GOT an amp for my MM6's

[AustinKP]

Ok, so today, I went on a search for amps to compare against that Monitor 1. Thanks for all your suggestions guys. I never thought to look at the input sensitivity, since I assumed that all amps would accept at least 4 volts if not more. That was my bad. I'm really glad that I didn't get that one.

Ok, so I know I ragged on Ultimate Electronics, but I stopped by again today to see if they had anything worth looking at. I ended up looking at a couple floor models they had from last years lineup. They had an RF punch 501x which, bridged, ends up like 175x2 or something like that. I had him talked down to about $175 when I found a PPI PCX 440. It's a 40x4 that bridges to 160Wx2 RMS. It was normally $400, but was on sale for $166. Since it was their last one, and was the floor model (it had never even been hooked up at all. It was just screwed to the wall for looks) I got another 10% off that. I walked out the door with it a few minutes later for $159 w/ tax.

The salesman told me that Ultimate's cost was $179, so I actually got it for 30 bucks under their cost. The salesman actually got a -$4 comission on that one(he put it under another salesman's name so he wouldn't lose any money). When he was checking me out and I had already swiped my credit card, he had to get his manager's permission for the floor model discount. His manager came over and chewed him out for giving me the discount when they were already below cost. It was kind of funny. He was like "you know better than that." The salesman just played dumb. Did I get an awesome deal or what? I'm so excited to hook it up.

Now, I just need to know exactly what I need to wire this thing up. All I have is an amp in a box. I figure I'll run 4ga power wire from the battery to the amp in the back. I'll get a distro block when I get another amp for a sub. Tell me if I'm missing anything. I need:

- 4ga power wire from battery to amp
- 4ga ground wire from amp to battery. (The owner's manual says "for systems over 300 W, Run a ground cable from the amp to the battery instead of grounding to the rear chassis--is this right?)
- ??? ga twisted pair to each crossover (is it bad to run this next to the rca's? if so, how do I get it back to the doors?)
- 1 pair of RCA's from HU to Amp (How long? I run these on the opposite side of my amp power wire, right? I'll probably get knuconceptz or Stinger if my friend can get me a discount)
- 1 inline 50A fuse less than 18" from battery on + wire.

Am I missing anything? Tons of questions here... Did I mention that this is exciting for me? :D Thanks for all your help guys.

[exalted512]

thats a great deal!
PPIs are REALLY nice amps...
160x2 is perfect for the mm6 comps
as far as power wire goes
when you are totally done with your system in your car, how much power do you expect it to be?
if you expect it to be over 1500watts RMS i would go ahead and get 1/0awg instead of 4
but other than that...4 is great
and i would just run the ground to anything close by thats metal
running it to the battery is unnecessary and just wastes money(in terms of the extra feet of wire)
12awg is good for your speaker wire
and as far as the routes of your wiring goes
my truck is set up like this:
think of the floor as divided into 4 parts
the very edge on either side, then 2 evenly spaced in the middle
i run my speaker wires on the edge of the car
the power wire on the middle right, and the RCAs and remote turn on wire down the middle left
as far as how long your RCAs need to be...i have no idea for a car...i would say 16ft'
thats what i have in my truck
youre putting it to your trunk right?
id say 16 ft...maybe 12', but id go with the 16, better safe than sorry
also, if youre planning to get another amp sometime soon, you might want to think about getting another set of RCAs
that way you can put them both in now and you wont have to take apart anything, just plug it in and go
for RCAs go with streetwires 3.0 or 6.0s
they can be found at sounddomain
the only thing you forgot was the remote turn on wire
its just like a piece of 20awg wire that goes from the HU to the amp to let the amp know the radio is turned on
the good thing about that is that you can just cut it off and crimp 2 pieces of 20awg wire to the existing one when you get another amp
i have 5 coming off mine with a fuse relay, but with only 2 you wont need a fuse relay
but yeah, you pretty much covered everything except for the remote turn on
im sure youll be pleased with the results:D
oo, and for all your power wire...www.knukonceptz.com is frickin cheap
-Cody

[MacLeod]

PPI amps are very underrated like RF and MTX. That 160 youre talking about is at least 180 and maybe as much as 200 and thats way over the MM6 limit so if you go that route I would advise tuning the gains quite conservatively.

Another option would be to consider bi-amping. I would guess that thing is putting out at least 50x4 if not 60x4 and that would be fine for your comps. I dont like bridging amps for highs becauase it runs the amp at 100% output and triples the distortion level sometimes to .3%. Bi-amping would give you less power but also less distortion and more tuning flexibility with the tweeter.

[AustinKP]

How do I find out how much power this thing really puts out? It didn't come with a birth certificate like MTX amps do. As far as bi-amping, if I do that, then I'm only getting 80 total watts to each pair of speakers. If I bridge, I get double that. Nobody can hear distortion below 2 or 3 % anyway, so I'm not really worried about .3% distortion. Actually, it'd be much lower than that. This amp has 0.02%; tripled, it'd be .06% distortion. If it really has that much power, I'm not going to be turning the volume up that high anyway. I'd like to keep my hearing at least a few years, unlike a few other forum members we know...PBD, you hear that? :) Finally, I'll get to hear the "true sound" of the almighty MM6 :D

[exalted512]

Originally posted by MacLeod
PPI amps are very underrated like RF and MTX. That 160 youre talking about is at least 180 and maybe as much as 200 and thats way over the MM6 limit so if you go that route I would advise tuning the gains quite conservatively.

so my 225 watts is a little overboard?:D
-Cody

[MacLeod]

Originally posted by AustinKP
As far as bi-amping, if I do that, then I'm only getting 80 total watts to each pair of speakers. If I bridge, I get double that. Finally, I'll get to hear the "true sound" of the almighty MM6 :D

Well since this thing puts out more in the neighborhood of 55-60x4 it would be more like 110-125 or so per channel. That will be plenty of power to the MM6's. Ive used PPI amps in the passed and bridged they are monsters! I had a 50x2 amp (200x1) running a pair of 8 ohm JL Audio 8" subs suposedly at 200 rms but if I had to guess Id say it was more along the lines of 250-300! Thats why I say bridging the PPI will yield a ton more power than 160. I wish they would test these things because Id love to see how much juice they put out, Im betting around 200 bridged.

More power will make a speaker sound better but only to a point. Beyond that point youre increasing ouput by only a few db while burning the life out of the speakers at a much higher rate. My rule of thumb is usually that I dont go higher than the speaker is rated and usually hit a little below that. My current plan right now for my set up is to use an MTX Thunder502 (125x2). I think this will work em just fine, be plenty loud and not kill the MM6's within a couple years.