Has anyone had experience using inline bass blockers. The ones that you wire right before the speakers. I am looking for a way to have less distoration at loud volumes and figures blocking out the frequencys bellow 150hz will allow me to turn the volume up more. I do not need the bass do to having a sub. Just want to know if anyone has used them.

 

yea it's called a capicator. you can buy them at radio shack for about a buck. dont waste your money on a store bought bassblocker. it will absolutly sove the distortion issue as long as you pick one that will filter out the lows at the correct frequency. the problem is that these are only 6db per octive crossovers and your going to loose a lot of the frequencies you still want.
150 is pretty high and unfortunatly the more bass you take out of the front speakers the more your going to pull the soundstange into the trunk.
the best way to fix the distortion is to get an electronic crossover that has a variable adjustment. most electronic xovers are 12db - 24db / octive this way you can dial it in to get the most bass and no distortion.
unfortunatly you will need an amp for that.

 

so there is nothing really to do that will work like the built in filters on aftermarket head units.

 

If u are looking to be able to really crank you volume using a capacitor as a bass blocker might not be the answer. Many times the distortion that you here is clipping and not the speaker. You must check that you are not over driving you amp to the point were the output is being clipped. If you are the distortion that you are hearing is a square wave ( which sounds very bad ). So do not be surprised if the capacitor does not fix the problem. To be sure you really need to measure the output of the stereo with an oscilloscope burn a CD of a tone and turn up the volume to the max you are going to listen and see if the signal starts to flatten out on the top.

If the signal is not clipping then the capacitor will help out with the distortion but if it is clipping it will still sound like crap.

 

A "Bass blocker" is just a speaker-level crossover filter. The "bass blockers" that's I've seen also incorporated a resistor to dissipate some of the amp's power, which makes the speaker quieter overall. That certainly makes it less likely to "pop"... but may not be what you have in mind.

I think what some people are trying to point out is this: When there are bass hits, some distortion may be due to your speaker trying to play those notes and failing, and some may be due to your amp running out of power and generating distorted signals.

Since the only part of the amp that tries to play sub bass is the 6x9 output, and the F and R are high-passed already, adding more speaker-level filters is probably no help. If you are running out of F and R volume and having distortion, your paperback-book-sized amp is the culprit, and is running out of gas. If the 6x9's are the culprit, try disconnecting them and see if the system sounds better/gets rid ofthe distortion.

 

I guess that means it is time to replace the entire sound system with all new speakers and amps. which would you recommend putting an aftermarket HU where the factory MP3 or run it off the factory headunit I have everythign thing else decided on what i am gonna run. New speakers in all doors and rear deck, with two subs. One five channel memphis belle amp and one two channel memphis amp and the subs running at one ohm with 1100watts.

 

In clicking around in this section, you'll find a number of threads discussing keeping the factory HU. Personally, from a cosmetic standpoint, I recommend keeping factory.

 

A capacitor is only for when u have a severe power drain with large bass hits, for example when ur lights dim, or wut i experenced in my accord a power drain on the motor the car would actually pulse and perform according to the bass, but if ur problem is distortion u could go about it several different ways assuming ur talkin about after market subs not door or component speakers, u can turn the bass gain, if u have one, down on ur amp as well as ur bass boost, also u can adjust it from u head unit, u might also, if available, get a bass control knob and mount it under ur dashboard this makes it very easy to adjust the bass volume without going alll the was yo ur amp to adjust or ur headunit, or it could be that ur speakers are just working too hard and receving too much power and cannot handle that peak bass hit. U just need to evaluate the prob a little bit, if u have any other q's pm b/c i kno a little something about systems. Hope this helped.... good luck.....

 

He was talking about very small capacitors compared to the capacitor you're talking about (AKA stiffening caps) which commonly are half farad to 2 farad in size (huge) and go inline with the power to your amps.

With small caps (and honestly I forget all the sizes versus the freqs), you can passively crossover speakers to pull some of the low freqs out. So usually a common mid range speaker can play a little better if it doesn't have to play low freqs(ie you don't have all speakers in your car playing all frequencies, you use either active or passive crossovers to have the speaker play the range of frequencies it was desgined for). Using caps and resistors you can make passive crossovers.

So if you have anymore q's, just post in here cause elduderino, Bass Mechanic , Tuan, or somebody that knows a little something about systems will answer.

 

Well, actually, a capacitor is for devices that use a loosely regulated power supply (Alpine V12, Rockford, Kicker, Phoenix Gold, most PPI now) as opposed to a stiffly-regulated power supply (older PPI, Hifonics, xtant, zapco, new JL "slash", some/all new xtant (don't know), upper-end new PPI, etc.). This is also what the "DC-DC converter" means on the higher-end decks.


During power draws (bass hits) there is a voltage drop on your electrical system, even if the lights don't dim, and really, even if you don't see it with a voltmeter. Most voltmeters are not that fast.

Stiffening caps are supposed to help keep the input voltage UP for amps with loosely-regulated power supplies, to keep them operating well during and immediately after the hits. With lower-end HUs without the DC-DC converter, it can theoretically help them too. Still some disagreement about whether they work or not.

Fully-regulated designs make the same power anywhere from 11-16 volts. Putting a cap on a system with these units doesn't help them at all. Sometimes you might be severely overloading a battery, an alrternator, or both, and a cap might seem to help somewhat. but usually it's not correcting your severe load problem.

BTW - in long paragraphs, hit the return key sometimes, it makes your writing easier to read... IM style is not good for dbs. Also, being eager to help is good, but being eager to learn can be better, man. You didn't know that capacitors are a speaker crossover part? Your system doesn't have any mids or highs, but if you did have any seperates, they'd have capacitors inside the passive xover boxes. FYI.