Audio Upgrade Nightmare - Any Advice?

I wrote this whole long thing and lost it because I’m doing this on my phone and I suck. If there are 4 wires coming off your amp, I’m confused. Your crossovers don’t accept two inputs, only one set. So... where are the other two wires hooked up?

Text me and we can get together to look at it again and figure out what’s what. I’m sorry if I steered you wrong with Rick. He has always steered me 100% right and has a stellar reputation. Don’t know what’s going on there. But we will get you right.

 

You need to not listen to anything this shop is telling you. There has been some very accurate advise given here and you problems are with that shop! It is very easy to foul things up if you don't have a clue, and they seem to have been fouling up at every turn while making you pay for their experiment. Our trucks do have natural phase issues given the layout and their locations. Also the megal-pastic grilles cover 75% of the output of the speaker. You have to resolve this 1 issue at a time in order to be sure you actually address the problems.
1 All wires to speakers need to be polarity confirmed.
2. All wires to crossover (you definitely need to use the Hertz passive x-overs) must be confirmed.
3. All settings set to off. Then 1 by 1 confirm that you are not redundantly crossing over channels. (You should not have the HU and the amp x-overs being used... 1 or the other. I usually set the amp to full range if the HU has all the processing in it and accessable.

4. THERE IS NO NEED TO BRIDGE YOUR AMP!

5. Start with the suggestions above for set points and just set gains first. Shut the sub and rears off and just start with the fronts. Get just those to sound right, then add the sub, then the rears. In a properly installed system, fronts and a sub will blow you away. I find the rear speakers are half out of phase with the sub and will be very difficult to resolve without time-delay. Shut them off to get the right levels up front.

6. Most important... You must have a reference source/track/cd that you absolutely know what it is supposed to sound like. (Use headphones for a layman's reference). This will actually allow you to tune in the right direction!!!!

7. Make small adjustments, and be patient. I have about 100 hours of tuning into my truck. Many of those hours I'm just listening to certain aspects of the system. For me, I'm cursed with hearing every little anomaly from track to track... and I want to fix it. But sometimes fixing 1 issue will create another... the truck is a horrible audio environment and you get it as good as you can but almost never is it perfect.

8. All of the tuning is dependent on a verified and professional install. (Professional meaning everything is hooked up correctly and installed as desired). You can verify everything and simplify it to make sure you are listening to as pure and minimally processed music as you can. This will hopefully help you get closer to enjoying your system.

 

I would by everyone a round of drinks if I could, thanks for all the input! It appears I am in 2-way mode, when I looked last night, it was greyed out, but realized this morning that's b/c it is set to that. I checked all the wires I could, polarity/phase should all be fine.

@Rubberdown - I did not state correctly, there are just 2 sets of wires coming off the amp (I meant 4 individual) so we should all be good there. And don't sweat it, Rick was super awesome, the shop owner, not so sure about. The fact that they tore every piece of crap wire out from the other shops and wired it right was 'almost' priceless. I am just upset that I got upsold on this $700 amp I didn't need, then was replaced with a more powerful model, but not worth $700.

@Toyotoholic - Thanks! After checking everything, I turned the HP filter off on the amp and set all HU to 80hz - it didn't really sound great, but I could barely notice a difference. I switched the amp HP back on for now. And dang, 100 hours of tuning!! I don't have that in me, I am a total amateur. I just need to get this thing set right and move on..

Here are some pics:

 

Dude, you have me so scared! I have a 2018 1794 and really want to upgrade my audio. I live in Sugar Land, and don’t want to do it myself. I’ve been researching where to go, and am really struggling. I don’t really want to drive to San Antonio to do Taco Tunes. OEM Plus told me they have a shop up in Conroe that would do an install for me. We’ve had issues with CarToys on my wife’s Expedition, so I’m not excited to go there. After reading all of these threads - I don’t know what to do!!!!

 

Yeah man, I would be really careful, I would not go any where in Houston. It's been a solid 4-5 months now and it's still so shitty. I have messed with the dials on the amp and sub and EQ every which way I can, EVERY day for these past months. My little powered sub which used to sound awesome when it was on that LC6i, now sounds like it isn't even there. I barely have any bass response from the front, no mids, etc. I still wish I never did it. That being said, I know it can all be fixed. The only redeeming quality is how badass the HU is and all that tech. I probably should have started with that and left every thing else alone. I think its just a matter of not having the right component speakers or sub. Around the time that tropical storm came through, I found a place in Pearland called Audio Engineers. They seemed nice, helped get rid of an engine whine b/c apparently the RCAs that Sound Evolution put in had a tear in it, or they put a screw into it. Then he went to tune it, acted like he was adjusting the HPF on the amp, but really had the switch OFF, so it was just in full range. I was like 'Uhhhhh...'

My plan now is to recoup some funds. My kid actually plays ball with a co-owner of Mobile Toys in College Station. I told him my story and he said to come by sometime for an assessment and see what they can do. I'm debating getting a (2) 10" box from JRT w/ subs and letting Mobile Toys figure out the rest. Willing to replace anything needed except HU. I heard one of the guys at Mobile Toys is great at tuning, and that is definitely what I need. I never want to have to put a DSP in. If the few dials and 13-band EQ are a head-scratcher, no way am I going to futz with a DSP! I refuse!!

Other option is to actually drive out to GA and have JRT do it. 13 hour drive, see some beautiful country...however, seems like a stretch if you do have any issues. I doubt you would though. At that point, perhaps you could buy all the gear, have it sent, attempt it yourself by YT-ing it or perhaps fine the right person for the job. I see a few mobile audio techs..if you had all the gear on hand, don't see how it could go wrong..

And I'm in Sugar Land too. If you wanted to meet up to see what the basic change would sound like, PM me!

 

I second what @phogallen said. I live in San Antonio and ordered from James at Tech12Volts. He has several tried and true kits he has put together, or you can go full custom build. With James you are not limited to just 2 or 3 kits and just one brand of speakers. I went with an upgraded JL setup from James, went with C5 & C3 speakers, 400w 4 channel amp, 2 10W1 subs and I already had a JL sub amp and a DSR1 processor.

 

i'm not using the LC7i but the JL equivalent, FiX86, which then goes into a TwK88. i still have the factory h/u and i also have zero white noise.

 

there's nothing to be scared about. our trucks are super easy to take apart and work on. figure out how you want it to sound and keep it simple. as has been already stated, call james @ tech12volts. get some gear from him. if you need help, there are plenty of us here that have done this ourselves and i'm sure a number of locals to you. depending on how involved you get, you can knock it out on a weekend.

the tuning part is the fun piece. takes a little patience but worth it. i threw up some notes for tuning with the TwK.

https://www.tundras.com/threads/twk-88-tuning.25729/#post-621422

 

If you're using the passive crossovers for your mids and tweets then the only crossover setting you should have active is a high pass (HP) for your mids. I'd use the head unit's at 80 hz as a starting point.

Some other tuning suggestions would be to
-set your eq to flat
-bass boost off
Basically turn off all setting or set them to zero.
-set each speaker level to 0 for now except the sub level.

Your Kenwood should been clean all the way to max volume, but I'd recommend not going passed 80%. When its time to adjust gains do it at that volume. That is now your max volume. This could help with any unwanted noise and it leaves you some head room for eq adjustments later on.

For your sub channel. While nothing is playing see what the max and min volumes are on the head unit. Many head units will have something like +7, and -10. Basically you want to figure out the neutral level. The true zero. In the above example the true zero is actually -1.5. This will give you a better idea of how much you're boosting that channel and it gives you the proper volume level to start adjusting from.

Your gains can be set by ear. There are some really good vids on YouTube that will get you pretty close.

A couple questions if you don't mind.

Do you know if the installers ran a dedicated ground for the head unit, or if they just grounded through the head units harness?
If they didn't run a dedicated ground, that could actually be a cause for unwanted noise.

As for the noise, have you determined which speakers it is coming from? Is it all the speakers including the sub?

Have you tried unplugging a set of RCA's one at a time until the noise disappears yet?

Edit:
You could actually unbridge your channels and then you would have two channels for your rear mids. That amp is a damn fine amp and its powerful. 250 per channel at 4 ohms. Bridged that about 500 watts per channel.

Double edit:
Correction, its 700 watts x 2 bridged.... Hot damn thats a monster amp.

 

James did me right too. My system is not going to win any awards, but it was never meant to. Got in contact with James told him what I wanted, just a good sounding system. He set me up with everything I needed, saved me some money over going with Crutchfield and some components from Taco Tunes, told me everything I needed in order to install it myself and set the controls on my amp. I am happy with what I got and will talk to him again when I get a new truck. Very simple install with his harnesses, didn't have to cut any wires. I keep the factory head unit, replaced front and rear speakers and added a 10 in sub and a 5 channel amp to power it all.

 

I have the 1794 too and the advantage you have is you have the JBL system. It has digital sound outputs which, even at full volume, have 0 distortion. Add an amp with DSP to that and you can get some terrific sound.

I've had issues with Car Toys too. My wife spent a bundle on a stereo upgrade and $3500 on a concealed install radar detector there, only to find out they sold her a bunch of crap and never installed the dynamat they charged her for. The guy mentioned below, fixed a bunch of Car Toys' issues on her car too.

I too was thinking about going to Taco Tunes and debated it for a few months. Then I found a local guy near me (Frisco, Texas) that worked magic on my system. After several hours of programming, the Marantz rep that was there while they were programming said my system was the best he has heard in a truck, ever. I'm blown away with the quality of sound I get now and whether the Marantz rep was serious or not, I'm elated.

He told me to bring it back in after a couple of months of breaking the speakers in (kevlar-Audio Focal ES 165 K2s in the front, ES 165 K3 for back doors (3inch speaker in that set used in the dash)) and he would turn the amp up. I will never need the amp turned up. It is great just the way it is.

I did the Dynamat (like Taco tunes does) myself, over several months a bit at a time, prior to doing any stereo mods.