possible ICE - what do you think?

[clio-lane]

Trying to get my head round this whole ICE thing at the moment. Does this look like a reasonable set up? I don't want to butcher the car's interior really, apart from mounting a sub and amp in the boot.

Vibe SK50 components (in the door)
JBL GTO 75.4 amp

Audiobahn Dub 1200 sub (mounted cone down)
JBL GTO 1201 mono amp

I'll be keeping my Alpine 9874 headunit with 3 pairs of RCA outs.

Any advice welcome. I have around £500 to spend.

 

[bmh.01]

I've just installed one of those JBL 75.4 amps this afternoon and so far i'm totally impressed with it as a whole. Can't really comment on anything else though.

 

[Dink]

there are better speakers/subs out there tbh

 

[clio-lane]

such as....

 

[BRUN]

why do you want it arse out ?.......from what ive read Audiobahn stuff just looks good and better can be had for the cash

 

[clio-lane]

why do you want it arse out ?.......from what ive read Audiobahn stuff just looks good and better can be had for the cash

I want one that looks good with it's 'arse out'. Anything else you can recommend?

 

[chiefsilverback]

I've just upgraded the ICE in my Trophy, replacing the front components, ignoring the existing rears and then mounting a pair of 6"x9"s on a stealth shelf.

The components are in, as is the wiring for the rears, but I don't get the shelf until saturday...

Just the difference in upgrading the front components is unbelievable! I would suggest that you possibly tried a phased approach, and spend more on each item and then see what you need to add?

I've used and Alpine CDE-9850Ri head unit, and Infinity speakers. The speakers were on sale but the original price was £250 for the components and £180 for the 6"x9"s.

My thinking is that more money spent of on better speakers could well negate the requirement for amps which are a pain to install given you need to run a large power feed direct from the battery etc...

Are you planning on fitting yourself, or are you hoping to get that as part of your £500?

It took me 2 days to install my speakers, and in all honesty I don't think any of my friends would even attempt it (they'd ask me to help/do it). So unless your confident and very practical I would be wary of doing it myself.

 

[BRUN]

My thinking is that more money spent of on better speakers could well negate the requirement for amps which are a pain to install given you need to run a large power feed direct from the battery etc...

not really, comps that are £100+ usually will take 80W RMS or more, no head unit is going to come anywhere near that, meaning the speakers will be underpowered, you dont really realise how good your speakers can be until you amp them, even off a small low power amp, the difference is quite substantial

 

[theduck]

Jsut a quick lesson for you all, building any system should follow a certain structure, this structure is as fllows:-

Best Source - Head unit in this case
Good Amp
Speakers
Cabling

so if you had a £1000 punds to spend on a system, and you just wanted front components and a sub, my budgets would be like this:-

£400 HU
£300 Amp
£200 Speakers and sub
£100 cabling - yes 100 notes on bits of cable, you'd be very surprised what difference this can make!

 

[hydeyho]

Brun's right, any decent set of components require an amp as a h/u will not have anywhere near enough power to get close to the true potential of the components. You would be better off spending slightly less on componenets in order to purchase an amp when working to a budget. I've got a Phoenix Gold Xenon sub 'arse out' in mine and I think it looks fantastic. More understated than the Audiobahn subs, and personally, look better too >

Excuse the poor quality pics. The sound quality is also great, imo it sounds better than the JL sub I had before hand.

 

[BRUN]

very true, people always forget the cabling costs, my RCA leads are £70 each, and ive got 2 of em as they are only 2 way

http://www.caraudiodirect.co.uk/product_info.php?products_id=1801

 

[hydeyho]

Sound deadening is important too, especially in the Clio lol

 

[chiefsilverback]

I won't even enter into the cable quality discussions/arguements. Needless to say there are a lot of people in the audophile world who are of the opinion that all of these 'double twisted, platinum infused, diamond plated' cables are nothing more than marketing schpiel and you can get the same quality as a £100 manufactured interconnect from a couple of pounds home made....

I can make you a true 75ohm RCA-RCA, BNC-BNC or RCA-BNC to your desired length eg. 4 metres for considerably less than QED or IXOS would charge you for the same product.

Similarly with speakers, 2.5mm twin and earth power cable makes a great speaker cable at 27p/m or if you want to splash out, braid three CAT5 cables together for around £1/m....

Honestly, you don't need to spend stupid money on cabling, especially in a car!!!

On the subject of amping, my Alpine headunit driving the Infinity components goes far louder than I could ever listen to so I don't really see any benefit from installing amps. The step up from the standard system is so vast that anything else would be negligable!

 

[clio-lane]

I've already spent around £80 on the rca cable (no connectors) for the car, as the interior is out at the moment I wanted to get the decent cables in ready for any ICE work.
I've just bought a set of Boston Acoustic SX55 components, for the doors. Came out top in the Fast Car 5.25" survey, and I've only paid £80 inc UPS del from the states.
Just need a sub now for around £150-200

 

[hydeyho]

The Boston SX55 aren't actually components, they are listed as full-range componenets for some reason, but they are basically 3way coaxials. In your budget, you would have been far better off going for these > http://www.caraudiodirect.co.uk/product_info.php?products_id=3855

 

[theduck]

I won't even enter into the cable quality discussions/arguements. Needless to say there are a lot of people in the audophile world who are of the opinion that all of these 'double twisted, platinum infused, diamond plated' cables are nothing more than marketing schpiel and you can get the same quality as a £100 manufactured interconnect from a couple of pounds home made....

Honestly, you don't need to spend stupid money on cabling, especially in a car!!!

On the subject of amping, my Alpine headunit driving the Infinity components goes far louder than I could ever listen to so I don't really see any benefit from installing amps. The step up from the standard system is so vast that anything else would be negligable!

Your just wrong, they benefit of these 'fancy cables' is more then apparent if you try them in a blind listening test, and you most definately cant make them for a couple of quid at home.

As for amping, a seperate amp is NOT just to make it louder, a more powerfull/better quality amp will have better control over the speakers resulting in less distortion meaning better sound quality.

 

[chiefsilverback]

Your just wrong, they benefit of these 'fancy cables' is more then apparent if you try them in a blind listening test, and you most definately cant make them for a couple of quid at home.

I could point you to hundreds of discussion/arguments on audiophile websites where people running over £10,000 of kit, who have used £500 inter-connects, will openly state that you can get the same quality for a few quid if you're prepared to do the work....

These guys will argue down to the physical properties of electron flows and the one thing that they all wish for is the a recognised body would do a proper blind listening test.

No magazine is ever going to do it because itfthe results prove that there is no need to spend more than £20 on a cable, they will loose massive advertising revenue from the cable companies!!!

And as I said these are guys running mega high-end kit, not cheap speakers mounted into a tin box with the acoustic properties of a bag of bolts....

 

[theduck]

I could point you to hundreds of discussion/arguments on audiophile websites where people running over £10,000 of kit, who have used £500 inter-connects, will openly state that you can get the same quality for a few quid if you're prepared to do the work....

These guys will argue down to the physical properties of electron flows and the one thing that they all wish for is the a recognised body would do a proper blind listening test.

No magazine is ever going to do it because itfthe results prove that there is no need to spend more than £20 on a cable, they will loose massive advertising revenue from the cable companies!!!

And as I said these are guys running mega high-end kit, not cheap speakers mounted into a tin box with the acoustic properties of a bag of bolts....

Mate I HAVE RUN blind listening tests on systems from a few hundred pounds upto £100,000 conclusion was 98% of people listed cables in price order, 2% listed them slightly wrong.

 

[clio-lane]

The Boston SX55 aren't actually components, they are listed as full-range componenets for some reason, but they are basically 3way coaxials. In your budget, you would have been far better off going for these > http://www.caraudiodirect.co.uk/product_info.php?products_id=3855

By component I assume that the tweeter comes away from the woofer, which they do on the SX55. Can't see how it's a 3 way, thought it only had the woofer and tweeter:S

 

[Dink]

the boston speakers are co-axials and not really the best choice(by design) but they are a good co-ax

the rainbows would have been better

sub maybe?

 

[BRUN]

On the subject of amping, my Alpine headunit driving the Infinity components goes far louder than I could ever listen to so I don't really see any benefit from installing amps. The step up from the standard system is so vast that anything else would be negligable!

no really, it wouldnt be, ive got an Alpine unit and for the past 6 months ive had my comps running from it, finally done my amp and the difference is amazing, its not all about volume, its about bringing out the minor details in tracks, its a whole different experience

if you have comps running off a headunit then you may aswell have bought coax in my experience and saved some cash aswell, your not using your components properly, your not getting the value out of them of the price paid, not even close

i presume you have the Kappa series, given the price you have listed, these do have a good sensitivity spec so they may sound better than most running from a head unit, however, they are still going to waste being run from the H/U......you may aswell have bought some around £100 as you probably wouldnt notice any difference with the power they are getting......about 20W RMS

 

[Dink]

no really, it wouldnt be, ive got an Alpine unit and for the past 6 months ive had my comps running from it, finally done my amp and the difference is amazing, its not all about volume, its about bringing out the minor details in tracks, its a whole different experience

if you have comps running off a headunit then you may aswell have bought coax in my experience and saved some cash aswell, your not using your components properly, your not getting the value out of them of the price paid, not even close

bi-amping from the hu aint bad and only works with comps

 

[chiefsilverback]

you may aswell have bought some around £100 as you probably wouldnt notice any difference with the power they are getting......about 20W RMS

They are Kappas (50.5c) but I did only pay £100 for them, so all in I haven't done too badly, plus a pair of Reference 6"x9" (£80) to put on a stealth shelf....

You've just got to love a sale.....

At the end of the day I'm really not overly bothered with the hi-fi delivery of the sound, as long as it sounds reasonable and the speakers can handle a reasonable frequency range then I'm happy. With out spending a fortune on soundproofing in the Trophy, you're fighting a loosing battle against all the other noises from the car and I'd rather be able to hear a certain amount of that, with a nice solid musical backing track!

 

[hydeyho]

You've just got to love a sale.....

Not when they sell you 6x9s :S

 

[Dink]

Not when they sell you 6x9s :S

lmfao

 

[Russ.]

please dont shout at me....but

ive heard that 2.5mm twin and earth (the stuff ur sockets are wired with at home) is better than alot of the cable u can buy...how true is this? obv the earth u wudnt use.

 

[Dink]

please dont shout at me....but

ive heard that 2.5mm twin and earth (the stuff ur sockets are wired with at home) is better than alot of the cable u can buy...how true is this? obv the earth u wudnt use.

mate i'd guess that it would be pretty good as it is a solid conductor

you could use the earth just ground it one end and it should act as a sort of drain wire for crosstalk:S

 

[chiefsilverback]

Which cnut decided that 'backspace' could be used to skip back a page in web browsers!?!?!?! I've written 2 replies so far and both times hit either 'backspace' or the stupid fcuking 'page back' button that some t*sser at IBM saw fit to place next the to up cursor key!!!!!!!!!! :quiet:

Ok, with my rant out of the way I will try again and either succesfully post, or hurl my laptop out of the window and watch with glee as it explodes on the road 4 floors below me.....

So, T & E does make a reasonably good speaker cable as it is (as Dink says) a good solid conductor, with a large cross sectional area, although cable lovers will argue that issue with single large coppers cores is that you get 'skin effect' whereby the high frequencies travel along the outer 'skin' of the copper faster than the bass frequencies!?!?!?!

They have a much harder time arguing against CAT5.

Simply take 3 lengths of CAT5, braid them together and then split the twisted pairs within the cable into 2 groups (CAT5 conductors are colour coded with each pair comprising a solid colour and a broken colour). You would use the solid colours for one polarity and the broken colours for the other....

QED has a rather expensive speaker cable, Genisis Silver Spiral, which is actually, when you look at it almost identical in structure to CAT5!!!!

The difference is CAT5 speaker cable will cost somewhere around £2/m (only if you pay too much for the CAT5) and Silver Spiral will cost £50 or £60 per metre.....

The same thing is true with inter-connects. What QED or IXOS or CHORD charge £40 or £50 for you can make with £4 of good quality coaxial cable (Canare, Beldin) and £8 of high quality connectors. Then its just a case of spending a little time stripping and soldering/crimping, and you will end up with a cable of equal or better quality.

I've done it, I'm hitting 'submit' and I'm going to a meeting, laptop still in one piece, just!

 

[BRUN]

yes but once its stripped, you have no shielding on it, so its at risk of picking up interference if near any other cables.........ive got speaker cables and RCA's right next to each other and ive not got even the slightest bit of pick up

 

[theduck]

those of you that think you can make good quality interconnects at home are just wrong. i cant be arsed to go through all the various arguments, but will just say if you listened to them in a blind test YOU WOULD hear the difference

 

[Dink]

i really don't believe the hype about all these exspensive cable

don't get me wrong they are important but mid range stuff is fine imho for interconnects

and speaker cable as long as it has the correct ccc it's all good

 

[theduck]

dink i promise you they can make a huge difference. yes its not worth it in a car, but if you've spent, say £5000 on a cd player, a £50 interconnect is just going to strangle the sound.

 

[Knightshade]

Hi All,
Thinking of putting together a reasonable ICE system for the car and was wondering what you all recommend for speaker cable and IC's and also why?
If i'm jumping in here I apologise but it seems relevent.
Cheers

 

[Dink]

IC's ???

 

[Knightshade]

Sorry, RCA's, interconnects.