Just finished installing a new amp and sub in a small truck box in the boot, and twice now my stock amp that's powering the stock front and rear speakers has clipped. I spliced into the X9331 connector, and I am using the cig lighter power in the boot as accessory power to turn on the amp. Also, I am running 10 gauge power, fused, from the battery.

Basically, I have my sub amp bridged, and set at the lowest possible setting, because it's still f'in loud with the stock amp running the fronts and rears. I have the bass set at 0. I tapped into the rear speakers to retain some ability to turn down the bass, and my fader is set at forward 4 (-4 on the dial).

When I have had the system volume around 65%, the I hear the tell tale signs of clipping, and I have to shut the car off in order for the sound to return.

It looks like many of you have a LOT better setups, running more power to your sub(s) but I haven't been able to find a thread or topic specific to an added amp that's run via the x9331 connector, clipping the stock speakers \ amp \ stereo.

One thing to note, it's not my aftermarket amp that's clipping, I believe it's both the front and rear speakers \ amp, as I am losing all sound. I plugged in an mp3 player to the aftermarket amp, via stereo to rca cable, and had sound come thru my sub.

Any ideas?

 

Stock speakers are your problem. They can't take the power of the stock amp. My stock door woofers would start crackling at midvolume. I replaced the stockers with my MB Quarts and haven't had any problems since (other than trying to feed them frequencies under 30hz LOL)

 

david is correct on this the OEM speakers are crap and have very poor efficiency. Just about any speaker woudl do a better job than what is in the car from the factory.

Get some decent door speakers and you will hear a world of difference.

 

I am not sure the stock speakers would cause the amp/music to shut down like i think he is saying is happening.

There is a lot more going on here that may need to be clarified...

Do you know the difference between the sound of an amp clipping and speakers reaching there xmax?

What is the amp you are using to power the sub? And is it rated to handle the bridged mono load that the sub is showing it?

How is the amp grounded and where did you pull the remote turn on from?

 

Ya, this isn't stock speakers sounding like crap... well, it is, but that's not specifically what I was trying to put across.

The amp that I have installed is a Berlin Mobile Westex Nitro 1200w two channel amp. It's rated from 2 to 8 ohm, and is bridgeable. The amp itself is running great... but when the I have had the volume up around 70% ish, the stock amp clipped. The sound dies, and I can hear it faintly crackle away for about 2 seconds before there's no sound at all. It's the tell tale sign of an amp that clipped.

The volume was no where near full.

The amp is grounded in the small compartment on the right side of the boot, directly to the frame of the car. I drilled a small hole in the frame, cleaned the area of the rust proofing material so I could get a good, solid ground, and screwed the sub amp ground into place.

I am just wondering if the current that my amp is pulling via the x9331 connector is too great at higher volumes? I turned my bass level on the factory head unit down to -2 and fader set to forward 4, and set the amp output level to as low as possible in order to not have an overbearing amount of bass from the sub.

Remote turn on is drawn from the cig lighter in the boot. Power direct from battery via 10 gauge cable, fused.

The only difference between this install and the many I have done before is the x9331 splice vs using a head unit with pre amp RCA connectors. Like I said before, when the system clipped, my sub amp was still powered and working fine, just the stock amp running the internal speakers clipped.

And yes, I will be replacing the factory speakers down the road, just got a great deal on a labor day sale at the local audio shop for the amp, box and sub.

Any input would be appreciated.

 

Do you have the HIFI system...or the Boost system?

Most people do not pull speaker level inputs from the rear channels, but i don't think this is the problem.

I will say that when i see 1200 watt amps selling for $100 i red flag goes up...i would be VERY cautious about proceeding with this current install until you have it checked out by a reputable auto installer...iy would suck to melt something in the mini that would be very expensive to repair.

Clipping an amp does not slowly shut down the sound..which is why i asked you if you knew what amp clipping sounds like.

But sending uncontrolled DC current back thru the system might cause the system to go into protect mode and shut down the sound...i would start with having a reputable installer look at that aftermarket amp.

 

I have the HiFi system.

And yes, people DO use the rear channels in order to allow control of the sub via the factory fader controls. On the HiFi system, the rear speakers do not have the low frequency drop off.

So, tell me what it sounds like when the stock MINI HiFi amps clip. Because I didn't use the term crackle as the sound fades away, I must have confused you, many apologies. The stock amp is clipping, period. What you seem to be eluding to is the amp is cheap, and therefor sending "DC current" (redundant) back thru the RCA cables, into the X9331 lines, and then shutting down the stock amp. While this might be happening, how do you test for this? I can spend a bit more money on a different amp, but I am not convinced that a different amp would change much. I am sure that if these amps were known to send current back thru the RCA cables, I would have been able to google some posts on this.

The sub amp is installed correctly. It doesn't take a rocket surgeon to install an aftermarket amp in a MINI, hell, it's actually the easiest car I have worked on... with the exception of the X9331 connection. I spliced into the rear speaker lines there, soldering the wires to ensure a quality connection.

I am certain the problem lies with the draw from the X9331, but I am not sure why. I am pretty sure the system wasn't designed to have the signal pulled from the system this way, so maybe the MINI engineers have some safety buffers set up to protect the amp. If the sub amp is running at 50% volume, and then turned up to 75%, does the sub amp draw more from the X9331 connector? If so, does that affect the stock system adversely?

 

The only thing i am alluding to is if it were me i would take my car to an qualified installer and have them trouble shoot this before you hurt something that may be expensive to fix. This is not really something that can be fixed over the internet...

things to try though would be

turning down the gains on the sub amp...
fading 100% in either direction and see if the problem moves with the fade..
measuring the power at the terminals of both amps...with the music playing.
try using a LOC....this might help filter DC current from going back thru the system.

 

Ok, just to let you know, the stock amp will not clip. It can be turned all the way up without any sign of distortion. It is designed to me driver proof. As for using the rear channels to drive the LOC, most of us tap them AFTER the amp and the rear channels have a hard volume cut at medeum volume. I think you are having problems because of the taping into the signal before the amp. The input side of your amp may be doing bad things to the stock amp.

Start off by disconnecting the aftermarket amp and see if the problem persists. If it still does it then you have now damaged the stocker. :(

 

*doh*///
i do not have the HIFI..so i did not know the amp was AFTER the x9331.

So yes i believe the speaker level inputs should always be taken AFTER the amplifier....sorry for not asking the obvious

 

Woah wait wait wait... now you are saying that you run your RCA cables from AFTER the amp?

So you are using the high level inputs on your sub? That being said, you aren't tapping into the X9331 connector?

So if I understand you correctly, you are taking an amplified signal from the amp, putting it thru the hi level input in your sub amp, and then amplifying it again to push the sounds to the subs.

*boggle*

No offense, but I think I am going to stick with the un amplified signal from the X9331 connector. Why anyone would use the post amplified signal to run their amps is beyond me...

miniSQ, my amp is still on the lowest setting, and I can't recreate the clip by doing anything with the stereo controls. Just noticed it clipped only twice when I had the stereo at around 70% volume. I rarely ever listen to the system that loud, mainly due to noise laws here on Fort Carson... so this might never come up again. But, nonetheless, I will shoot down to the audio store tomorrow and have em take a look at it. I don't have a tool to monitor power levels, so hopefully they do.

My initial thoughts were that someone else who has hooked up an amp to the X9331 connector may have had the same problem. There's nothing really to "fix", unless I completely remove the stock stereo and go for a nice double din... alas, that's tons more work!

 

No, take the amplified signal and send it through a line out converter (LOC) as I mentioned before. Not a high power signal to the amp.

 

Let me preface this by repeating i do not have the HIFI system...so this is general audio info:

If you are running the sub amp via Speaker level inputs...you take those speaker leads do it AFTER any OEM amplification...

If you are running the sub amp via RCA's that are coming from a LOC...you also tap the speaker level signal that goes INTO the LOC...AFTER the OEM amplifier...

 

Because ....if the factory HU does not have RCA level outputs...that is the way aftermarket amps are designed to accept the signal.

PS...since you are the one having trouble here maybe YOU are doing it wrong..no offense

Again i do not have the HIFI system...so i really am not the person you should be listening to....but i do have a pretty good grasp of car audio.

 

Please note that all radios in the North American Market, (Canada, US, Mexico) are both "Boost Radios" they come in two versions Standard and HiFi.

 

No most of us use the signal out of the X9331 or directly out of the head unit. The signal out of the OEM HiFi amp is filtereed for all channels thus there is not one singla cahnnel out of the OEM HiFi amp that is full spectrum. To get a full Spectrum signal you must take it from before the OEM HiFi amp.

 

maybe a nice idea for a sticky would be to diagram the signal path for both the standard and the HIFI version...showing things like where the best place to tap into for aftermarket amps.

my head hurts...time to do something else for awhile..sorry if i made things worse...

 

David... I understand now. The reason I don't like to do that is because you are double amplifying your signal. I don't know the technical term for this, but the sound that creates thru a sub is muddy and no where near crisp... but it does boom. (I don't like boom)

But, to each their own.

Ran the system at 75% volume (on the stock head unit, not 75% on the amp) for 20 minutes, with no clipping. The only adjustment I made to the sub amp was setting my crossover down to about 100'ish.

Maybe there's some crazy mouse back there tellin his friends "hey guys, watch this...". LOL.

Appreciate the input!

 

You may be stuck doing something like that with the standard system, but it seems like a very bad idea with the HIFI.

The HIFI amp is in the rear of the car. The X9331 comes before it, so it has non-amplified signals that are pretty much full spectrum on all channels. Somewhere at or after the amp, the signals are filtered.

I don't know why anyone would want to use the garbage that comes out of the HIFI amp if you didn't have to.

 

This is strange, because the volume of an aftermarket amp makes no difference in the current it pulls from the stock unit. You can have it at 100%, 0%, and it'll be the same.

Perhaps you are lowering the voltage with your aftermarket amp and the stock radio turns off (SWAG!)?

 

Hmmm, so maybe the amp is drawing too much current is what you are saying?

So, in this theory, do you think adding a capacitor would do the trick? Think I can pick up a 2 or 3 farad (sp?) cap and give it a whirl.

Not sure about this though, as everything else runs fine, including the gauges and sub amp...

Worth a shot.

 

Guess I'll try tapping into the X9331.

 

Robin is correct the amplifier channels filter the sound to each driver in the HiFi system and thus none of therm are full spectrum.
It would be a bad idea to use any output from the OEM HiFi amp. Just as i stated in post #16.

 

No but the loading of the output of the head unit by the aftermarket amp inputs can cause the head unit to overheat.

Example if the amp input is 10Kohms it will cause the head unit to craw more current than if it was a 100k input. Infact it would be 10 time more current. This could very easily cause the head unit ot overheat and shut down the output until it cools down.

 

I was going for lows so full spectrum was not my search. I do, however, see the benefit of a full range source. On a side note, Installing audio as long as I have I have learned the higher signal voltage the less chance to pick up engine whine and such. This is why I went with the amplified signal to the sub amp. I know that in this case that it was less than optimal.