soundengineer

iTrader: (16)

just want to know which is going to be louder.. directly driving the speakers with my kenwood headunit(50w peak x4 or 22w rms x4)
or drive the monsoon amp and let the monsoon drive the speakers.

VIP1

Let the Monsoon amp power the speakers. It will output more power than the headunit alone.

I have a Pioneer AVIC-D3 headunit in my car and still using the Monsoon amp. Its louder and clearer than the stock setup.

omarrakeen

iTrader: (2)

yea the amp is louder but it hard to notice any difference plus didnt u get the noise that gets louder with the gas pedal ?! i think u must have got it! i powered all my speakers to monsoon amp and i got that noise coming out of the rear speakers it was annoying so i got the rear speakers in the hatch powered by an external amp doing gr8 now..

soundengineer

iTrader: (16)

I didnt mention anything about a stock setup?
now you just confused me...

I know using an aftermakert head in conjunction with the monsoon will be better than the stock radio...

I'm asking will my aftermarket kenwood headunit be better than the monsoon amp behind the spare tire or should I just keep using the monsoon amp along with my aftermarket kenwood headunit.

tuffluck

iTrader: (4)

the monsoon amp distorts very badly. right now i have speakers hooked up directly to a factory cd player and it sounds much better than through the monsoon. but, i think the monsoon is the only way you will get the midbass in the sail panels. so, i think ideally if you hooked up your front speakers directly to your HU and left the rest to the monsoon, you'd get the best sound.

you would need to re-run wires from your HU to the door speakers in order to do this though, so it probably is more trouble than it's worth. also i think if you're going to do that, you should upgrade the door speakers, which would help a lot as well.

soundengineer

iTrader: (16)

I have upgraded the front speakers to infinity Kappa reference series..
the sail panels have Kicker CVT 6.5" subs powered by an Alpine MPR-500 amp
the back ones have been upgraded to a Kenwood 6x9(a little custom work was done to make them fit)

I just wanted to find out which is going to be more power before I dig in waste some time today
I'd do the wire swap at the monsoon...that way I dont have to run new wires..LOL
its easy to crimp temporairly twite together a set of wires for a test... was just trying to be lazy and not get off the couch to go find out.

tuffluck

iTrader: (4)

oh well yeah, i think that would be pretty easy. if you have the sails hooked up to an amp, the monsoon might be helpful for the little bit extra juice. it's a messier sound than through the head unit, but it might get a little louder. i don't know to tell you the truth, i definitely think the HU will produce a cleaner sound, you just may not be able to turn the volume up as high as you're used to. i would definitely try it if i were you though, since it's so easy and since your speakers are aftermarket anyway.

WhiteBird00

iTrader: (4)

This is completely, 100% wrong. The Monsoon amp is quite good considering it's a relatively low-powered 8-channel amp. It accurately amplifies the signal it's given without introducing any audible distortion. The source of distortion in Monsoon systems is the cheap AC/Delco head unit.

VIP1 and omarrakeen already answered this question but I will reiterate. The Monsoon amp produces more output power than almost any head unit on the market (not by much in some cases). It runs about 240 watts RMS into eight channels or about 30 watts per channel. Not all channels get the same amount of power - the door mids and the sail panel sub channels get more while the tweeters and hatch area speakers get less. But in any case, it's more than 22 watts per channel.

However, as omarrakeen said, you won't really hear the difference. Doubling the power would only produce a 3dB gain in volume - noticeable but not significant. You would have to apply ten times the power to double the volume. Going from 22W to 30W would be at the very threshold of human perception in terms of volume increase. (There are people on this forum who claim they can hear a 1dB change but most of us can't.)

tuffluck

iTrader: (4)

i think on alpine head units, and maybe others, isn't like a 1 volume **** increase equal to 3db? i remember hearing that a while back but don't know if it's true.

sorry if i was wrong on the monsoon amp. i have done many things from stock speakers to aftermarket HU and stock HU to monsoon, etc, and i always thought when the monsoon amp was in the loop the sound was worse. maybe that's just due to turning up the volume too high expecting the amp to help out. the idea of a monsoon "amp" is very deceiving if you're only getting ~10w per channel of extra power.

WhiteBird00

iTrader: (4)

I don't know about this but it certainly seems reasonable. The loudness of sound is a logarithmic scale (i.e. each step is a power of ten 1..10..100..1000 etc.). The accepted threshold of hearing (for young people, not me) is designated 0dB which is equivalent to the sound of a flying mosquito at about 10 feet. This takes about 0.000000000001 watts (10 ^ -12) to produce. If each click is a 3dB change then it would take just over three clicks to double the volume by producing ten times the power. So just over sixteen clicks takes you up to 10 ^ -7 watts and 50 dB or about the sound level of a refigerator. With 30 to 40 clicks available you can quickly get up to the higher volume levels from there. 20 watts takes you into the 115 dB range which is louder than a jack hammer at three feet. (This is all theoretical and based on a 100% efficient speaker, which you can't buy).


You're right, it's not much amplification. The advantage is that you can achieve higher volume levels with lower settings of the head unit's volume control. This helps limit the distortion because the internal amp of the HU produces less distortion at lower volume settings. Unfortunately, it also makes things worse when you crank up the volume. The HU's distortion gets amplified along with the signal and sent to the speakers which get destroyed over time.

tuffluck

iTrader: (4)

the alpine HU's that i'm familiar with (a little older than current), generally start getting very loud around 22-23 on the volume ****, and start clipping at around 27, so the 3db per click thing does seem reasonable. of course this also depends on the power of the amps powering your speakers as well, since 500 watts on a subwoofer at 22 is the same as 1,000 watts on a subwoofer at volume level 23, if the 3db per click rule holds true (that's right isn't it? double the power=3db increase?). i thought this is why alpine made their HU's this way specifically, so it was relatively easy to tell how much louder of volume your power was actually achieving. i could be wrong...

at what point does a stock HU start clipping do you think? i am not sure you can really say "x volume level" since there are no numbers for the volume clicks on a factory head unit. but, if you had to guess db level (tuned by the ears only), what would you say? i know there is obvious clipping, and there is unobvious clipping as well that you cannot necessarily hear while a korn song is playing.

when i set my previous amps to their max gain, i remember the jbl mono amp was clipping at above 63% on the gain, so i had to stop it at around 60%. that might be half the reason my amps/speakers lasted 6 years strong (and could have kept going), because i know a lot of people have blown subs after a couple of years because they automatically turn their amp's gain to 100% without realizing it isn't exactly supposed to work like that.

VIP1

Your original post didn't mention that you replaced the speakers. So I used an example of stock speakers.

Using the Monsoon amp would be better than just using the headunit, but that also depends on which speakers you have. If your replacement speakers have similar power requirements and ohm ratings as what others have used while maintaining the Monsoon amp, then you should be fine.