I just got my subwoofer and amp installed in my IS3350 at Best Buy. It's a Pioneer 300W 10" sub in a bandpass with a Lightning Audio (Rockford Fosgate's low end line) 450W amp:
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Furthenmore, everybody thinks our cars stock audio is terrible and too "bass heavy." I think this is becuase the stock 8" subwoofer is awful. It dominates and muddies up the overall sound. The way we installed the sub was to disconnect the factory sub and run the signal to the new sub from the stock amp. I think this was great because when you turn your car on with only one push of the starter, the radio turns on without the sub. The reason this is good is if you run your sub without the engine running, your battery will die. Next, I turned the EQ to minimal bass and mostly highs and mids. This allows the stock speakers too be much more clear and the the sub do the heavy lifting.

I control the sub's volume by turing up the gain on the amp. By doing this, you can crank the volume and get clear prominent high's and full-bodied mids and no risk of distorting the sound or worse blowing the stock speakers.

I am now super happy with the audio. If a rock tune comes on I may need to take the bass up from -4 to -3, and if a hip-hop track comes up, I may have to take the bass down from -4 to -5 or be good where it is at. Before a was SORELY disapppointed with the stock audio. Now I'm back to having no regrets with this car

 

any chance you might be missing out on the mid bass from the front speakers when you turn the bass down that low ?

 

Wow thats one big subwoofer. Sounds great though I bet

 

Yeah, I've had the subwoofer for more than 12 years. When it goes I will definitely get something more compact and clever. But it is so clean and so powerful, I couldn't see spending money to mess with it. I really dig it.

 

question, what happened to your old sub? did you remove it? or you left it there?

 

Just disconnected it and left it in place in the rear seat area.

 

This is an awesome encouraging (old) news!!! Do you leave the back of your rea-seat fold down or leave them up? would you get good bass with them up?

 

What made you decide to disconnect the rear subwoofer? I am just curious
If i was to do this same idea, which i will be soon.
I would leave the subwoofer as fill for certain frequencies.
Adjust the EQ on stereo as you did and use gain on new Subwoofer amp to match rest of system and run a subwoofer volume control job for the new amplifier.

 

Mainly, we just wanted the stock sub amp connected to only the new sub and not divide the connection to both. Second, I think the stock sub muddies the sound.
Yeah, I was going to add an in car/dash volume **** for the but I'm not super confident in the custom DIY on my nice new car

 

I'd like to do something like this to mine as well. I have a few more questions for ya.
1. Do you use a line converter to convert signal from your stock amp to the new amp? If so, can you share the model?

2. Do you have a switch to turn on/off your new amp?

3. Do you get good bass with the rear seats up or do you have to fold them down to get good bass from your new sub?

Thanks.

 

1. Yes. Don't remember, any will do.
2. No. The power wire (not the one connected to the battery) is connected to spliced into stock radio wiring. Turns on with main power and is off in assesory mode
3. It would be too much bass with the seats down. Perfect with them up.
Good luck

 

Thanks again for the infos.

 

Got my box, sub and amp ready, today. I have not started the installation yet, but have done "some" looking around for location to run the power through the firewall. Saw a good location on the driver side. Had trouble locating the OEM amp and how to get to the OEM sub. Can you tell me where the OEM amp is locating? And how to get to the sub? Also, the new amp (Pioneer GM-3500T) has "speaker input", do you thing this is enough or do I still need a line converter?

Thanks.

 

whats your DSP settings?

I am thinking of installing a better amp to power the existing speakers.

 

Is this the standard or the ML stereo?