My system is finally up and running! I've been workin on it the last 5 days straight, all day everyday. Everything is working smoothly and the sound is so much better than it was before. Yitzac1990, thank you so much for ALL the help you gave me. I look back at everything on the three pages of this thread and I cant believe how much I've learned. I couldn't have done this without all that guidance. Whenever I move to my next car I'm gonna transfer everything over and I already know what head unit I want, and I made sure it has 6 RCA jacks. haha That input connector was a pain. Thanks for everything.

 

love it when things work out!

 

This is a question for the future. I saw a head unit in a magazine that I really like and found it online for $250. But I also found another one from the same brand that is the EXACT same. Design, features, everything! Its $60 cheaper and the only differences are the expensive one has HD radio(which I dont absolutely have to have) and the preouts for RCAs are 4V while they are only 2.5V on the cheaper one. Like I said, I'm not bent on having HD radio but I'm wondering how much the voltage for the preouts would affect the performance of my amplifiers. If it would make a difference I hope its a big one for $60 more in price. Thanks again.

 

Let me try to explain this as easily as possible. 2 volts is basic, 4 is standard for a good unit, sometimes you'll see units with 5 volts. Eclipse units have 8V pre-outs. The eclipse head units are amazing. I have one in my rsx and I wouldnt trade it for the world. In short, more voltage=less noise and cleaner sound.

 

haha but i doubt you will hear the difference between 2v and 8v on his system....really, the voltage means that your amps will have more potential to get louder. thats why you cant hook up speaker wires to low-input (RCAs) connectors on an amplifier.......thats like telling your amp your radio has 12v pre-outs and would make it be VERY loud even at lower settings. a line output converter lowers this voltage between the speaker wire and RCAs. thats usually what the "gain" or "level" setting does on an amp. the higher the pre-out voltage, the lower you have to turn that setting to get them to sound equal. for example, if you have 2v now, and have ur amp set to how you like it volume wise, and you switch to a radio with 4v pre-outs, the same system, without messign with any settings, will be twice as loud with the new radio. idk if you have ever seen higher end amps, but the "level" adjustment has numbers going in reverse order, starting with usually 9v at the lowest setting, going down to 0.2v at the highest setting. pretty much, if you have a 1v pre-out, you set this level really high to compensate for the loss in RCA voltage. they also make adjustable line output converters, where you can adjust the "pre-out" voltage for the RCAs.

hope that helped haha

but yes, the higher the pre-out voltage, the better quality and louder it will be

 

Yeah, that helps. And with the setup I have now I put the input control at 3V (in a 3-12V range with the high level input connector; .3-6V with RCAs) cause I wasnt sure what it meant and I wanted to be conservative. But after I saw how much of a difference the input sensitivity made on my subs when I had it tuned on the amp, I wonder if I'm missing anything on my speakers. Should I have this adjusted?

 

what are you talking about that you should have adjusted? lol once you get a new head unit, use RCAs and just completely eliminate the line out converter, then you can adjust the input according to what the voltage of the new radio's RCAs is

 

I'm talking about the input level setting on my speaker amp. Should I just leave it alone?

But as far as the new head unit, the difference between 2.5V preouts and 4V preouts would be negligible?

 

you should match the input sensitivity on the amp as closely to whatever it is i think......i have never used high level input like you, try reading about it in the sub manual lol......or the ol' fashioned way, turn it down all the way, turn ur system on to 75% volume, and turn the amp up until its at where you want it

and as far as sound quality for ur system, yes. my radio has 4v pre-outs, but thats because i had a 1600 watt RMS system geared for SPL, so some extra quality would be good haha