Please 'Boom' Responsibly As most of you have noticed, the noise ordinances have become much tougher lately. Most of this is due to idiots, yes IDIOTS, who drive through residential areas with their windows down while their system is playing at full power. To make things worse, the music they listen to has all sorts of foul language that's not suitable for small children, (who may be playing outside). There are even a few people, who are even beyond idiot status, that play their systems at full power through residential areas after 10:00 PM (when many people go to bed). I don't believe that this type of behavior is good for the industry. If the fines get too stiff, people will stop buying large systems. If this happens, more people will get out of car audio (who wants a mediocre system). People get interested in things because they're exciting. A deck and four 6.5" speakers are not going to interest many of the younger car audio enthusiasts. If car audio enthusiasts keep annoying more and more people, the fines will keep getting tougher. All of this will only reduce interest in the equipment that fuels the industry. If you want to listen to your system at full volume, get out on the highway where there's little chance of bothering anyone. When you get to a red light, turn it down. If the only thing attractive about you is your 'system', you have some work to do. Bottom line... Think about what you're doing. Think about other people. It's not the end of the world if you have to turn the volume down for a little while.


Y-Cables
There seems to be some confusion over the function of Y-cables. Let's see if I can fix that. :-)
Function:
A y-cable simply provides 2 jacks/plugs from a single input jack/plug. It does NOT send half of the signal to each of the outputs. It sends whatever signal it receives to both of the output connectors. The diagram below shows some common configurations.

y-cable

Construction:
In a y-cable, all 3 center conductors are connected directly together and all of the shields are connected together. It contains no resistors or capacitors.
Example:
The diagram below shows how the left signal is sent to both channels of the blue amplifier and the right signal is sent to both channels of the green amplifier. The blue amplifier amplifier would drive the speakers on the left side of the vehicle. The green amplifier would drive the speakers on the right side of the vehicle. y-cable2
Things you shouldn't do:
A y-cable should NOT be used to connect 2 outputs from a head unit, EQ, or other device. It cannot be used to mix 2 signals together to provide a single non-fading output. If 2 outputs are connected together (via a y-cable) and they don't match EXACTLY, one output will be trying to drive the other to match itself. This will likely not damage anything but WILL likely cause the output signal to be distorted.

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