can someone help me setup my setup?

[Stealth5]

im sick of the stock radio and im planning on getting a new system. i picked out some stuff on crutchfield but im a moron and dont know anything about compatability, i wanted a deck, new speakers all around, and 2 8inch subs or 1 10 inch sub, heres what i picked out

Deck: Kenwood KDC-X469, it says 3 prs. preamp outs. 2pr for speakers and 2 mroe for subs

Subs:2 fosgate HE RFP3408 8's or 1 infiniti 10.1 + 1 hatch

Speakers: i dont even know the sizes, but im sure theyre all similair.

Amp: what kind of amp would i need, i was hoping to only have to buy 1, so that may influence my subwoofer choice. also, i dont really want to have to fool with caps.


can anyone help me out or offer any suggestions.

im sick of talking to people that say "oh, that brand sucks, get this" and thats the only kind of poeple i can talk to in person

 

[chuyler1]

I'm fairly new to this board but I'm a regular at www.sounddomain.com (user #498 out of something like 40,000). Everyone is going to have their own opinion but here's mine anyway.

First, decide whether you really need rear speakers. Not upgrading them will leave money to spend on other things. Many competition installs only use speakers up front to produce better imaging. However, if you want rear speakers thats fine too, just make that decision now. Do a search on sounddomain for rear speakers and see what others have to say.

It sounds like you picked out a decent head unit. You will get similar sound quality out of almost all but the very top end head units so its just a matter of what options you want. (eg mp3 playback, digital signal processing, etc)

Next, choose an amp. If you decided to go with rear speakers you should look for 5 channel amps, that way each speaker gets its own channel. The subs will be powered by a special sub channel on the amp and it doesn't matter whether you have one or two. More on that later. If you decide to axe the rear speakers, a nice 4 channel amp that puts out at least 50-75 watts RMS per channel will do for starters. You can bridge the rear channels into a single powerful channel for your sub(s)

Next is speakers. Personally, I will not buy anything that is not a component set with seperate crossovers. However these cost more than your average coaxial speakers found in Crutchfield. They are worth every bit of the price. If you don't have a place to mount the tweeters (not sure what car you have) then look for a set that allows you to mount them coaxially (on top of the woofer).

Then there is your sub(s). 2 8"s or 1 10" sounds good. One thing to pay attention to is the impedence (ohms). To get the most out of your amp you want to run it at 2ohms (some amps can go lower than this). If you are bridging the amp you should have a total load of 4 ohms (2 ohms per channel)...
5channel amp with one sub channel -
1 sub, 4ohm DVC or 2ohm SVC
2 subs, 4ohm SVC
4channel amp with rear channels bridged -
1 sub, 4ohm SVC
2 subs, 4ohm DVC or 8ohm SVC

Don't forget you will need a box for the subs as well as a wiring kit for the amp. Crutchfield usually gives you the wiring harness for the head unit.