# Burning Smell



## jeff9nissan (Jan 9, 2004)

Hey guys, I JUST got my amp and sub today. I hooked it up just in the backseat to make sure it works. Works and sounds great, Way excited to put it in my box. Only thing is that i noticed a burning smell, like burning rubber. Amp is brand new so i thought it might be normal? Any help?


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## bustedframe (May 9, 2005)

I would never have, "burning smell" and "amp", in the same sentance and think it's normal man. I would definatley get it checked out, especially if you bought the amp brand new.


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## UnKnOwN @uDiO (May 15, 2005)

what kind of amp and what size wire are you running? also how big a fuse do you have on your wire? sounds like your cooking a wire, not the amp, but i could be wrong. also sometimes a sub will stink a bit when its first hooked up, due to the breaking in of the coils, ive only seen this out of cheap subs tho... your full setup would help me to diagnose the prob better


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## jenns240 (May 17, 2004)

UnKnOwN @uDiO said:


> what kind of amp and what size wire are you running? also how big a fuse do you have on your wire? sounds like your cooking a wire, not the amp, but i could be wrong. also sometimes a sub will stink a bit when its first hooked up, due to the breaking in of the coils, ive only seen this out of cheap subs tho... your full setup would help me to diagnose the prob better


^^ive had this problem, my wire was to small (i think like 8ga). i was driving for maybe 30 mins when all of a sudden i could smell this horrible burning rubber scent so i pulled over, looked over the amp and subs nothing, so then i checked the wire. man, that thing was melted along with the fuse.


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## Bumpin (Feb 18, 2003)

You might be burning the voice coils. If you hooked up your sub wrong or if your amp is to powerful for your sub it could be cooking your voice coils.


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## Punkrocka436 (Jul 8, 2003)

if its new, it could be the glue on the voice coil former just getting hot. Unless you have the gains cranked all the way up, i wouldnt worry too much


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## Twiz (Aug 24, 2004)

I agree with jenns240... the power supply wire is too small... 8 gauge may not be enough. You should get that checked or else you risk a fire. I never heard of a break-in smell for the amp or subs.


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## UnKnOwN @uDiO (May 15, 2005)

Punkrocka436 said:


> if its new, it could be the glue on the voice coil former just getting hot. Unless you have the gains cranked all the way up, i wouldnt worry too much


this is what i was speaking of as in break in smell, if your running 8awg then upgrade to 4awg and your prob should be solved, just make sure you run a fuse within the limits of the wire (aka 4awg is 80 amp max)


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## jeff9nissan (Jan 9, 2004)

Alright, I'm running 8ga from battery to amp. I'm guessing that's the problem. It doesn't really seem to do it anymore though. Only like the first day really.

BTW. I'm running Alpine MrP-M350, 350 rms 700 peak, and alpine type S 300 rms 900 peak. parrallel? wired following there diagram.


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## UnKnOwN @uDiO (May 15, 2005)

yeah get a 4awg kit and run it with a 70-80 amp fuse and you will be fine, not to mention that amp wont be so power hungry tring to feed its needs off of such a small wire... in the long run you will be much happier


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## jeff9nissan (Jan 9, 2004)

Well the smell is gone now. It was only there for the first day. So i'm guessing it was the voice coils like someone suggested. I will still probably upgrade to 4ga in the future. I found that an amp drains a battery really fast if the car isnt running... almost had to get a jump tonight.


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## sr20dem0n (Mar 19, 2003)

Don't bother upgrading to 4awg, I don't know why everyone is telling you this. You have a 350rms amp, it DOESN'T need 4awg, it would work fine off of 10awg if you wanted. Unless you plan on upgrading your amp to one that puts out 800+ rms or you plan on adding a second amp, upgrading to 4awg would be a waste of money.

Where is your gain set btw?


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## UnKnOwN @uDiO (May 15, 2005)

sr20dem0n said:


> Don't bother upgrading to 4awg, I don't know why everyone is telling you this. You have a 350rms amp, it DOESN'T need 4awg, it would work fine off of 10awg if you wanted. Unless you plan on upgrading your amp to one that puts out 800+ rms or you plan on adding a second amp, upgrading to 4awg would be a waste of money.
> 
> Where is your gain set btw?


so by your standards i should hook my JL 500/1 up with 8awg....  get real man 400-500 wrms its time for 4 awg and whats the problem with your amp not having to fight the wire to get its power it needs, have you ever run an alpine amp? they are quite the power hogg and even alpine recomends 4awg with MOST of there amps


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## sr20dem0n (Mar 19, 2003)

8awg is fine up to ~80 amps, which depending on the amp is in the 700-1000rms range, at that point 4awg is the better choice. And yes you could hook up a 500/1 with 8awg.

There's nothing wrong with using larger wire, except that you're telling a person who already has 8awg bought and run to go in and replace it with 4awg when he would gain NOTHING by doing so.


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## UnKnOwN @uDiO (May 15, 2005)

do you have a clue what your talking about, almost every bench test on the JL 500/1 showed an rms output of 850-900 RMS, and so i should run that with 8awg... how long have you been in car stereo? ive been an installer for 10+ yrs. SERIOUSLY MAN, do some research b/4 you give the wrong advice, as far as motors go, your a god compared to me, but i know my audio sh*t!


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## sr20dem0n (Mar 19, 2003)

The highest bench I've seen on that amp was 750rms at 2ohm, and less than that at higher impedances. To be on the conservative side lets say that's at 12.5V and 80% efficiency, you'll have a current draw of 75 amps. 8awg wire has a resistance of .0006282 ohm/ft, with a 75 amp draw and a 15 foot run you'll get a .7V drop in the wire. .7V is approaching the point where it will start to matter with an unregulated amp, but since the JL slash series amps have a fully regulated power supply it won't make a damn bit of difference. As for his amp, at full output it will only have a ~.3V drop with 8awg, which is NOT significant NOR audible. Just for comparison's sake, using 4awg instead of 8awg would reduce the voltage drop by a factor of 2.5, so you're looking at roughly .28V for the 500/1 and .13V for the 350. So actually running your JL 500/1 on 4awg has about the same size voltage drop as running his MRP-M350 on 8awg  Also if you didn't notice, both the 500/1 and the MRP-M350 recommend a 4 OR 8awg power wire, they'll both work fine on either size.

I don't care how long you've been installing, I've met people who have been installing car stereo longer than I've been alive and they still don't have a clue wtf they're talking about. I don't need to justify myself to you because a person's history is irrelevant, it's what someone knows and what someone says that actually matters, but f' it. I've been into audio for about 6 years, right now I've been taking a bit of a break because I'm in college. I've taken more technical classes than I can remember, I already have my math minor and in less than a year I'll be a certified electrical engineer. I've built my own pre-amps, power amps, passive and active crossovers, ADCs and DACs (all from scratch), and in my closet I have about a mile of cable and as much random audio equipment as several local audio shops. I have never blown a piece of audio equipment (except for my focal tweets, but those don't count because everyone blows them ). My current system cost roughly $3500 and uses equipment most people have never heard of. I have both a 4awg and 0awg run from the battery, and am running fully active (do you even know what that is? please say yes) with 2200+ rms coming from a trio of amps on the front components and sub (no rears). I'm in the process of setting up a $5000 4-way active home stereo system using Lambda, PHL, and Fountek drivers in each tower, Brahma for sub duty, Behringer processors, and roughly 4700rms of power. I know what I'm talking about, please don't insult my intelligence by calling me out on something as trivial as this....wait for a thread where we can actually get into an educated debate and possibly learn something from each other


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## captain_shrapnel (Sep 10, 2004)

UnKnOwN @uDiO said:


> ...have you ever run an alpine amp? they are quite the power hogg and even alpine recomends 4awg with MOST of there amps


Don't Alpine amps have unregulated power supplies? That would explain the need to beef up the cabling, unregulated power supplies output is directly influenced by their input. But a regulated power supply takes a range of voltage and corrects it to a specified output by varying the current draw to compensate. As long as the input voltage is within the range, output will be constant. Hence the need to be sensitive about power cable selection.


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## Twiz (Aug 24, 2004)

V12 amps have a nice power management design... They never shutdown. You could say they're a bit underpowered for their size and weight and overpriced usually. I run a 8 ga. wire and it's perfectly fine for an amp that puts out 340W bridged ... 600W max.


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## UnKnOwN @uDiO (May 15, 2005)

sr20dem0n said:


> The highest bench I've seen on that amp was 750rms at 2ohm, and less than that at higher impedances.


this is the only part where you sounded like you didnt have a clue about JL amps, the power supply in the slash series amps are R.I.P.S. and impedance does not matter, between 1.5 and 4 ohms the amp puts out the same ammount of consistant power, and allows it to push as hard at 4Ohms as it does at 1.5



sr20dem0n said:


> I know what I'm talking about, please don't insult my intelligence by calling me out on something as trivial as this....wait for a thread where we can actually get into an educated debate and possibly learn something from each other


and ill be looking forward to our debate!  btw, very well put and described, i belive multiple ppl will benifit from you tring to "knock my Knowledge" 

keep it real man, and links to pics of your system would be awesome, love to check out your setup... sounds amazing when compared to mine! but then again im just a poor white boy tring to make a living!


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## UnKnOwN @uDiO (May 15, 2005)

captain_shrapnel said:


> Don't Alpine amps have unregulated power supplies? That would explain the need to beef up the cabling, unregulated power supplies output is directly influenced by their input. But a regulated power supply takes a range of voltage and corrects it to a specified output by varying the current draw to compensate. As long as the input voltage is within the range, output will be constant. Hence the need to be sensitive about power cable selection.


this is basicly what i was getting at, not to mention im a firm beliver in buy cable once, it may be overkill right now, but down the road i dont have to tear it out and upgrade to fufill the needs of my new setup... hence why ive ran 1/0 awg for 3 yrs now... but to each his own, the 8awg will prob work, i just prefer to not run smaller than 4awg in anything i install so that the room for upgrading is already there!


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## sr20dem0n (Mar 19, 2003)

UnKnOwN @uDiO said:


> this is the only part where you sounded like you didnt have a clue about JL amps, the power supply in the slash series amps are R.I.P.S. and impedance does not matter, between 1.5 and 4 ohms the amp puts out the same ammount of consistant power, and allows it to push as hard at 4Ohms as it does at 1.5


Yeah, it shouldn't matter, but even R.I.P.S. isn't perfect. They probably try to account for inefficiencies due to the extra current by dropping the voltage to a little more than 71% when you cut the impedance in half (should be exactly 71%), and as a result you end up with a bit more power at lower impedances, but not near as much power as if they had not reduced the voltage at all.



UnKnOwN @uDiO said:


> this is basicly what i was getting at, not to mention im a firm beliver in buy cable once, it may be overkill right now, but down the road i dont have to tear it out and upgrade to fufill the needs of my new setup... hence why ive ran 1/0 awg for 3 yrs now... but to each his own, the 8awg will prob work, i just prefer to not run smaller than 4awg in anything i install so that the room for upgrading is already there!


That's a good philosophy, I do the same, the only difference is that he already has the 8awg installed. If he was buying this from scratch I would definitely recommend he go with 4awg instead of 8awg for upgradeability as you said, but if he already has the 8awg, unless he does do an upgrade it's just not worth it to switch to 4awg at this time.


All of the details about my setup are in the link in my sig:
www.resnet.trinity.edu/areynol1


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## Twiz (Aug 24, 2004)

All Alpine amps have unregulated power supplies... You could tell right away just by looking at the box or manual. They'll have two RMS ratings ... one at 12V and one at 14.4V. I opened mine up and it doesn't look like a power hog to me. The circuit board in the picture is 12" x 10". The manual recomends 8AWG. How the hell do you stick the 4 ga. wire in the tiny positive side connector anyways ? The 8 ga. wire barely makes it in there.


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## jeff9nissan (Jan 9, 2004)

My gain is set at i think zero, or nominal or whatever the official setting is. It's not turned up though.


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## Twiz (Aug 24, 2004)

When you have an Alpine headunit and Alpine amp the gain is set by the headunit... The gain on the amp doesn't do that much. This does not apply to other configurations, other brands. Mine is close to max and it's not distorting, not overheating and sounds cool as hell I wouldn't turn it down one notch... what for ? ... and I've been running it like this for months.


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## UnKnOwN @uDiO (May 15, 2005)

sr20dem0n said:


> That's a good philosophy, I do the same, the only difference is that he already has the 8awg installed. If he was buying this from scratch I would definitely recommend he go with 4awg instead of 8awg for upgradeability as you said, but if he already has the 8awg, unless he does do an upgrade it's just not worth it to switch to 4awg at this time.


agree'd, also if you ever feel like a meet and greet, id love to bs audio equip, ill meet ya half way! (central Arkansas here)


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