So I installed my amplifier, a Kenwood 8105d, and bought a new kicker 10" l3 in a ported box, running 2 ohms, and the sound is not very loud. I used the speaker level inputs on the kenwood, and tapped into the speaker wires from the factory pioneer sub, and I had to turn the gain up almost all the way to get decent sound out of it.

I thought maybe the factory wires I tapped off of were not providing enough voltage to drive the amp, so I tried to hook up the amp to the rear speaker wires instead of the sub wires, and now it sounds worse. Very little bass at all.

So are most people using rca style line out converters or using the low level hook up method in the sticky? I just want to make sure the amp is not bad, and that the way I am hooking it up is correct....

 

I am also thinking that besides a line driver/converter, that the amp I got is a cheap POS, and I might go return it for something else...It is supposed to put out 500 watts rms at 2 ohms, that is why I think something is wrong...

 

It's just hooked up wrong. You can't be running both the factory amp and aftermarket to the sub. You should be running the speaker wires from the amp directly to the sub and if you are using the converter to you have to use the wires that went to the factory sub the convert so that you can now use the converter rca wires and remote wire to turn the amp on. If I had it all apart and still using that setup I could tell you no problem. I just know you can have both amps going to the sub thats why its not loud. I have had it that way before and it worked great. If you are using a converter like this than it should work no problem. Just can't have the two amps going to the sub. http://www.sonicelectronix.com/item_...-AX-ADCT2.html I'm not saying this exact one, but you need to make sure it has a remote turn on, otherwise your amp will never shut off and kill your battery.

 

Im using the rear door speaker wires into the speaker level inputs of my amp, same 500w, and i get pretty loud.

 

Well I figured it out, I hooked up a line out conveter and discovered that the polarity was wrong on one of the inputs, problem fixed, running the LOC and bangin hard now...