Odd subwoofer "breathing" when sound stops should I be worried?

[gamehawk55 10+ year member]

I have had subs do this before and it came down to bad rca's. They were picking up a signal from something. I am not saying your rca's are bad but it could be the culprit.

Well I'm gonna try what Jdawg suggested and try running my Ipod directly off the amp with a 1ft RCA cable and if the problem goes away then I guess I might have to order some really high quality cables. Hopefully it's just the RCA's. But I should mention that my W7 was hooked up with 2 different sets of RCAs and did the same thing. So chances of having 2 shi**y sets of RCAs is prolly pretty slim right? The old set are just streetwires brand.

 

[gamehawk55 10+ year member]

You will probably have to crank the gain cause of the lower voltage but it shouldn't matter if its doing it at all volumes

I don't think it does it at all volumes. At least not that I can notice. I only notice it when the subs have been hit with quick high excursion notes or after the high excursion produced by the test tones ends suddenly.

 

[sbarber82 10+ year member]

hmm.. Maybe the output from the HU is doing it.. I think if you run the test straight from the iPod and it stops then you know it has something to do with rca/hu signal

 

[gamehawk55 10+ year member]

Well I think I'm off for the night. GF has been wanting to watch a movie and I've been sitting here talkin to you guys for the last hour or more now haha. I'll try a couple things tomorrow and see if I can find anything and also will take a video of the effect and see what you guys have to say about it when you actually see it.

 

[jdawg 5,000+ posts]

IIf it stops then its the rcas or deck, new rcas are cheap enough to swap anyways. If its still there then its the amp or grounds. Does it only do it with volume cranked all the way?

 

[gamehawk55 10+ year member]

IIf it stops then its the rcas or deck, new rcas are cheap enough to swap anyways. If its still there then its the amp or grounds. Does it only do it with volume cranked all the way?

It's not possible for me to crank the volume all the way due to the Monsoon amp powering the fronts/rears. They get really loud at lower volumes so my max tolerable volume on the HU is usually 17/35. So it's Definitely not clipping from the HU (SMD DD1 confirms that). HU doesn't clip till volume 29+

 

[jdawg 5,000+ posts]

Do your ipod thing then report back lol

 

[gamehawk55 10+ year member]

hmm.. Maybe the output from the HU is doing it.. I think if you run the test straight from the iPod and it stops then you know it has something to do with rca/hu signal

Alright hopefully some people are still checking this thread because I did a couple vids today showing the "breathing" effect to show exactly what I'm talking about so everyone can understand what I'm talking about now haha.

First video is the amp running directly off my Galaxy S III playing a -5db 40hz tone which I retuned the amp with the SMD specifically for running this track off the S III.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/rz3yo0hmolk71pt/VID_00000004.mp4

Second video is everything hooked back up the way it was and retuned back to -5db with the SMD for the Head Unit. You can see the subs do the "re-align" in this video at about the 1:05 mark.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ew3jyb9gcxux22v/VID_00000005.mp4

Check out the vids and let me know what you guys think and if I should be worried about damaging anything.

 

[sbarber82 10+ year member]

I wouldn't worry about it brotha, it doesn't look like what I was thinking. Mine would actually move all the way out and back in once or twice before it stopped. Your's look like just a slight re alignment. I don't think you have any problem after watching the vids

 

[gamehawk55 10+ year member]

I wouldn't worry about it brotha, it doesn't look like what I was thinking. Mine would actually move all the way out and back in once or twice before it stopped. Your's look like just a slight re alignment. I don't think you have any problem after watching the vids

Ok good well that makes me feel better then. I do have another Q though. After watching those vids and seeing the excursion on that 40hz tone. Considering that is only aprox. 500W to each sub do you think those subs should actually be moving that much with only 1000W total? Cuz I know these things will take over 1000W EACH. But wouldn't 2000W end up making them excurt almost twice as much as seen in that video?

Basically what I'm asking is does that look like max excursion or am I not even close to maxxing out these subs yet? I'm just worried about them excurting too far because of what my old W7 would do with hard sharp excursion (pop noise)

 

[sbarber82 10+ year member]

They will take 1k but I wouldn't go much farther.. I think they look like they are moving pretty good. Are they louder than the w7?

 

[gamehawk55 10+ year member]

They will take 1k but I wouldn't go much farther.. I think they look like they are moving pretty good. Are they louder than the w7?

Oh GOD YES. haha. What a question to ask lol. I was a NOOB for wasting my money on that W7 all those years ago. Not to say that the W7's are crap subs because they're not. It was a very good sub and hit nearly as loud as these 2 8's, but the SQ with these 8's is much better and the beats on a lot of metal hits ALOT harder on the 8's than the W7. And the W7 sounded really sloppy on quick beats in the HO box.

And with the cost of a W7 in the HO box ($1000) it's just not worth it, when you could spend the same money and get 4 of the v2's and absolutely obliterate a W7 lol.

So when I upgrade my amp situation and actually feed them 1000W each, is it actually a very noticeable difference going from 1000W to 2000W? I notice you have 4 of them on a 4000W amp so obviously your gonna be a HE"LL of a lot louder than me on 2000W. Just want to know what kinda difference I should expect from the output. Is 3db really that noticeable?

 

[sbarber82 10+ year member]

I don't what know what you would gain.. I think if you went to 1k each you might want to think about building a new box and tuning it around 30hz with more port area. I am happy with the 4 but at times I feel like it should be louder. At the moment I have a IA Death Penalty/PSI 21" sub in a 10ft^3 box sitting on top of my seats in my crew cab and it is so much louder than the 8's I can't describe. I think I need to build a bigger box tuned lower for my 8's to get the output I think I should be getting.

 

[gamehawk55 10+ year member]

I don't what know what you would gain.. I think if you went to 1k each you might want to think about building a new box and tuning it around 30hz with more port area. I am happy with the 4 but at times I feel like it should be louder. At the moment I have a IA Death Penalty/PSI 21" sub in a 10ft^3 box sitting on top of my seats in my crew cab and it is so much louder than the 8's I can't describe. I think I need to build a bigger box tuned lower for my 8's to get the output I think I should be getting.

I don't know if you will ever get the output of the 4 8's to be louder than that 21". Even with 4 8's the cone area of the 21" is nearly DOUBLE what 4 8's cone area is. I think that 21 is always gonna be louder. Unless you upgrade to 6 8's maybe //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/biggrin.gif.d71a5d36fcbab170f2364c9f2e3946cb.gif

 

[gamehawk55 10+ year member]

I think the max I will ever be able to go in my trunk would be 4 sa-8v2's. Box wouldn't be able to be much bigger than spec (0.75ft^3 per sub) but it would still slam like a hot da'mn I'm sure haha.