So I just got an audiobahn 10", cdt rear fills, and 2 profile amps. If you don't like that equipment thats fine, it was on sale and I don't need audiophile stuff. The question I have is about wiring. How do you determine how long you need the power cables, rca cables, and speaker wire to be? I'm gonna mount the 2 amps behind the right rear panel and build an enclosure for the sub. There lies my next question. In the book it gives numbers for a sealed enclosure of .6ft min and 1.3 max. Then it also talks about 3 dB down min and max sealed. What is the 3 db down? and should I lean more towards the min or max volume for the enclosure?

 

longer the better, just not to long. Because of the fact that if its to short, you cant really extend RCA cables. As for the cubes, Im not to sure. I have always had full custom boxes.

 

If you buy an amp kit then the wires are already at good lengths to use (20 ft power, 3 ft ground, 16+ ft . RCA's and the remote is around 20 ft a lot of times). You can look up the specs on any car audio site that sells them.

The only reason to buy everything seperate is if you were doing a custom install or if you needed short lengths of specific cable. Since you are going to be running two amps you will need a distribution block and some additional power wire (so that you are only running one wire from the battery). You will also want to get a thick enough remote wire 14 guage that it will be no problem to splice it and solder it so that you can send the turn on signal to both amps.

A good rule of thumb for building enclosures is that bigger is better, up to a certain point. You also want to have a little smaller enclosure if you are sealed, and a little larger if you have a vented box. I would go somewhere around 1 cubic foot for a sealed, and if you want to go ported I would do about 1.5 cubic foot.

I would recomend the ported enclosure since you are working with a single 10" , but it also depends on what kind of music you listen to. Fast rock and things like that you would want sealed, rap/dance/jazz you would want ported because you will get more bass that way. (and a lot of people on the board swear that you can get a ported enclosure to be just as "tight" and acurate as a sealed).

If you have specific questions about the wiring let me know - I would take a look at Knu Koncepts wire - they have established a good name in car audio (check out Ebay, you can get a wiring kit fairly cheap).