pretty darn good to me
Written: Oct 20 '04 (Updated Oct 20 '04)
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Pros: looks cool, sounds pretty darn good
Cons: manual blows, tech guys ain't the best
The Bottom Line: It's solid, a good buy. Like buying a Honda car, you probably won't go wrong. Read the epinion about the VGA500.4 - he knows way more than me.
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| borat's Full Review: Soundstream Van Gogh VGA320.4 Car Amp |
Soundstream Van Gogh VGA 320.4
I'm kind of a newbie when it comes to car stereo so I relied on several websites, especially caraudio.com and of course epinions to gain some knowledge before I shelled out some serious dough on a system for my 97 Accord.
What I was looking for -
1. quality, a good reputation and good technical specs, even though I don't know what THD means, I do know that the lower the number, the better (usually)
2. a price of around $300 - sometimes you get what you pay for and that's a fair amount for a 4ch amp
3. simplicity - one unit to power all four of my speakers, no subwoofer
The one thing that pushed me to Soundstream was their terrific specs and especially a review here at epinions on the VGA 500.4. The reviewer sounded like he really knew what he was talking about and basically raved about how good his system sounded. He judged it against amps from his past and since I had no amps to judge against (well, a crappy Sony one a long time ago, and it sounded fine to me) I trusted his opinion.
I narrowed it down to the VGA 320.4 and a Phoenix Gold 4 channel unit (with about the same amount of power per channel) which had a built-in fan. A fan makes a LOT of sense to me because you'd think that cooling a hot amp is a really good thing. The funny thing is the box of the 320.4 says that it has an internal fan but when I spoke to Ernie at Soundstream, he said there was no fan, so I'm not sure. If there is a fan I don't hear it or see any evidence of it. Regardless, the amp doesn't get scorching hot, but warm.
Found the 320.4 on e-bay. I would have gone with either the Phoenix Gold or 320.4 but it just so happened that a person was selling his new in box 320.4 for $270 + $25 shipping and I jumped on it.
Bought my Alpine CDA-9830 HU (reviewed by me at epinions), my Infinity Kappa 60.5cs components and Infinity 692.5i 6x9s for my rear and off I went to the local installer here in Hollywood. Mistake - if you can install your stereo yourself - even if you "think" you can install it yourself - DO IT! [These guys did a CRAP job, make that a $385 crap job. Bottom line was after leaving I noticed that there was alternator whine so I took it back and the "pro" (as in only because he does it for a living) fixed it by turning down my gain! - which of course I'm sure this guy doesn't even know how to properly do. I finally did a lot more research and got rid of the alt whine myslef by grounding the amp to an existing ground for the gas tank - which is what you're supposed to do. And they used junk RCAs which I had to completely replace and charged me for USELESS noise filters which they had routed in the wrong direction AND in the wrong place . . . ]
The 320.4 is really nice looking and heavy, it "feels" like a quality unit. It took a long time to figure out how to "tune" my system since there were lots of install problems that I wanted to clean up first. Checked all my connections, got the good ground and then started playing around with the HU set to flat and me with a small screwdriver to the 320.4.
The manual is junk. I give it a 2 out of 10. There's one page devoted to one-line descriptions of what the switches and controls are for while there are 6 pages of useless diagrams showing how you can wire all their amps to different sets of speakers and subs. For example, the manual states - "INPUT attenuation: if the audio input voltage exceeds 4 volts RMS, place the selector switch in the 4~12 volt position." OK dude - but the selector switch only reads ON and OFF so what do I do? I call Soundstream and Ernie pretty much said "set it to the one that sounds better." So I talk to another dude, Carl, a bright engineer-type, and I think, after all his electronics-speak, that I got the right answer and my ATT is now set to OFF. I told them, if you guys could write a better manual than the Korean dude who supposedly wrote it you wouldn't have to waste time with dudes like me on the phone.
I set my gains with a voltmeter and got the needed 17.89 volts out of the speaker terminals with my HU turned about 3/4 of the way up. Shouldn't the manual tell you how to do this? JL Audio's does and I called them two times with questions which their customer service guy ably answered. Soundstream's phone # on the back of the manual - 323-722-333. (Notice there's a digit missing?)
The other big issue I had in tuning this sucka up were the HP/LP filter adjustments. There's a little screw. On one end there's 50Hz, on the other end there's 5kHz. Ten hash marks in between them. OK, now I want to set my filters NOT from the HU but at the amp at 60 Hz. So, where the hell is 60Hz in that range? I have no clue. Carl at Soundstream e-mailed me saying that they were arbitrary marks, so unless you have some kind of device that tells you which freq is coming out of the speaker you don't know. I just shut the filters off and used the filters on the HU which tell you exactly what you want. I had to settle for 80Hz on the filter because that's the choice closest to what I needed.
The amp didn't arrive with the four small mounting brackets. Ernie sent them to me FREE and QUICK. It did come with a giant Soundstream sticker which I placed on a pallet-stacker in the warehouse at work.
There are small vent openings on the bottom of the amp. Why? I have no idea. Once you lay that sucker on a flat carpet in your trunk or under your seat the openings are no longer open. I mounted this bad-boy in my trunk on a hunk of MDF on which I cut a large hole that the amp sits over. (There's about 6" of free space below it where the spare is.) My thought was if there's some space under it, it would help draw some air around to help cool it.
How's it sound? I can say that my "system" sounds pretty good. I'm happy - Steve Perry on Journey's "Captured" CD gave me goose bumps. It's loud and clear, thanks partly to the amp. I have no way of knowing how good the VGA 320.4 sounds against another amp since I can't really audition it in combination with the speakers and head unit. Given the price I'd have to say I'm satisfied. I wish I could tell you how sweet the highs are and how strong the power is, but I'll leave that stuff for the scientists and audiophiles. This amp works pretty darn well for me.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): $270
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Epinions.com ID:
borat
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Location: Los Angeles
Reviews written: 3
Trusted by: 0 members
About Me:
Asian women, Asian cars, Asian food.
Libertarian Objectivist
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