Kicker hideaway- final upgrade to the $250(+) 3rd gen premium upgrade (+Kicker Key 180.4 amp)

I'm just trying to describe the volume of noise floor I'm hearing. That's not easy to do online. I don't actually want the gains on half. Only my tweeters are on amp1, so anything above a 2 gets painful. I'd like the woofers on amp2 to be a bit higher, to maybe a 4, but the sound gets unbalanced quickly when they're not matched. The speakers sound much clearer with the gains up at least a little.

 

Set your gains first with minimal noise floor and then use the auto tuning mic to have it balance out your system with your EQ flat. Mine were so well matched that I actually had to turn the EQ back to flat after they broke in.

 

I'll try some more tuning scenarios. The manual says to set gains at zero for auto tune, but I wonder if I can trick the system into lowering the noise floor on the tweeters only by tuning with the tweeter gains higher, than turning them down later for listening.

One more test I'd like to do is to connect the key directly to the battery (I have extra Key wiring), and power just one tweeter to see if the noise floor is the same as when everything is run through the truck. What do I need to do with the remote turn on wire to get the amp to turn on? Can I just run that to the battery also? I don't need any input for the test, so it'll just be positive, negative, remote, and one speaker output.

 

If I understand you correctly, you're just wanting to test the amp with power directly from the battery. In that case, I believe that you only need to reroute the power (+/-). I believe the remote turn on wire needs to remain in the harness for the signal to pass. Again, I am not the guru that destin is

 

I'm going to connect only this right to the battery under the hood. I'll put a tweeter on one speaker output, and whatever I hear should be the specific noise floor of the amp, without any other variables. If it's any different than what I'm hearing in the truck, I'll know there's something going on with the wiring. The amp either needs dc offset or 12v remote turn on to start up, so I'm guessing I can just connect the blue wire to the positive to do that.

 

Yes just do the blue to the positive battery terminal as well.

I’m starting to think it doesn’t like your particular bi-amp setup. Not sure why, but if a replacement amp didn’t change anything, something in the setup has to be making the amp be unhappy.

If you get to the point of re-building the harness, I would consider wiring it as a 4-channel amp and just leaving the fronts in parallel like normal. The amp puts out plenty of power to push them that way so if that solves the problem, it will be worth it.

 

Could it have anything to do with the component speakers I chose? I like the Kicker brand, and switched to the KS for the soft dome tweeters, but now I’m not sure it makes sense to run 125 RMS speakers with a 45 RMS amp gained all the way down.

Would a lower RMS speaker give better sound clarity at lower volumes?

 

Well gain has absolutely nothing to do with volume or power output. It is to match the INPUT level. So since we’re playing high-level straight from the radio, our gain will be low. If we were playing super low-level from the RCA outputs of some cheap radio, our gains would be high.

I’m running KS components up front on a 50x4 amp. Components are using the passive crossovers, so the tweeter AND woofer are pulling power from the same amp channel. I have done that same setup with the key as well. I can assure you I have NO issues with volume or clarity. If I tried to run 125w through those speakers I would cause permanent hearing damage in a matter of seconds.

 

So is there any benefit from increasing the gains?

 

No. They are simply there to match the input level so you get the desired output level.

Basically, if I feed the key really quiet audio (say plugging in an aux cord from my phone straight into the amp) then I will need to turn the gains up to compensate for the low input. If I’m playing signal from a factory amplified system that is a much higher wattage, I need to turn my gains down to compensate for that high input.

 

So then when setting gains, we should choose aux input and set them accordingly? But that could risk increasing the noise floor when switching over to a higher level input like bluetooth or usb right?

 

I didn’t mean playing your phone into the radio. I was meaning if I were to literally plug my phone into the Key’s RCA inputs (if we hadn’t cut them off)

 

I've taken enough of this thread and people's time, so I'll wrap this up.

I'm reasonably certain the white noise I hear is the noise floor of the amp, speakers, and configuration (Key, KS, Bi-Amp.) I connected the Key directly to the battery terminals with the supplied wiring, using nothing but the positive, negative, remote turn-on, and one tweeter connected to a front channel output. It's the same exact noise I've heard from day one on two separate Key Amps. (I even tried this on two different cars for the hell of it.)

I don't know why my experience is different from others. I just read a professional review today that states:

The only other variable is the Kicker KS Component speakers, but I can't imagine what the issue would be with these specific seperates. If anyone has any thoughts about that, I'd love to hear it.

Other than the noise, the system sounds pretty fantastic. The gain levels barely need to be raised to provide more than enough volume for an access cab. The tweeters are a bit overpowering, but the highs are intoxicating if my ears can take it. I'm still making adjustments to the auto tune function, but it appears to do a pretty good job for what it is. The Kicker Hideaway under my seat really makes all the difference in the world. If you're on the fence because you think you may have enough bass already, I would just do it. You won't regret it.

Thanks OP for all of the installation/setup info.
Thanks @tpp4 for the outstanding t-harness writeup. I'm confident mine works perfectly.
Thanks @destin_meeks for all your help throughout the forum.

I'm still within the return window for Crutchfield, so I'm going to listen for awhile and decide if I can live with the white noise or not. I'm considering something like the Kicker IQ500.4 amp/DSP combo, although it may make more sense to just find a separate amp and processor.

 

@JonWB glad I could help! Best of luck with your setup

 

Has anyone taken a look at the Kicker Hideaway HS10?

The external dimensions are almost identical. 180 watts vs 150. The frequency response is the same, at 25-120Hz.

I don't know jack about subs, so what is the benefit here? Is it all about more spl, or is there an associated improvement to sound quality also?

 

Does anyone know what adapter I would need to use for the rear 6-3/4?

For whatever reason the AT 2020 Pros came with JBL audio and the MT Pros came with "premium" audio and I can't figure out the part number.

I'd rather not butcher the factory harness if I don't have to.

 

On sale at Crutchfield

 

Just wanting to make sure I am correct here. If I am going to wire for the hideaway sub only, no key amp, and I wanted to use the Metra harnesses, I just combine like colors and tee off off the white, white/black, grey, and grey/black for line level input, and off of the blue/white for a remote signal? Then power and ground go to their respective places outside of the harness.

EDIT: Got the answer. Thanks Destin Meeks! The answer is yes, if anyone needs it...

 

So I'm not sure if this had been discussed before but I'm going to ask anyways. So I was replacing the front and back speakers in my 2019 and it must have rained beforehand and I noticed water is getting into the doors. I see there is weap holes for the water to drain out so I am guessing that it is supposed to happen but am wondering if the people that installed new speakers in front and back doors did anything to prevent the speakers from getting wet or just left as is. The only thing that I have seen is the speaker soft box that will protect the back but not sure if that would mess with the sound output.

 

Speakers are designed to get wet with rain water. I personally only used stainless screws/bolts for this reason. The included screws with most speakers might work just fine, but I always tossed them straight into the recycle bin and grabbed my stainless hardware. But at this point, I’ve installed literally hundreds of pairs of speakers across nearly every major brand and haven’t seen any issues, and I’ve pulled literally hundreds of pairs of factory speakers out and very few have rust on them, even in 20+ year old vehicles.

The ones I see rust or fail from water are the cheap brands (boss, Pyle, dual, etc)