| Hi, I recently installed a system into my car and its having various issues. Was wondering if anyone could help me out. The car is a 1992 bmw 325is, the battery is in the trunk. The system is the following: pioneer deh6800 head unit. Orion cs200.4 amp powering orion XTR 5.2 components in the front (havent put in the back speakers yet). Rockford Fosgate 351M amp powering a orion CS12" sub. The amps are hooked up to the deck via monster cable. The amps are hooked up to my battery with 8 gauge ground and +, with the ground < 1.5 ft. The problems I am having are the following. First of all, the sub only reaches about normal volume when the gain on the amp is 80-90% and even then it is quite soft (I have to turn the sub volume up to +5/6 to get decent bass). I should add the sub is in a closed box however with the gain anywhere lower you cant hear it at all. According to the amp website the gain should only have to be around 50% for the preamp voltage that my head unit produces. The amp produces 350watts RMS at 12V (2 ohms single channel) and the sub is 200watts RMS dual 4 ohm voice coils. The amp is being run in parallel with the dual voice coils so the corrects resistance is achieved. I have checked this a few times to make sure it isnt in series. Any ideas? This same problem occurs with my front speakers. The gain on the orion amp is at about 80% and I have to turn my volume up to about 30/50 on my HU before the sound is fairly loud. I am thinking that this could be due to another problem however. My orion XTR components are 100 watts RMS where as the amp produces 50watts RMS into 4 channels (I am only using 2 of the channels obviously). Orion amps are supposed to be under rated and I have heard it should give me 60-70 watts however I was wondering if this would still be under powering the speakers? The other reason that leads me to believe I could be underpowering them is because (this is only a guess), on songs that have a lot of midrange bass (~150hz so its played by my fronts), the front speakers get very distorted and 'fluttery' sounding (not crisp etc). In bridged mode the amp does 140watts into 2 channels. Should I try bridging it or would that Overpower the speakers and risk blowing them? Any other ideas? Lastly, one of my tweeters is fairly distorted. I know it isnt an actual hardware defect because when I switched the speaker connections (right/left at the amp) the distortion also moved from the right tweeter to the left. What could this be caused by? haha ok... yah lots of problems but hopefully there will be some solution. Thanks! | 
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