KickerCS Upgrade with Kicker Key amp Install Assistance

Getting my Key in a few days. Super excited! Looks like a great product. Hopefully it will compliment my upgraded Kicker CS doorspeaker upgrade. Sounds like it will...

Question, after you “auto tune” it do you leave all the bass, treble etc. at mid level? Or can you adjust? Also are you supposed to leave the mic connected? I know you wouldn’t leave it on the headrest but are you just stowing it or removing it completely...

 

Set the radio EQ all flat, run the auto tune, then feel free to mess with radio settings. The auto tune won’t be the perfect setting for everyone, so trust your ears and change what you want.

As for the remote, you can unplug it

 

Gain 4, volume 55/63.

 

If your radio is like mine, the radio output itself distorts at 52, which means anything over that is distorted going into the amp, and severely distorted coming out of the amp

 

What's the next step up to correct this from a 200 kicker key?

 

Depends on what you mean by "correct this"
The radio distorting is not fixable. Everything has a distortion limit where the internal amp can't push any farther.
If by "fix" you mean make it louder, you need a higher powered amp.
If by "fix" you mean lose the hiss, you need to turn down the gains or get a better quality amp (which costs more money)


Either throw in a good quality Line-Out converter (lc7i for example) or upgrade to a better amp (Kicker KXA4004, Alpine PDR-F50, Memphis PRXA300.4, Rockford T400X4ad to name a few)

All of these will add in a lot more wiring, as none of them will fit inside the dash like the Key. So you'll need to mount them either under a front seat, or behind the back seat. They will also all need a power wire to the battery, ground, speed wire from AND back to the radio, etc.

 

Holy crap dude do you work at a jet engine factory or something. Anything over 45 is too loud for me and with the gains all the way down that’s where it starts to distort anyway.

 

Hey guys I am planning on installing this same setup with the 4 Kicker CS for the doors and the Subaru tweeters. For those of you that used the Kicker Key, did it make a huge improvement on the sound quality? Was it worth it? I could careless about how loud it is as I feel the head unit is loud enough for me. I just want better sound quality. Thanks!

 

Huge difference.

 

2 month follow up and I mostly listen at 25-30 now.

 

Massive improvement with aftermarket speakers.

The stock headunit sounded flat above 30 to my ears and definitely wasn’t driving the speakers with any authority. I needed to have my volume knob up around 30 to have moderate volume while driving and 40-45 for cranking it.

The stock speakers worked well enough with the stock HU to make really boomy, but to my ears inaccurate and muddy, bass and mid range. Aftermarket speakers won’t be boomy like the stock speakers, so it’ll sound like you’ve lost a lot of bass, but you’ll gain a massive amount of clarity. Spoken word and vocals are much cleaner and clearer with aftermarket, especially male voices.

The amp will give your mids and upper bass notes their punch back, but it still won’t be boomy and muddy like stock. You might even get significant low bass, but my amp is crossed at 60hz and I use a sub for my low lows so I don’t know. I’ve seen others on here post that they were happy enough with the straight speaker and amp combo to forgo a sub altogether. There is more volume, but effectively the “working range” of my volume knob shifted from 30-50 to 15-35. Above 35 it’s too damn loud for my ears.

 

Thanks a lot for the replies guys. Does anyone have a schematic of the way the harness needs to be connected? If not, I might do one once I do it myself for other people to save them some time and headaches.

 

Just double checking - you have the kicker key crossover set at 60hz so effectively that means you are not sending anything less than that to your door speakers right? You said you are using a sub to fill in the low end so I assume you are grabbing a signal from your headunit before it goes to the kicker key to send a full range signal to you amp and sub right? Doesn't the head unit "rolloff" the bass around 30 volume to protect the factory speakers? Is this not an issue or are you using some kind of bass restoration EQ like an audiocontrol LC2i?

 

There is no bass rolloff on my head unit. I originally installed an lc2i but it didn’t make any difference. I have a 2016 so maybe the newer ones have the rolloff everyone is referring to or maybe one guy said it and everyone ran with it. Who knows.

 

there is definitely bass roll off on all of our factory head units. Some people don’t notice it, which is good. Some people notice it like crazy, which just means those people have to spend more money to fix it.
It’s not near as bad as the roll off in something like a newer GM vehicle.

*edit Oct 2019*
Turns out our radios actually have bass BOOST and not roll-off. When I was doing my “testing” way back I was using the rear speakers. But they basically just don’t play any bass at all so I may have heard this as bass roll-off. More extensive testing has been done by myself and other members. The deeper we dig, the more we learn!

 

I had been using a pre-made harness with a cheap LOC to connect to my mono amp. I cut up that harness to install the Key Amp, and cut off the LOC (that was on the front two speakers) and used the RCA’s from the key that I cut off to make the separate pre-key-amp connections for my mono amp. So yes, it’s getting full range from the front speakers before the Key amp. I am not using an additional signal processor.

If there’s bass roll off above 30, I didn’t really notice it before but I don’t know how much the cheap LOC was affecting bass output either. I suspect it wasn’t helping that’s for sure. I did reset my gains on my mono amp now that it’s getting speaker level inputs, based on my new usable volume levels, and it’s working better than ever. After I installed and set up the Key, I don’t set my volume at or much above 30 as its REALLY loud.

Yes, as I understand it, setting the filter at 60hz means anything lower than that doesn’t go to the door speakers. I also adjusted the sub’s filter to 60-70hz to better blend and pick up where the doors drop off.

 

At what point does it start to roll off? I don’t go above 30 volume so maybe that’s why I don’t notice it.

 

It’s somewhere right around there. I didn’t notice it until I added a sub and I put a volt meter to it to see for sure. I tested volume 20 and volume 40 with a 40hz tone and there was very little increase. I’m not sure exactly where it starts to roll off, but it definitely has it.

 

Doesn't the Key need to get power directly from the battery and have its own fuse? If you connect it to the power from the headunit it will be drawing more power and possibly burn the fuse of the headunit if the Key amp draws enough current.