Audio bargain or flea market junk? (Rockville Audio)

[the MfM]

It’s soft and goo like. If you press on it lightly it will deform.

I agree it doesn’t look like a capacitor failure. But if you look at the first pic you can see the board is laid out very symmetrically and the goo isn’t on the other side.

Part of the Rockville marketing claims there capacitors are special and made in Japan with a different electrolytic fluid to improve sound.

Could easily be from poor assembly.

 

[bigblank69]

Rockville marketing is just that... marketing. I have dyno'd a couple of their amps and can say the birthsheets are pure bs, and the QC definitely is lacking. I had a K9 subwoofer from them come in for a review on my YouTube channel and I never got around to posting the video because the "Japanese Coils" were actually chinese garbage and started coming unwound left and right. I have a marine subwoofer from them I am still hemming and hawing about doing a review on....

 

[the MfM]

Back in and working.



Who knows for how long.























.

 

[Clayton Danyew]

Changing my vote to junk and sending back. I have two of these in my boat and they overheat EVERY time I am on the water. One amp is pushing 8 speakers (parallel 2ohm) and one sub (bridged) with two free channel and the other is pushing 4 tower speakes (parallel 2ohm) and 2 subs (bridged) again with two free channel. I cant get any bass in the subs out of the amp and the gains and eq are turned way up. I had a 4 channel pyle amp before that worked better than these. Biting the bullet and upgrading to wetsounds. Im sure they are fine for average systems...but for big stereos (mine has 15 speakers, 3 of which are subs), these are definitely not what you want to go with.

 

[the MfM]

Changing my vote to junk and sending back. I have two of these in my boat and they overheat EVERY time I am on the water. One amp is pushing 8 speakers (parallel 2ohm) and one sub (bridged) with two free channel and the other is pushing 4 tower speakes (parallel 2ohm) and 2 subs (bridged) again with two free channel. I cant get any bass in the subs out of the amp and the gains and eq are turned way up. I had a 4 channel pyle amp before that worked better than these. Biting the bullet and upgrading to wetsounds. Im sure they are fine for average systems...but for big stereos (mine has 15 speakers, 3 of which are subs), these are definitely not what you want to go with.

Not saying they aren’t flea market junk but turning the gain way up is would create more heat as I understand amps. Generally 25-50% is a good starting point.

 

[Jaylex]

@the MfM Agreed....not sure how most have their gains set, but in my experience turning them way up has never been the recommendation. I run 3 (soon to be 4) JL audio amps and wouldnt turn them past 50-60%, to avoid the excess heat.

If these are still having issues with the gains down with excess heat then that's prob part of the cause.

Those that have them...wonder what they have their gains set at?

 

[seanmclean]

My failure was hardware related, but was able to get satisfactory performance around 40% gain. Just done by ear though, as it doesn't come with the precise voltmeter based tuning data that the JLs do, for example.

 

[adrianp89]

@the MfM Agreed....not sure how most have their gains set, but in my experience turning them way up has never been the recommendation. I run 3 (soon to be 4) JL audio amps and wouldnt turn them past 50-60%, to avoid the excess heat.

If these are still having issues with the gains down with excess heat then that's prob part of the cause.

Those that have them...wonder what they have their gains set at?

Even at 50% gain, most of the time you are clipping. That clipping will cause some serious heat.

 

[Clayton Danyew]

I agree that it should not have to go more than 50% gain. But when setting my head unit eq to zero, and turning the volume to 75% which is what i have read that i need to do to set the amp properly...at 50% gain, i am getting very little bass out of my three subs. just not enough power i dont think. LPF set at around 100Hz, even adjusted that up and down to see where the low limit was and didnt make a difference. any other recommendations?

 

[adrianp89]

So what are the subs wired to? Are they in the same box? What is the RMS of your amp?

 

[Clayton Danyew]

Box Sub, 4ohm, 400W RMS capability, bridged 2 channels at 190W
Mounted sub 1, 4ohm, , 600W RMS capability, bridged 2 channels at 190W
Mounted sub 2, 4ohm, 600W RMS capability, bridged 2 channels at 190W

Here are the specs for the rockville amp
-4ohm: 65 Watts x 8 Channels
-2ohm: 95 Watts x 8 Channels
-4ohm Bridged: 190 Watts x 4 Channels

I should be able to get plenty of bass with 190W but im not. I just ordered a 6 channel 900W wet sounds amp, should get 300W to each sub and have more adjustability which i am hoping fixes the problem.

https://creativeaudio.net/htx6/

 

[adrianp89]

The primary problem is power. To even get those subs playing somewhat decent you need to go full tilt. Even the HTX6 is going to be too little. If it were me, I would do probably do two amplifiers. A 1200 watt (or around, maybe 1500) for the IB subs. And then a 500 or so for the box sub. Remember too little of power blows more often speakers than too much power. (Due to user error, they clip the subs because they are not playing as loud as they could be).

This would be a perfect match for your IB subs: https://www.sonicelectronix.com/item_137479_Kicker-KXMA1200.1-44KXMA12001-Damaged-Packaging-Only-New.html?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=shopping-campaign-goal-optimized-marine-audio&utm_keyword={keyword)&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIxpnhsOSS3AIVF4_ICh2oZAshEAQYASABEgLz_vD_BwE

Finding a good amp for the box sub will be difficult because you need 400 @ 4. Probably need to look for something that would be 800@2.

 

[BlkGS]

In a past life (college) I was a car audio installer for a living. I can't speak to their marine offerings, but their car stuff straddled the line of junk and decent starting gear.

They tended to be very over rated in output, but worked ok with the understanding they weren't going to be loud.

I've been looking for Amps myself. I missed out on the 25% off Rockford amps deal, the power acoustic, mb quart, and soundstream offerings seem to be the best value right now.

 

[Mainah]

I posted this in a different thread but don’t remember which one. I have had a rockville rxm-t2 pushing a polk db1040 in a sealed box in my truck for a few weeks now. I tuned it with an o scope to 40v and still no clipping. I did not dare push further than that for fear of burning up the voice coil on the db1040 with too much power. So far so good and the amp never even gets warm mounted under the drivers seat. Going to throw another rxm-t2 in the boat to push a pair of sealed polk mm1040 subs and use the current jl m400/4 amp to push towers.

I did open the rxm-t2 and really liked the extruded aluminum chassis with heat sink beauty cover. Pretty good thermal disapation design unlike some of their other chassis. The transistors were clamp mounted well to the chassis with thermal paste in between. Some of the on board componets were better than I expected and others were on par with what I expected. The conformal coating was done only ok. I did add a couple of thin strips of thermal paste where the beauty cover/heatsink makes contact with the main chassis for good measure knowing that this is key to the thermal transfer away from the board. For $114.00 I was willing to take the risk on this as a sub only amp. I would not try to run full ranges on a class D with quality concerns as the sound reproduction will suffer with cheap components on a more varied response frequency.

I can’t speak for their other designs but the rxm-t2 seems to be a good class D value even if only good for pushing a sub or two. Will see how it holds up in the boat pushing two subs. If it craps out then I will have to drop $1k on a JL mhd 600/4. I will update once installed in the boat on two subs and again mid summer after a day of high heat.

 

[the MfM]

I posted this in a different thread but don’t remember which one. I have had a rockville rxm-t2 pushing a polk db1040 in a sealed box in my truck for a few weeks now. I tuned it with an o scope to 40v and still no clipping. I did not dare push further than that for fear of burning up the voice coil on the db1040 with too much power. So far so good and the amp never even gets warm mounted under the drivers seat. Going to throw another rxm-t2 in the boat to push a pair of sealed polk mm1040 subs and use the current jl m400/4 amp to push towers.

I did open the rxm-t2 and really liked the extruded aluminum chassis with heat sink beauty cover. Pretty good thermal disapation design unlike some of their other chassis. The transistors were clamp mounted well to the chassis with thermal paste in between. Some of the on board componets were better than I expected and others were on par with what I expected. The conformal coating was done only ok. I did add a couple of thin strips of thermal paste where the beauty cover/heatsink makes contact with the main chassis for good measure knowing that this is key to the thermal transfer away from the board. For $114.00 I was willing to take the risk on this as a sub only amp. I would not try to run full ranges on a class D with quality concerns as the sound reproduction will suffer with cheap components on a more varied response frequency.

I can’t speak for their other designs but the rxm-t2 seems to be a good class D value even if only good for pushing a sub or two. Will see how it holds up in the boat pushing two subs. If it craps out then I will have to drop $1k on a JL mhd 600/4. I will update once installed in the boat on two subs and again mid summer after a day of high heat.

Just kidding; after removing the black goo mine worked great all summer.

 

[Cambo]

Has anyone used the pa on these amps ? After having one of the bazzoka add on pa and having fun commenting and giving directions it’s something I was looking to add

 

[swatski]

Has anyone used the pa on these amps ? After having one of the bazzoka add on pa and having fun commenting and giving directions it’s something I was looking to add

How did you do that? I installed the WS420 mainly for that reason, it has this "talk-back" mic feature, I couldn't figure out how else to do it...

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[Scott]

What is the Bluetooth for on this amp?

 

[the MfM]

How did you do that? I installed the WS420 mainly for that reason, it has this "talk-back" mic feature, I couldn't figure out how else to do it...

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Some of the Rockville amps come with a microphone. The rxm8 I have didn’t come with one so I downloaded an app that lets me use my phone as a PA mic via Bluetooth to my boats speakers.

 

[the MfM]

What is the Bluetooth for on this amp?

Let’s you connect your phone or anything else with Bluetooth to stream music.

With Bluetooth built into the amp you don’t even need to install a head unit if you just want to use your phone.