Amp Upgrade Choice

Found this amp on Ebay for a pretty good price.

Kenwood KAC-X4R. It has a built in 5 band parametric equalizer. I think it should fit under the passenger seat, because it is the same size as the JL Audio 300/4 amp that Banjoman put under his front seat.

http://www.kenwoodusa.com/Car_Entertainmen...lifiers/KAC-X4R

I figure with that and my new analyzer toy I should be able to tune my system pretty well.

http://priuschat.com/Real-Time-Analyzer-RT...eap-t40861.html

I will sum the front speaker sources on my JBL "premium" sound system using Banjomans resistor netwoork.

http://priuschat.com/index.php?showtopic=3423&st=120

I think this is a fairly cheap and flexible solution for upgrading the JBL "premium" sound system.

Cost:

Kenwood amp: $245 with tax and shipping $290
Radio shack parts for speaker summing: $10
Misc Wiring supplies: $20.

Total cost for improved amp with equalization in Prius = $320.

 

F8,

A couple things. First, for the Kenwood unit the S/N ratio is probably affected by the built in equalizer. If you choose to get a separate equalizer it will degrade the sound too.

Secondly, the method that JL audio uses to measure the S/N ration is different than Kenwood.

Kenwood: 78dBA (Ref: 1 Watt into 4ohm)
JL Audio: 108.5 dB below rated power

See the difference? JL Audio is measuring it at full power just to inflate their specs. Kenwood is measuring it the "standard" way. Who knows what the difference is when measured under the same conditions. I am sure that the Kenwood unit will sound good. It is in their High End "Excelon" brand so it is not some piece of junk.

As far as the EQ "gadget", it is actually necessary to have some sort of equalization for when adding an amp to the stock Prius stereo. If you had read the many other posts on the stereo upgrades, and/or Tommorrows excellent page on the stereo performance you would know that just such a "gadget" is necessary.

Oh, BTW thanks pointing out those issues that can be confusing to so many people.

 

No I never listened to them. You are right about that. Then again it is a car and I am trying to maintain some kind of budget. I don't necessarily expect it to be as good as JL Audio, but it is not like some cheap Legacy amp. I am trying to balance price and performance. From my first looks on this site, in order to upgrade the amp I was looking at;

JL Audio summing device: $200
JL Audio Cleansweep: $300
JL Audio AmpL $300
Total: $800 which was not what I was willing to spend.

I am now looking at a $300 amp delivered and $10 in resistors. I am not getting the quality of the JL Audio amp, nor the automatic equalization of the the Cleansweep. However, I am getting a new RTA toy and a good amp with some control over the equalization. For a total of $360. Do I expect it to sound as good as the JL Audio setup? No. Do I expect is to sound better than the stock system? Yes. I expect it to sound much better than the stock system. I also plan to have a lot of fun taking measure ments and tuning the system. I also have installed the silk tweeters from a pair of ADS component speakers that I purchased. That alone made a huge difference.

Also, I don't consider a $600 list/$300 street price to be an "extremely low" price.

BTW, can you tell me if I can hook the high power speaker connections directly to the Kenwood amp? It has gain adjustments, but I read the manual online at the Kenwood site, and it did not say whether it would accept speaker level inputs or not.

If one really wanted a top notch system, I think Banjoman has quite a setup with the Audessey equalizer and the JL Audio amp. Again, there is quite a cost difference between his system and mine.