplifier to create a 4-ohm load.

Woofer Wiring
A pair of dual-voice-coil subwoofers wired with their coils in series and the subwoofers wired in parallel to the amplifier.

Parallel Each Woofer’s Coils, Series the Subwoofers

The second option is to wire the voice coils on each subwoofer in parallel, then wire the two subwoofers in series with each other to the amp. Each subwoofer would have a net impedance of 2 ohms, and wiring those loads in series would present our amplifier with a 4-ohm load.

Woofer Wiring
A pair of dual-voice-coil subwoofers wired with their coils in series and the subwoofers wired in parallel to the amplifier.

However, our subwoofers aren’t resistors. We talked about the reactive characteristics of speakers and subwoofers not long ago in this article. Since we’re dealing with inductance and capacitance along with the resistance of the voice coil, is there a chance that the two wiring options present different results in terms of performance? Let’s see what happens!

Let’s Do a Test!

We have a pair of 10-inch subwoofers that we’ve meant to install into the sound system in our office. Yes, we need the ability to reproduce 25 Hz with authority while watching Cleetus McFarland, AvE, Project Farm and bigclivedotcom on YouTube. OK, maybe we don’t NEED it, but we want it. As we described in our examples above, the subwoofers have dual 4-ohm voice coils, so they’ll be perfect candidates for our experiment.

First, we measured the Thiele/Small parameters of one subwoofer using our new Clio Pocket 1 portable measuring system. Next, we measured the sub with its voice coils wired in series and then again with the coils wired in parallel to generate the data below.

Woofer Wiring

Not surprisingly, the mechanical characteristics like resonance frequency (Fs) and compliance (Vas) didn’t change. As we expected, the electrical measurements like DC resistance, electrical Q, and inductance (at 1 kHz) did change.

Electromechanical Series-Parallel Wiring Results

Next, we wired the subwoofers together in the configurations we showed in the two diagrams at the beginning of the article and repeated the measurements to see what, if anything, had changed.

We’ll start by saying that the differences are minimal. The reality is, the system will work just fine wired either way. With that said, there are signs that wiring the coils on each sub in series and wiring the subwoofers in parallel is slightly beneficial.

Woofer Wiring
C-S W-P, coils in series with woofers in parallel; C-P W-S, coils in parallel with woofers wired in series.

If you look at the chart above, the DC resistance of the C-S W-P configuration is a little lower, as is the driver’s total Q (Qts). A lower Q-factor can mean less resonance at Fs and a more accurate bass response.

Sometimes an experiment yields earth-shattering results. Other times, the outcome is subtler or less controversial. Most professional installers wire coils in series and those subwoofers in parallel. If you need a hand choosing suitable subwoofers for your car audio system or help in wiring them, drop by your local specialty mobile enhancement retailer today.

This article is written and produced by the team at www.BestCarAudio.com. Reproduction or use of any kind is prohibited without the express written permission of 1sixty8 media.

Filed Under: ARTICLES, Car Audio, RESOURCE LIBRARY

What Is the Big Three Electrical Upgrade?

Big Three

We were recently at an event that was hosting a mobile audio system SPL competition. If you aren’t familiar with this sort of thing, it’s a contest to see who has the loudest stereo. We aren’t talking about cranking the dial on the factory radio. Instead, some of these folks build steel and concrete reinforced subwoofer enclosures and feed tens of thousands of watts to their subwoofers.

As you can imagine, delivering that much power requires significant electrical system upgrades. Many of these creations have multiple alternators and huge banks of batteries. If you’ve upgraded your car or truck with an amplifier that can produce hundreds of watts to your speakers, there’s a wiring upgrade called the Big Three that can improve the efficiency of your electrical system. Let’s look at what this upgrade is and why it’s a great starting point for a high-power car audio system.

How Automotive Charging Systems Work

The first thing you need to know about delivering power to your amplifier is that most of the energy will come from your alternator, not the battery. The battery is there to start the car. Once a vehicle is started, the alternator, which is mechanically driven by the engine, provides power to replenish the battery for the next start. The alternator also runs the computers, ignition system, fans and lights in your vehicle. Once you’ve started the vehicle, you could remove the battery and everything would, under normal conditions, operate just fine.

This scenario changes if you add a high-power amplifier to your vehicle. Say you have a 1,000-watt amplifier and you want to deliver that full amount of power to a few high-power subwoofers. At 13.8 volts, most amplifiers of this type will consume about 100 amps of current. If you have the engine running, headlights on and a climate control system in operation, your car or truck may be using 30 or 40 amps of current to power those systems. If the alternator is only rated to produce 80 amps, there certainly won’t be 100 amps left for your stereo.

The additional current the amplifier wants will come from the battery, albeit at a lower voltage. You will likely find that an amplifier rated for 1,000 watts at 14.4 volts can only produce about 800 watts at 12 volts without clipping the output signal and adding significant distortion.

Big Three
When upgrading, make sure the retailer working on your car or truck uses all-copper, full AWG-spec power and ground cables like those from Rockford Fosgate.

How To Make the Most of Your Alternator

The first step in optimizing the electrical system in a car or truck is to reduce waste. In this case, waste is the power converted to heat because of resistance in cables and connections. First, have a look at your alternator and battery. How large are the wires running to and from them? Unless you have a big truck with a high-output alternator, chances are that the wiring is 4 or maybe even as small as 6-AWG.

Big Three
Aftermarket alternators like those from Ohio Generator can produce over 350 amps of current. They are going to need significant wiring to supply large amplifiers.
Big Three
Is a single run of 0-AWG power cable enough for almost 400 amps of current from a Singer alternator? Likely not.

Please make no mistake about it, the company that built your car or truck deliberately chose the smallest, lightest and least expensive wire that would allow the vehicle to function reliably. They had no intention of providing conductors that could handle two to three times what the alternator was rated for.

The Wiring Upgrades that Make the Difference

The Big Three upgrade involves adding to or replacing the existing conductors with larger, high-quality wires. The upgrades in the Big Three are:

  • The run from the alternator chassis to the negative terminal of the battery.
  • The run from the output of the alternator to the positive terminal of the battery.
  • The ground connection from the negative terminal of the battery to the chassis of the vehicle.
Big Three
A representation of the wires that need upgrading to complete the Big Three.
Big Three
It’s not unreasonable to run multiple cables to the alternator to optimize power delivery to numerous electrical systems.

Depending on your vehicle, there may be other wires that can be upgraded at the same time. For example, if there is a main power distribution box under the hood, running new wire to it can help provide more voltage to the factory-installed electrical and electronic components in your vehicle.

Big Three
Two runs of 4-AWG power wires feed the factory fuse block in this Jeep Grand Cherokee.

Another upgrade you may want to make at the same time is replacing the battery terminals. Some factory-installed terminals are notoriously flimsy. If you’re demanding significant current from the battery, then optimizing each component along the way only makes sense.

Big Three
Stamped steel battery terminals don’t provide much room for upgrade.
Big Three
High-quality plated brass terminals like these from Audison Connection allow your installer to maximize current transfer from the battery.

Is the Big Three Enough?

In 2012, we wrote an article about upgrading the stock electrical system wiring in modern cars and trucks. Even though it was a decade ago, new vehicles at the time were being constructed out of materials like QuietSteel and aluminum, and some companies had started using adhesives instead of spot welds to bond unibody panels together. All of these advances in vehicle assembly work against our desire to deliver large amounts of current to an amplifier, especially when we want to use the body as the ground return path.

Power delivery from the positive terminal of the alternator is as important as the ground connection to the chassis and battery. If the current can’t flow through both, you are wasting energy by transforming it into heat. Upgrading and adding grounds with the Big Three is a start. If you are serious about optimizing your electrical system, then you’ll want to add a ground wire from the battery or alternator directly to your amplifier. Back in 2012, we called this the Big Four.

Big Three
Having a ground wire run from the battery or alternator to the ground location of your amplifier can dramatically improve current flow.

Full disclosure: This wasn’t our idea. The first we heard of running a dedicated ground wire was when we were checking out Precision Power’s fleet of Chevrolet Suburban demo vehicles back in the ’90s. The topic came up again when Ford introduced QuietSteel in the F-150 vehicles, and companies were having problems with amplifiers failing because of low voltages. As a solution, JL Audio suggested adding what they called a parallel ground. This wire would connect to a conventional ground point in the rear of the vehicle and run to the battery’s negative terminal or the alternator. A benefit of the parallel ground is that it offers less resistance than a dedicated ground wire or using the chassis. As a result, current can flow through both paths, reducing the voltage drop and improving system performance.

Optimize Your Vehicle Electrical System

If you’ve purchased a high-power amplifier for your vehicle, talk to your local specialty mobile enhancement retailer about upgrading all the wiring in the electrical system. Implementing an upgrade like the Big Three or, better yet, the Big Four will allow the amplifier to produce more power and allow the system to play louder with improved reliability and efficiency.

This article is written and produced by the team at www.BestCarAudio.com. Reproduction or use of any kind is prohibited without the express written permission of 1sixty8 media.

Filed Under: ARTICLES, Car Audio, RESOURCE LIBRARY

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