Trayson's adventures in stereo upgrades

[xBabyJesus]

Looks good Trayson. I'm doing the EXACT same upgrade only using (2) 900.4's and (1) 1000.1 Did you do 1/0 to the dist. block and 4ga to the amps? I haven't picked dist blocks yet.

[trayson]

Looks good Trayson. I'm doing the EXACT same upgrade only using (2) 900.4's and (1) 1000.1 Did you do 1/0 to the dist. block and 4ga to the amps? I haven't picked dist blocks yet.

Well, I had to get this done during a couple evenings of time off the water, so I used the materials I had on hand. Down the road I intend on using the 1/0 to go from the perko to the dist block, and then 4 gauge to the amps, but for now it's 4 gauge for everything. My two batteries are wired together and to the perko switch with 4 gauge currently, so if it's only 4 from the battery to the perko, it seems like the bottleneck is there before going from the perko to the distro block.

The amps are pretty damn efficient. One thing I was surprised at is the fact that in the owners manual for all three amps, they are only spec'd to need 8 gauge to wire the power/ground of each amp. So that gave me at least some degree of comfort level that 4 gauge would get me my for now.

That said, the distro blocks I bought were both 1/0 in and 4 gauge out. I really like the one off Ebay I got that has the voltage display built into it. Very nice to know how much power is making it to your amps. http://www.ebay.com/itm/321224853907

I took the boat out on Saturday and it performed awesome. I was super happy with how efficiently the amps ran. I was in the party cove and was throttling the stereo pretty close to full tilt for about an hour an 45 minutes straight. The only time the boat was running was when I idled for a few minutes to move to another part of the cove we were in. So almost the whole time was engine off with the cabins and subs rocking hard and the towers were between 1/2 and 3/4 on the WS420SQ (3/4 on the tower knob is basically as high as I go with the towers). So the EQ had the subs at about 80% on the knob, the cabins were about half and the towers were between half and 3/4 with the main volume between 1/2 and 3/4. Again, 3/4 on the main volume and 3/4 on the tower knob is about as high as I can go w/o distorting.

The 900.4 is great so far. I would have went that direction, but for my Kicker 6500.2 six pack, I needed to go 2 channels at a 2 ohm load. So the 600.2 was my only real choice for that. what speakers are you going to be running with the new PPI amps? I wish the 900.4 was 2 ohm stable bridged or that I could do a 6-pack at 4 ohms or really I wish that PPI made a 900.2!!! But the 600.2 hasn't disappointed thus far. The whole system definitely sounds like it has a lot more midbass and I'm not exactly sure why aside from maybe I have the amps tuned differently.

But bottom line, I was able to get a TON more play time out of my system with no issues. Before I would have lost my 5-channel after like 30 to 60 minutes and it wouldn't have mattered if I had the boat running or not.

So yeah, if you're starting from scratch, by all means go with the bigger wire. it can't hurt and is always better to overbuild. But so far the 4 gauge seems to be performing okay.

[xBabyJesus]

I was thinking about swapping out my DBOT5 HLCDs for a pair of REV10's. I'm still rocking the kicker in-boats and they're doing ok so far. My stock infinite-baffle sub has got to go, for a sealed 12" I think. Maybe Sundown, or recycle one of my old Rockford RFP-1212's

I priced out 0-GA to distro blocks with fuses and it gets stupid expensive pretty fast. Like WHOA. I have some 2GA from an old install that I might re-use, have to see what else is in my leftovers box

[trayson]

I was thinking about swapping out my DBOT5 HLCDs for a pair of REV10's. I'm still rocking the kicker in-boats and they're doing ok so far. My stock infinite-baffle sub has got to go, for a sealed 12" I think. Maybe Sundown, or recycle one of my old Rockford RFP-1212's

I priced out 0-GA to distro blocks with fuses and it gets stupid expensive pretty fast. Like WHOA. I have some 2GA from an old install that I might re-use, have to see what else is in my leftovers box

Yeah, no one would ever complain about a pair of REV10's (aside from headroom). if you go that route, your 900.4 would be future proof.

I agree. the infinite baffle sucks donkey. I'd lose that as soon as you can, especially if you already have spare this and that. I wonder if you could stuff a pair of sealed 12's in an XLV??? I know I fit the pair of sealed 10's in mine.

With the PPI Amps, I think that 1/0 would be fine for the trunk line from the perko to the distro, then 4 gauge from the distro to the amp. Likewise for the ground. 2 would be fine too if you have that laying around. But running 4 from the distro a short run to the amp seems legit, especially when the amps say to use 8ga. I found tons of inexpensive options for distros that are 1/0 to 4. My fuse is separate (reused what was installed in my boat). it's two posts with the fuse in the middle, installed on the feed line between the amp and perko.

[MLA]

One word of caution when a "car" amp manufacturer has a suggested power cable ga. This is likely based on the assumption that the amp will be an a road vehicle where the steel chassis is an entire ground plane, therefor, the ground cable can be about 24" or less. In a boat, the battery is the only ground spot for amps. That can be 20+ feet away, depending on the boat. Thats 40ft of power cable that plays into the equation. Do your own math for your particular setup, dont go by some audio clearing house online car calculator.

[trayson]

Good caution. Thanks. I'm certainly not going with "just" the 8 that they recommended. I'm doing 4ga for around 10 feet power, 10 feet ground. Eventually I will swap out to thicker wire from the distro block to the perko and to the battery ground. So my short term plan doubles their reco, and my long term plan exceeds it by an even greater margin.

That was my line of thinking.

[xBabyJesus]

Are you not using a battery bank? My amps are about 18" away from their batteries, behind the observer seat.

[trayson]

Are you not using a battery bank? My amps are about 18" away from their batteries, behind the observer seat.

My power wire is attached to the Perko switch. it is mounted under the observer seat on the inside seatbase wall. The run goes from the perko, up and over the top of that storage compartment, then down to the amps. I could shorten it by going along the floor, but I'd just as soon not have anything on top of my wires. so a few feet of extra length is fine. My batteries are on the right hand side of the storage behind the observer seatback. The ground wire does the same up and over, but of course terminates at the negative of one of the batteries. I have two batteries right now. Might add a 3rd eventually, but we'll see.

[trayson]

Note to self... I need to update this thread.

I've since went from the kicker 6pack to Wetsounds rev410s. I've added another PPI P600.2. I've added a 3rd Infinity reference 10" sub. I've added the Exile BT Controller. I've added 2 more Polk Cabin speakers. I've swapped in lots of 0 gauge and 4 gauge OFC copper wire. I've added a 3rd Group 29 battery. Good times!

[Skee907]

Any tips on how you have your multi-battery bank setup? Looking to add a second battery on mine this summer with my audio upgrades (still a ton of questions on all of that). Do you have your amps under the drivers side bulkhead or under the observers seat storage with the battery bank?