Alpine PXE-08505s feedback

[cueball981]

I have one of these that's going into my install. Hoping to have it up and running within the next 2 weeks. This will be my first foray into the DSP world. LOL! Wish me luck!

I have a JBL MS-8 on the bench just in case...

[ToNasty]

Do you mean the 0850s?

[Syncher]

Yeah... my bad I botched the title.
Mine is installed. Bluetooth app works- that's about all I can say as of now. The cable for the remote works as long as your car is the size of a Mini Cooper. It can't be more than a few feet long- kinda worthless til I find an extension. I might not even bother since the Android app works fine for all that. Serious tuning will be done with a laptop anyhow. Tomorrow I'll get busy measuring with REW and adjusting.

[Syncher]

The PXE works like a champ. I've only used one other dsp so I can't give much of a comparison but via the laptop it's intuitive and it's pretty fast navigating to the different options. I got the crossovers, TA and gains setup so now it's fine tuning. The Android app is a little cumbersome to use for original setup but I think for fine tuning it'll be very useful.

[cueball981]

Syncher, are you using any of its onboard power or running external amps only?

[Syncher]

I used 2 channels to power the tweeters up front. Seem to work fine so far. There's nowhere to adjust the amp output- I guess they figure 25w is gonna be full up. Not a problem though- in my system they're only around 50-60% via the output gain on the dsp mixer setup. That's just as far as I got today- I'm sure there will be some more small adjustments made on them.

[cueball981]

Great! Thanks for the reply! I'm going to power my center 3.5 coax, 2x rear-headliner 3.5 coax, and rear door 6x9s off of the PXE to start. Both front door 6x9s and left/right dash 3.5s will run off of external amp power.

[Syncher]

I think a lot of people will be interested in hearing how the amp does for those 6x9s. I'm pretty sure it'll work well for the 3.5 coax's. I re-checked and the tweeters are only at about 35% on my tune so far.

[cueball981]

I'll definitely post an update after I have time to tweak it. I'm planning to pull the back seat tomorrow to remove the stock sub and to deaden the back wall. Then I'll figure out how I'm going to lay out my amp rack, which I believe will take up the space where the stock sub resided. I have 2 Alpine PDX-V9s, the PXE-0850S, and wire distribution blocks for both power and ground to lay out. I hope it will all fit! Either going to go with 1/4" ABS or 3/8" starboard (HDPE) to mount the components. Once the seat is back in, there's not way to get to anything, so will have to make sure the amps are set correctly before closing things up.

I'll take some pics as I go along. I don't have any for the speaker upgrades, but maybe I'll take a few shots when I go back in to finish deadening the doors.

[Syncher]

I've had some time to play around with this thing and I've found it to be very responsive. It's got solid software working for it- no strange behavior at all. A minor nit is that if you link any speaker to it's partner all speaker pairs link up. So basically the link feature is good for setting crossovers then you don't use it anymore.
I can't figure out why they only have a 3 foot cable for the in-dash remote. It's completely useless at that length unless you have a wee little tiny car. So if you use an external playback source like a Fiio or your cell phone you have to control the volume on that piece of hardware. Or you can buy an extension cable, which is Y'd off the usb cable. Again... why. Anyhow- if you want to get an extension it appears to be the same connector that a lot of back-up cameras use. I'm not sure that will work since the connector/cable is not mentioned anywhere in the Alpine universe but I ordered one and will be the guinea pig.