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Product Spotlight: Rockford Fosgate R165X3

Rockford Fosgate R165X3

Whether you enjoy background music while commuting to work or are serious about your car audio system offering studio-quality or concert-level performance, Rockford Fosgate has speakers, amplifiers, and subwoofer solutions for every application. The Prime series products are the most affordable offerings and include trickle-down tech from their industry-leading Punch and Power series. In this spotlight, we are going to look at the Prime Series replacement speakers, particularly the R165X3 6.5-inch set.

Rockford Fosgate R165X3 Design

The R165X3 is a three-way coaxial speaker with a vacuum-formed polypropylene woofer cone and a rubber surround. Rubber surrounds last much longer than foam and are usually not found on speakers at this price point, so you can expect many years of enjoyment from the set. Each driver features a silk-dome midrange and a silk-dome tweeter, whereas most speakers use polyetherimide (PEI) plastic dome tweeters at this price point. The mass of the textile domes typically allows the drivers to play lower, so the R165X3 will be less directional in the upper midrange while still offering excellent coverage thanks to the compact tweeter.

The drivers feature Rockford Fosgate’s Integrated Concealed Crossover (ICC) design. This design choice mounts the crossover parts to the stamped steel basket to save time during installation.

The R165X3 set includes a set of metal mesh grilles for applications where you are surface-mounting the speakers.

Rockford Fosgate R165X3
The R165X3 set includes a pair of 6.5-inch speakers, grilles and mounting hardware.

Mounting Options

One of the challenges of upgrading speakers is finding a driver that fits your application. The R165X3 speakers require only 2.15 inches of mounting depth. The tweeter post protrudes from the driver’s front side, but this keeps the factory grille away from the woofer surround. The total protrusion from the mounting surface is 0.44 inches.

Rockford Fosgate also provided every common screw pattern in the mounting flange. There are 22 holes, which sets a record for any 6.5-inch speaker we’ve come across.

Rockford Fosgate R165X3
Each R165X3 speaker includes 22 mounting holes to ensure installation in your vehicle is efficient and reliable.

Driver Specifications

The R165X3 set is rated to handle 45 watts of power continuously with a maximum power rating of 90 watts. Sensitivity is rated at an impressive 91 dB when measured with one watt of power at a distance of one meter. The frequency response is 52 hertz to 20 kHz. All the driver specifications comply with the ANSI/CTA-2031 standard for car audio speakers. The woofer Xmax is 1.9 millimeters in each direction. Rockford Fosgate typically uses an Xmax specification where the driver reaches 10% total harmonic distortion. So, while the number might seem lower than competing products, these are raw laboratory measurements that reflect real-world performance.

The woofer features a one-inch diameter voice coil and a winding with a nominal impedance of four ohms. Regarding Thiele and Small electromechanical parameters, the woofer has a resonant frequency (Fs) of 69 Hz, an equivalent compliance of 12.9 liters, and a Qts of 0.75. These numbers indicate the driver is designed for an infinite baffle application like you’d find in a typical car door or the rear parcel shelf of a sedan.

Rockford Fosgate R165X3
Rockford Fosgate R165X3 dimensions.

Prime Series Speaker Family

The R165X3 is just one of seven speakers in the Prime coaxial family. The solutions include 4-inch, 5.25-inch, and 6.75-inch two-way coaxial speakers, two-way 5×7 and 6×9 speakers, and a three-way 6×9 speaker.

All are designed to offer great efficiency and power handling. This makes them ideal for use with aftermarket radios or basic factory-installed units that produce roughly 20 watts per channel. You can also extract even more performance and enjoyment by using the drivers with an external power amplifier.

Upgrade Your Speakers Today!

If you want an affordable 6.5-inch car audio speaker with great efficiency and clarity, drop into a local authorized Rockford Fosgate retailer and ask to audition the R165X3 set. We think you’ll be impressed. You can find an authorized retailer by visiting their website and using the locator tool.

Be sure to check out their Facebook, Instagram and YouTube feeds and channel to stay up to date with their latest product releases.

This article is written and produced by the team at www.BestCarAudio.com. Reproduction or use of any kind is prohibited without the express written permission of 1sixty8 media.

Filed Under: ARTICLES, Car Audio, PRODUCTS, RESOURCE LIBRARY Tagged With: Rockford Fosgate

Understanding the Science Behind Automotive Headlight Bulb Colors

Headlight Color

When it comes to lighting the road in front of your car or truck at night, most enthusiasts focus on light intensity instead of headlight bulb color. It’s straightforward to see the difference between yellowish light produced by incandescent halogen bulbs and the white/blue output of HID or LED bulbs. The science behind these light sources is interestingly similar to what professional car audio technicians measure to calibrate a digital signal processor in your mobile audio system. If you’re intrigued, read on, and we’ll explain in detail.

How Light Works

There have been many detailed scientific dissertations on how light works. These papers explain the electron and sub-electron concepts that allow us to see objects. In short, light is made of photons. Photons are packets of electrons that have been released from atoms. These packets of photons have energy and momentum but have no mass. This means you can shine a light at an object to illuminate it, but the energy from the light source doesn’t make the object heavier.

If we excite a group of atoms, the negatively charged electrons that orbit the nucleus absorb that energy. As more energy is added to an atom, the electrons circle faster and farther away from the center. When the energy source (electricity or heat) is removed, the electrons snap back to their original orbit path but release that added energy in the form of photons. Under specific conditions, the photons that are released produce visible light. If you studied electrical theory in high school, you’d recognize this pattern as similar to how electricity works. The only difference is that electricity involves electrons jumping from one atom to another to transfer energy.

When the light photons escape from an atom, they can have varying energy levels depending on the electron’s position when it leaves the atom. You can think of this as the photons having a specific resonant frequency. As a result, different types of atoms release photons of different wavelengths. The result is differently colored light sources.

Light and Color

We know that light sources have different colors. An incandescent bulb gives off a very different kind of light than a fluorescent bulb, a gas-discharge arc lamp (high-intensity discharge or HID) or a light-emitting diode (LED). Some light sources appear yellow, while others are white or blue. How these light sources illuminate objects can make them look very different.

Let’s take a giant step sideways. You’ve seen plenty of rainbows, but do you know what turns the supposedly white light from the sun into a color pattern that shifts from violet through to blue, green, yellow, orange and red? Water molecules refract the light from the sun. Because white light is made up of many different wavelengths, and each is reflected at a different angle as it passes through the water molecules, the light is divided into its primary components. Sorry, I know. We got all technical again.

Headlight Color
Our friend Jeremy Lambertson from Driven SS in Marquette, Michigan, and his wife, Carrie, snapped this photo of a rainbow after a Cars and Coffee event.

An expensive-for-its-size electronic device called a spectral illuminance analyzer or a spectrometer can analyze the frequency content of a light source. The spectrometer works precisely the same way that a real-time audio analyzer (RTA) looks at the amplitude of the different sound frequencies produced by an audio source. As you may have guessed, we’ve added one to the BestCarAudio.com lab.

Headlight Color
An audio analyzer like the venerable AudioControl SA-3052 will show a user the relative loudness of each 1/3-octave band of frequencies across the range of human hearing.
Headlight Color
Our spectrometer shows us how much energy is contained at the different wavelengths from a light source.
Headlight Color
The view when we took the light measurement posted above.
Headlight Color
Spectrographic analysis on a bright sunny day with the sun almost at its highest point in the sky.
Headlight Color
The view during our measurement of a bright sunny day with very few clouds in the sky.

If you compare the two spectrographic measurements, you can see that the water vapor in the clouds is blocking increasing amounts of green, yellow, orange and red light. Unsurprisingly, we are left with a light source that makes everything look dull. This is because the water vapor in the air has quite literally filtered out the light energy that makes colors pop.

The software scales the measurement window to make it easy to see energy levels at different wavelengths. This is similar to the way our eyes or the iris and shutter on a camera work together to deliver a similar level of perceived brightness for a given lighting condition. The chart below shows both measurements overlaid, one on top of the other. You can see that the overall brightness level on a cloudy day is significantly lower.

The measured light level was 106,252 lux on a sunny day, whereas the cloudy day was only 9,069 lux. Converted to candlepower, the numbers are 9,874 and 843.

Headlight Color
A comparison of energy levels between a sunny and a cloudy day in Southern Ontario.

Headlight Bulb Color

When it comes to the headlights on your car or truck, bulbs come in various colors for a variety of reasons. At the incandescent end of the spectrum, most have a yellowish look. With that said, halogen bulbs (which use iodine and bromine gas) have less yellow and produce more light output than old bulbs that use argon. Here’s the spectrographic analysis of a relatively simple halogen light bulb.

Headlight Color
Spectrographic analysis of a Wagner 1156 turn signal bulb.

As you can see, there is a lot of energy in the red portion of the light spectrum produced by this bulb. To be clear, it’s not an amber bulb, though; we should find one of those and test it as well.

Headlight Color
Our Wagner 1157 is a classic incandescent bulb that produces warm yellow light.

OK, we’re back from the hardware store with a pair of Sylvania 3057AK amber turn signal bulbs. The graph below shows their spectral energy.

Headlight Color
A Sylvania 3057AK has a dark amber coating. The amount of blue light passed from the filament is dramatically reduced.

How we perceive the color of a light source is dependent on the frequency content of the energy coming from the bulb. Warm light will have more red energy, where a cool bulb will be bluer.

Color Temperature and Color Space

If you’ve ever shopped for HID headlight bulbs, you know their color is often described by a specific Kelvin value. For example, a yellow fog light bulb might be rated at 3,000 K, where a factory-installed HID or LED bulb might be a very pure white rated at 6,000 K. Those bulbs with a very blue tint are often up in the 8,000-10,000 K range.

Most people think these values are somewhat arbitrary, but the reality is, the light color can be measured with impressive accuracy using the right equipment. Our spectrometer can do this quickly and easily. The software will also plot the measurement on what’s called a color space chart. The chart outlines the level of red, green and blue in the light source and uses X and Y coordinates to describe the location on a chart. For our testing, we’ll use the CIE 1931 color space chart. The image below shows us where our measurement of the Wagner bulb falls.

Headlight Color
Our Wagner bulb measurement yielded an X value of 0.4246 and a Y value of 0.3985.
Headlight Color
The Sylvania bulb measured at 0.5590 for an X-value and 0.4305 for a Y-value.

The software tells us the Wagner light source has a correlated color temperature of 3,174 kelvins. As mentioned, that’s considered a warm yellowish light. The amber Sylvania bulb has a color temperature of 1,857 and falls into the orange and red portion of the light spectrum.

White Light Isn’t Always Made Up Of All Frequencies

The last item we’ll touch on in this article is a bit of a tease toward some future content we are working on. If you’re reading this, then you’re likely looking at a computer or smartphone screen. The light created by that screen is made up of tiny red, green and blue pixels. The colors you see depend on the intensity of each of those pixels. If the screen is to be blue, then only the blue pixels will be illuminated. For violet, the red and blue will be turned on. Yellow is produced by red and green. You can easily see this pattern by looking at the CIE 1931 color space images above.

What might be surprising to some is that the perception of white can be made up of specific amounts of red, green and blue light. The chart below shows a measurement of the light produced by the laptop screen on which this article was created.

Headlight Color
The spectrographic content of our laptop screen with an all-white image.

Behold! Our Dell XPS 13 laptop screen is perceived as white, yet it’s primarily red, very light green and mostly blue light. Here’s how the white light it produces measures on the CIE 1931 chart.

Headlight Color
The white light produced by our laptop screen was measured with an X value of 0.3095 and a Y value of 0.3310.

Our screen has a correlated color temperature of 6,662 K. If we were scoring it on even whiteness, that’d be an excellent result. But does this score mean it’s a perfect source of white light? Absolutely not! We’ll leave you to ponder that thought as we prepare the next few articles.

Lead-in Image: Thanks to Josh Matthews for sharing this photo of an Acura RSX equipped with decidedly blue headlights.

This article is written and produced by the team at www.BestCarAudio.com. Reproduction or use of any kind is prohibited without the express written permission of 1sixty8 media.

Filed Under: ARTICLES, Car Audio, RESOURCE LIBRARY

Let’s Talk About Remote Starter and Security System Range

Remote Range

Range is the critical factor in the quality and performance of a remote car starter or security system. That’s the distance between you and your vehicle when you’re sending a lock, unlock or remote start command, or are hoping to receive a security notification. If you aren’t close enough, or the convenience system doesn’t have enough power, signals may not reach the vehicle or the remote.

Remote Starter and Security System Key Fobs

The handheld remote that comes with your vehicle or an aftermarket starter uses radio frequency communication to transmit commands. These work in a similar fashion to a radio station in that they broadcast in a circular pattern from the remote. If your vehicle is close enough and the signal is strong enough, the receiver in the car or truck will relay the command to the control module and execute the function.

Let’s look at two-way remote controls. A two-way remote sends a command such as “unlock” to the vehicle when you press the button. When the command has been received and the doors are unlocked, the transceiver in the car sends a command back to your remote to let you know the request was executed. The benefit of this two-way communication is that you always know the status of your car or truck. There’s no need to guess whether the doors are locked or the engine is running.

Remote Range
Two-way remotes like the new Compustar R5 allow security warnings from the car or truck to alert you when something is wrong.

How Do Remote Car Starter Companies Define Range?

No matter which brand of convenience or security system you’ve chosen, they all try to describe the distance between the vehicle and the remote in a measurable range. The simplest aftermarket remotes usually offer about 1,000 feet (about 300 meters) of range under ideal conditions. The step-up systems provide solutions that work at ¼ mile, 3,000 feet (914 meters) or 1 mile (1.61 kilometers). Some companies offer ultra-long-range radio frequency remotes that can deliver 2 or even 3 miles of range.

All manufacturers of remote start systems calculate these distances based on ideal controlled conditions. With trees, houses or buildings between you and the vehicle, the maximum functional range will decrease dramatically. If you’re inside a building (apartment, office tower, factory, hospital, etc.), that will decrease the effective range. A lot of electrical interference from communication systems will also reduce the usable range. We’ve seen cases where a specific remote solution worked great in one city but barely worked at all in another because a nearby military base was broadcasting something in the same frequency range.

To compare remotes, consider their power levels. The simplest 1,000-foot models could be your distance benchmark. A remote that offers 3,000 feet of range isn’t just three times more powerful; it’s closer to eight times as powerful. Because the signal radiates in a circular pattern, the power level needs to be about four times stronger to double the distance. That would mean a transmitter needs to be 16 times stronger to quadruple the effective distance. So, a remote that offers 1 mile of range is just over 25 times more powerful than one that only provides 1,000 feet of functionality. The 2-mile remotes are 100 times more powerful than the 1,000-foot models, and 3-mile units are an amazing 223 times more powerful.

Manufacturers of remote start and security systems work to increase range in other ways. The first is to switch from amplitude modulation (AM) signal to frequency modulation (FM). As you may have noticed on your car radio, FM offers better noise rejection than AM. The second method to improve range is to use what’s known as frequency-hopping or spread-spectrum communication. A simple way to understand this is to think of spread-spectrum systems as a group of people yelling a command rather than a single person. If there is noise interfering with one person yelling, the message from one of the other people is still likely to get through.

Remote Range
AM, FM and digital spread spectrum (DSS) communication technologies vary in their ability to send a command to the brain of your starter or security system.

Why Is Remote Range Important?

If you park your car in the driveway of your house and want to start it before work, you don’t need much range. A 1,000-foot system will likely be more than adequate. If you’re in an apartment on the fourth or fifth floor and the car is parked below you, the same applies. However, if you live on the other side of that apartment building, you’ll need to send a much stronger signal.

Think, too, about where you work. Do you work in a small office where your car is parked outside the window? If so, 1,000 feet is lots of transmitting strength. What if you work in a hospital, a distribution warehouse or a manufacturing facility and your car is 1,500 to 2,000 feet away? There may also be mechanical and electronic equipment along with the metal structure of the building between you and the vehicle. You may need 20 or 50 times as strong of a signal to let you start the car.

Logically and not incorrectly, you could wait until you were at the door to the parking lot to start your car and let the air conditioning run in the summer or get the heater working in the winter. However, if it’s the latter, the car won’t warm up much in the two or three minutes it takes to walk across the parking lot. The whole purpose of a convenience system is to make the vehicle more comfortable when it’s time to drive away.

If you have a security system or security features tied into a remote starter, you can receive warnings from the alarm portion of the system on some premium two-way remotes. If you’ve parked your car or truck at a big shopping mall, it’s not unreasonable that you’d be more than a quarter-mile away. With that said, the ¼-mile system isn’t going to work with concrete and steel walls, dozens of stores and hundreds of people on their cell phones between you and your vehicle. Transmitter power is fundamental here – both from the remote and from the transceiver in the vehicle.

A Quick Test of Remote Starter Range

To quantify some of the range claims, we headed to a local light-industrial area to test how far away we could be and still receive a reliable confirmation that a command from our remote worked. The first system featured a two-way remote control with a color display that’s marketed as offering 1 mile of range. We used the infamous remote-to-chin trick (which turns your head into an antenna) to maximize performance, and we were able to get the system to function at a distance of 2,000 feet (615 meters).

The second system features a one-button remote with LED confirmation. It’s listed as providing up to 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) of range. We managed an impressive 1.11 miles (1.78 kilometers) in our urban test scenario. Just as a note, the battery in this remote was a year old, so there is a slight chance we could have bettered that number.

Nevertheless, the real-world numbers in this test came in at 38% and 55% of the maximum the companies use in their marketing. Given the caveats of interference, these aren’t surprising. If we were in a remote part of Texas or Saskatchewan with flat terrain with no trees, cell service, radio stations or buildings, we’d have no problem believing that these systems would deliver every inch of their ratings.

Remote Range
How far away from our cars did the remotes work in the city’s light commercial area?

We took the long-range system to a local shopping mall for a second test and parked at the very southwestern corner of the parking lot. We parked facing the door and in line with the long center hallway in the mall. This positioning would provide a best-case scenario in terms of range.

The first test was to check out the factory keyless entry system. As we walked through the parking lot, we pressed the lock button. At a distance of 195 feet (60 meters), we had to turn around and face the car for it to respond. This continued to work right up to the door of the mall at 290 feet (88 meters). The vehicle continued to react once we were through the first set of doors but not after the second. So, we’ll call that about 300 feet (100 meters) of range.

We switched to the one-button two-way LED remote that’s marketed as offering 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) of range. We continued in a straight line down the mall’s main corridor into the large department store at the end. Just as we passed the perfume section a quarter of the way through that store, we ran out of range. That’s a total of 1,400 feet (427 meters).

Given the line-of-sight benefit, we decided to stray off down a few of the side corridors. A little to the north, with a few dozen more stores in the way, the range was down to 920 feet (280 meters). Farther west of that, with even more stores between us and the car, the range was down to 740 feet (225 meters).

At no time were we disappointed with the test. It was amazing to see just how far we could get and the types of interference that reduced the effective range. On the other hand, it was no surprise to see how poorly the factory remote fob worked.

Remote Range
Being in a building dramatically reduces the range of your remote car starter or security system remote.

What Do You Need To Know About Remote Range?

Just as with some of the overzealous power ratings on speakers and amplifiers we see, using the longest range possible in marketing information is just a part of reality when it comes to the performance of remote starter, security and convenience systems.

When buying a remote car starter or security system for your car or truck, think about the worst-case scenario in terms of how much transmitting power you’ll need. We’ve heard of people starting their vehicles from a monorail when more than a station away from their stop or while flying into a small airport in a small commuter plane.

If you want your vehicle to be comfortable and ready to go when you are, extra power from the car starter or security system remote will give you more warm-up/cool-down time. Drop by your local specialty mobile enhancement retailer today to find out about the security and convenience solutions available for your vehicle.

This article is written and produced by the team at www.BestCarAudio.com. Reproduction or use of any kind is prohibited without the express written permission of 1sixty8 media.

Filed Under: ARTICLES, Remote Car Starters, RESOURCE LIBRARY

Product Spotlight: Thinkware U1000 Plus Dash Camera

Thinkware U1000 Plus

If you are shopping for a premium dash camera with a high-resolution image sensor, the Thinkware U1000 Plus should be on your shortlist. This solution can record video in 4K resolution and is available with a secondary camera to capture what happens behind your vehicle. Let’s take a close look.

Design of the Thinkware U1000 Plus Dash Camera

The U1000 Plus is a low-profile camera that mounts at the top of your windshield. Rather than a square or round body, the bulk of the camera sits flat against the glass. This design leaves a lot of clearance for the sun visor and rearview mirror.

The main camera can be tilted up or down to ensure the system works with windshields with varying rakes. The camera body is 4.33 inches tall, 2.55 inches wide and 1.18 inches thick. On the left side of the chassis are power connections, a port for an external radar sensor and the optional rear camera. The rear camera uses a USB connection, so you shouldn’t have issues with RF interference. Thinkware includes a hardwire installation kit with the camera. You can upgrade to the OBD-II power cable if you don’t want any of the wiring in your vehicle modified. This is a wise investment for leased vehicles.

Thinkware U1000 Plus
The right side of the chassis has the Micro SD memory card slot, the reset button and the microphone.

Once installed, the camera body has the manual recording button in the center and the Power, Wi-Fi and voice recording buttons in the upper left corner. LEDs across the top indicate when the unit is on, when Wi-Fi is enabled, and when the GPS receiver has locked on enough satellites to pinpoint your location.

Thinkware U1000 Plus

Thinkware Dash Camera Specifications

This camera features a Sony IMX515 STARVIS-Series image sensor that can record at up to 3840 x 2160 pixels at 30 frames per second. It can also be configured to record in 2K mode at 2560 x 1440 pixels at 60 frames per second. The viewing angle is rated at 135.6 degrees, offering a good balance of detail and field of vision.

The rear camera features a Full HD-quality image sensor that records 1920×1080 pixels at 30 frames per second. Both the front and rear cameras have a High Dynamic Range (HDR) mode that compresses the light and dark parts of the image to make objects in shadows, or that might be washed out by a bright light source more visible. Low-light performance is further enhanced with Thinkware’s Super Night Vision 3.0. This processing reduces noise when light levels are low to keep videos clear and sharp.

Thinkware U1000 Plus
The Wide Dynamic Range mode compresses bright areas and brightens dark parts of the image to make everything more visible.

Video files are stored using the HEVC format H.265 to maximize file storage. With the 64GB card included, the system can store up to 151 minutes of video in a dual-camera solution. You can increase the size of the memory card to 512 GB for an incredible 1229 minutes of storage.

You can upgrade the U1000 Plus to a five-camera system using Thinkware’s optional multiplexer and three additional cameras. This is an ideal solution for taxi, limousine and rideshare applications.

Thinkware U1000 Plus
The U1000 Plus can be upgraded with the optional multiplexer module and additional cameras for better coverage.

Parking Mode Protection

The Thinkware U1000 Plus includes several parking mode options. In energy-saving mode, the camera only stores video when the onboard accelerometer detects impacts. Motion and Impact mode allows the camera to watch for vehicles or people entering the field of vision along with impact sensing. The camera stores a 20-second video that starts 10 seconds before the event trigger. Time Lapse mode records constantly at two frames per second.

The U1000 Plus can be upgraded with Thinkware’s optional radar module. Rather than monitoring the area in front of the vehicle using the image sensor, the radar sensor detects someone or something approaching. This dramatically reduces current consumption, so there is less draw on the vehicle battery.

Thinkware U1000 Plus
The optional radar sensors can dramatically reduce current draw when using parking mode.

Wi-Fi Connectivity

You can use the Thinkware Dashcam Link app on your Android smartphone, iPhone, or tablet to view video files stored on the system. Once connected, your installer can adjust the system settings and fine-tune the viewing angle to ensure maximum coverage.

The Thinkware Connected app gives the U1000 Plus Cloud-based connectivity. If you have a mobile hotspot, or the dashcam can connect to Wi-Fi at your home, you can view what the camera sees on your phone. You’ll also get impact notifications when parked. The vehicle operator can send an emergency message to the registered contact by pressing the REC button on the chassis for three seconds. Parents or business owners can review the vehicle’s operational history to review use and driving behavior.

Advanced Driver Assistance Systems

Modern video processing technology allows the U1000 Plus to warn the operating. These Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) include Front Vehicle Departure Warnings (FVDW), Forward Collision Warnings (FCWS) and Lane Departure Warnings (LDWS). Notifications about approaching a vehicle too quickly or crossing the lines on the side of the road can help prevent serious accidents.

Thinkware U1000 Plus
ADAS features like Forward Collision Warning integrated with the Thinkware U1000 Plus can help prevent serious accidents.

If you are shopping for a premium dash camera with a high-resolution image sensor, the Thinkware U1000 Plus should be on your shortlist. This solution can record video in 4K resolution and is available with a secondary camera to capture what happens behind your vehicle. Let’s take a close look.

Upgrade Your Vehicle with a Thinkware Dash Camera

We all know that having a dash camera is the best way to protect yourself from fraud and false accusations. It’s also an ideal solution for capturing those “I can’t believe that just happened” moments. When upgrading your vehicle, drop by a local authorized Thinkware retailer and ask about the U1000 Plus system. They can provide you with a quote that includes expert installation.

You can learn more about Thinkware products like the U1000 Plus by visiting their website. Their dealer locator makes it easy to find a retailer near you to help design and install a premium dash camera system.

This article is written and produced by the team at www.BestCarAudio.com. Reproduction or use of any kind is prohibited without the express written permission of 1sixty8 media.

Filed Under: ARTICLES, Driver Safety, PRODUCTS, RESOURCE LIBRARY Tagged With: Thinkware

Product Spotlight: Rockford Fosgate PP4-NT

Rockford Fosgate PP4-NT

Not long ago, we took a look at the impressive PPS4-10 10-inch Punch Pro midrange drivers from Rockford Fosgate. While they are great for keeping up with a trunk full of subwoofers, what works in terms of reproducing those high frequencies? This spotlight focuses on the Rockford Fosgate PP4-NT Punch Pro tweeter. Let’s check it out!

Rockford Fosgate PP4-NT Specifications

The PP4-NT is a one-inch diameter aluminum dome horn tweeter designed for SPL systems. The tweeter is rated to handle 50 watts of power continuously and 100 watts maximum. The driver has a nominal impedance of four ohms and has an incredible efficiency rating of 105 dB SPL when powered with one watt and measured at a distance of one meter.

The Rockford Fosgate PP4-NT tweeters are sold individually. So, if you need a pair, then you have to buy two of them.

Rockford Fosgate PP4-NT
The raw PP4-NT Tweeter (left), with the mounting flange (center) and with the through-panel clamp (right).

Punch Pro Tweeter Features

As mentioned, the PP4-NT is based around an aluminum diaphragm and is powered by a compact neodymium magnet. The voice coil is formed from high-temperature Nomex to help ensure reliability. This is all housed in an aluminum chassis that improves heat extraction from the voice coil assembly. To increase efficiency, the tweeter uses a horn design with a pointed phase plug.

Electrical connections are handled by a pair of spring-loaded chrome terminals on the bottom of the housing. The terminals are designed to allow wires to be inserted from underneath the tweeter, preventing wires from protruding and increasing the overall size.

Rockford Fosgate PP4-NT
Electrical connections are made using a pair of spring-loaded terminals on the bottom cap.

SPL Tweeter Mounting Options

Rockford Fosgate includes two mounting solutions for the PP4-NT. If space is at a premium, then the compact outer trim ring will screw down into the body and clamp over materials up to 0.35 inches thick. Your installation technician will need access to the back of the mounting location to complete this installation.

Alternatively, the tweeter can be flush mounted through a 2.52-inch hole using the provided removable mounting flange.

With the compact mounting ring, the tweeter body is 2.52 inches in diameter and the ring is 2.09 inches across. The surface mounting ring measures 3.64 inches across.

Rockford Fosgate PP4-NT
The included mounting flange allows the tweeter to be surface-mounted.
Rockford Fosgate PP4-NT
Mounting dimensions for the two installation options.

Crossover Options

The PP4-NT includes a built-in 6dB/octave 4kHz crossover. This is equivalent to using a four-microfarad capacitor wired in series with the voice coil. You can also use the tweeter with the PP4-X Punch Pro passive crossovers. The crossovers are designed to apply a 3 kHz low-pass filter to whatever four-ohm Punch Pro midrange you choose. They also add 0, -3 and -6 dB output attenuation options for the tweeters. If you don’t have a DSP and amplifier channels dedicated to the tweeters, then the PPS-X crossovers are a wise investment.

Rockford Fosgate PP4-NT
The optional Punch Pro passive crossover networks add output attenuation options to the PP4-NT installation.

Louder Than Loud for Music Fanatics

If you are working on building a car audio system designed to play music at rock concert levels, visit a local authorized Rockford Fosgate retailer and ask about the PP4-NT tweeters and the rest of the Punch Pro line.

You can find a local authorized Rockford Fosgate retailer at their Dealer Locator. Be sure to follow Rockford Fosgate on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube to learn about their new products and the amazing events they attend each year.

This article is written and produced by the team at www.BestCarAudio.com. Reproduction or use of any kind is prohibited without the express written permission of 1sixty8 media.

Filed Under: ARTICLES, Car Audio, PRODUCTS, RESOURCE LIBRARY Tagged With: Rockford Fosgate

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