I just noticed this morning that one of my speakers is crackling a little, the thing is I am not sure exactly what it could be. I am pretty sure its not blown, and will be p***ed if it is.

The speakers are Infinity Kappa 682.7's and I have then running off an Aura RPM 4200 amp. I have the gain down a little under halfway at the moment as I am having some problems with the right channel (think my stock HU is bad, whole other story) and also have the filter set to about 100Hz to stop any real low bass going to them.

Is the crackling more likely to be a loose connection somewhere? thinking about it yesterday on the way home the speaker was not working at all, this morning it's working but crackly.

Along with this and my stock HU possibly being bad I half wish I had not even bothered trying to upgrade anything, only had this stuff in about a month and so far nothing is working, and I have no time to try to figure out the right channel problem

 

hmm... The best I can say is check for a strong connection to the speaker & to the amp. Maybe you also might want to try another piece of wire, as that one may have some issues in the way they spun it.

Ryan

 

Almost forgot to update this, I found out what the problem was......... the speaker wires going into the amp were not so great. At the moment my amp is loose on the floor (will be secured probably this weekend) and whenever I went around a sharp/fast left hand turn the amp slides across a bit, pulled out some of the speaker cables.

I just ordered a new HU this morning after finding out my stock was causing me all my recent problems (see past posts on amp problems), once the new HU is in I can ditch my LOC and tidy up all the amp wires before securing it (kinda p***ed that I spent a bunch of money on diff cables (3.5mm to RCA to test amp channels with MP3 player, LOC etc) to figure out that my HU was the problem)

 

What did you buy for a headunit, where'd u get it, and may I ask what you paied?

tks alot
~Nate

 

I bought a Pioneer DEH P6800MP, it looked like the best thing available for my budget (around $200) and all the reviews I read about Pioneer were positive (I had wanted an Alpine but no good reviews on any of the new models).

I ordered it from Crutchfield, they are not the cheapest around, but along with the head unit itself they throw in a wiring harness (so I don't have to hack up my Ford existing wiring) a dash kit (so that the single DIN fits in the double DIN opening) some DIN removal tools (to remove old stereo) and an instruction sheet specific to the F-150. On top of the extra's the shipping was free and I will have the head unit tomorrow. By the time I added up the cost to buy the dash kit/wiring harness etc myself and added shipping it comes out close to or cheaper than other online stores, also the Crutchfield customer/tech support is really good.

Total I paid for it was $219.

 

Does it everytime...
Its good to see you havn't given up hope on the "crackley-things" and the partially non-working factory H/U...

Let us know how things turn-out.... ....

 

Well I installed the Pioneer over the weekend, took me about 2 hours in total. Most of the time spent removing old cables (from when my amp was running off speaker level inputs) and routing the RCA cable (which annoyed the crap out of me).

So far no complaints at all with the deck, speakers or amp. I have not yet had much time to set the gains properly on the amplifier, or play too much with the settings on the HU. But the sound is so much better than using the stock HU.

At the moment I am not running a sub, so can't help but feel I have something missing (even more so as I used to one in my previous vehicle). But using the Kappa's the bass is lower, highs are clearer and the sound overall is much better. I might add a sub in future, but at the moment budget restricts that entirely.

The Pioneer tuner works well, picks up a bunch of stations quickly (where is the RDS though?!?!?!?!?!). It took a few seconds to get used to using the multi control **** instead of preset buttons, but it is in fact a very simple system to use. The CD player picks up MP3 CD's quickly (and again using the multi control **** and the list button makes finding a folder very quick and easy). I am going to order a cable to use the front mounted aux input to run my MP3 player at some point, and am sure this will also be a great feature. I may also add a Sirius tuner in the next few months.

I am hoping to tweak a bunch of the EQ settings on the HU over the next few days (I am sure it will take a while to get things where I want them) and will probably constantly be changing settings (with my last setup I was always tweaking settings almost everytime I drove somewhere).

No comments on the brightness of the Pioneer display yet, as I have not driven at night. But it is not as bright as some reviews have led me to believe.

The only negative comment I have at the moment is to do with the dash kit Crutchfield supplied. When I put the DIN sleeve into the dash kit, no matter how many tabs I bent out there is still some play in the sleeve. So when using the multi control the unit moves slightly, I might pull it out and try securing it a little better at a later date. And at the moment its only a minor issue (I do have to pull off the surround anyway as its not quite seated properly).

The other minor complaint I have (more a personal thing this, and there may be a setting to change it that I have not found) is that when the display is showing (for example) the battery meter that the background switches between black and blue. I would prefer it to always stay black with blue text, but like I said this is a personal preference and may be a setting somewhere I can change.

So overall a great HU, very pleased so far with my new system and looking forward to driving home this afternoon.

 

The stock HU amp is pretty much blow-out proof. The amp has internal overload and protection built-in, so even if you shorted everything to ground, it'll shut itself down.

I'm currently running my stock HU into a JL 250/1 and JL 300/4 amp.

I had issues with crackling speakers that sounded like intermittent connections. I used some metal RCA jacks to tie into the HU.

When dangling in the back of the HU, the exposed shield of the RCA connectors sometimes touched each other. Apparently, the amp doesn't like the speaker grounds to short to each other. Isolating them fixes it.

No issues since.

You might also want to double check the factory harness connector itself. Make sure it's seated completely. Those connector pins aren't the greatest.