Audio bargain or flea market junk? (Rockville Audio)

[Scott]

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.

Fantastic! We only use our phone for music.

 

[Cambo]

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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It is no longer available it was the bazzoka map1000. It worked great but that boat is sold . Rockville amps now have a mic pa feature and some searching turns up that they also sell pa/dj systems .

 

[Jgorm]

I just ordered my 3rd rockville amp for my side by side. So far so good.

 

[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.

I tried to tune the rockville I just put in the boat this past weekend. Yes tried is the correct word. I got it outputting almost 39v pre clip to two channels on a 50hz test test tone which is darn good for the price. I tried dialing in the low pass filter to no joy (no intermediate markings on the dial and I was using my oscilloscope to do it). They claim a 12 db per octave roll of at 4 ohms but I was seeing more like 6 or less. I ended up leaving the crossover dial at about 1/3. After retuning all of my amps and hooking all of the speakers back up I ran some test tones at low/mid power. Something was very off with the subs on the rockville amp right away. The subs were still visibly responding all the way up to 500hz even at low power. Turning the crossover down more attenuated the desired bass response below 120 hz though. Only pushing 2.88v source level into the amp that is unacceptable. I did not see this in my truck because my head unit has built in digital crossover settings.

Bottom line is that the crossovers on the rxm-t2 I put in the boat are junk. The polk head unit not having a dedicated sub out with filter does not help either. Not sure if all of the rockvilles are like this but the one in my boat is. Not sure if I will build my own filters/crossovers or buy inline rca filters off the shelf but will certainly be setting the rockville to full pass once I have that done.

On the plus side with the rockville disconnected everyhting else sounds great right now.

 

[Cambo]

Confirmed by williston audio labs to have a problem with the built in crossover as well, it was discontinued maybe they did a production run and found out about this issue and are addressing it. Testing looked pretty good just may need some signal processing that model is the Class D . The RXM-S6 class A B its being delivered tomorrow and will bench test it. The main purpose is for having the mic and adding some more tower speakers. Posiibly an eq the last boat had a simple eq and it worked great allowing a lot of flexibility and tuneability. The wets sounds eq looks great but has features that are available for $35.00 less the mic


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[Mainah]

Confirmed by williston audio labs to have a problem with the built in crossover as well, it was discontinued maybe they did a production run and found out about this issue and are addressing it. Testing looked pretty good just may need some signal processing that model is the Class D . The RXM-S6 class A B its being delivered tomorrow and will bench test it. The main purpose is for having the mic and adding some more tower speakers. Posiibly an eq the last boat had a simple eq and it worked great allowing a lot of flexibility and tuneability. The wets sounds eq looks great but has features that are available for $35.00 less the mic


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Wow. Had not seen that video. I decided to cut bait at 500hz to avoid damaging my subs. Seeing his test with the crossover turned down all the way and still getting vocals tells me that the crossover is even worse than I thought. If true to spec there should be basically zero response above 400hz even at max ouput. For those considering this amp be careful as speaker carnage could ensue with this much power and terrible crossovers.

I have decided my solution is going to be a dsp. This way I can set all of my amps to full pass and adust the slope/filter/gain/phase/delay to my liking for all amped channels in the dsp prior to sending to the amp. Will allow for some fine balancing of main cabin/tower/subs/bow/and swim deck such that I should never have to touch anything but the main volume once I have the gain for each channel in the dap balanced with the gain on the amp and some hard limits set.

 

[Jgorm]

My newest amp (rxdf20, $80) had an issue where channels 1 and 2 have a undefeatable high pass crossover that can only be turned down to 50hz. 3 and 4 have lpf full or hpf setting. I didn't have any crossover issues with the one in the boat on a jl 10, or in my car with a little 8. No vocals at all. This crossover works well on 3 and 4. I think my solution is going to be to add a sub and use the hpf on 1 and 2 so it will go real loud. 50mph with no windshield needs lots of volume! I bought this because it fits under my seat and the 12" versions are too long.

 

[Mainah]

My newest amp (rxdf20, $80) had an issue where channels 1 and 2 have a undefeatable high pass crossover that can only be turned down to 50hz. 3 and 4 have lpf full or hpf setting. I didn't have any crossover issues with the one in the boat on a jl 10, or in my car with a little 8. No vocals at all. This crossover works well on 3 and 4. I think my solution is going to be to add a sub and use the hpf on 1 and 2 so it will go real loud. 50mph with no windshield needs lots of volume! I bought this because it fits under my seat and the 12" versions are too long.

Crossovers issues have big impacts. I checked the t2 in my truck and same issue as the one in the boat and the one williston had. No point in asking for a replacement with that kind of defect rate or design flaw. Had I known about the multiple crossover issues people have had I never would have taken the gamble. Of course now that I have, it lead me down the path of getting a dsp which will be awesome. I will have to do some more testing of the t2 in my boat and if in fact I can’t set it to full (the dsp is going to handle crossover, slope, hard limit filter, gain etc upstream) I will just pull the board remove the crossover switch, pots, and caps then jump the needed points on the board. Based upon the output of the one in my truck set to full because of the headunit filter hitting hard and low I pretty much knew no high pass only issue but I also tested just to be sure no material roll off or phase distortion and that part is fine so I am hopeful for the one in the boat. If the amp dies at some point I will save the beauty cover for some future aluminum project and trash the rest. This will be my last rockville amp.

For those that may be scratching their heads about all of crossover and octave stuff the simple answer to the start of the thread is yes rockville is junk. Those with enough know how can get them to work and they produce a lot of power for the money but it probably is not worth the effort. Quite the shame because parts of their designs are pretty darn good and lots of power for the money.

 

[Jgorm]

Maybe it was just that model? I have a rxdm1 in my boat, a rxat1 in my car, and the new rxdf20 going in the sxs. I didn't hook up my scope, but they all tuned just fine, aside from the mandatory high pass on my newest amp. I've got 5 jl amps, a kenwood, and 3 rockville. Is jl worth 5 to 10x the cost? No way, not even close. Rockville is so cheap when you think "should i put an amp in?" The answer is always yes. I spent 150 bucks for the amp and sub in my car. Granted it doesn't sound like a $2000 jl w7 with 1000w jl amp, but it made a huge improvement in the sound. I'll keep buying rockville until they start failing. Even then i might just replace them.

 

[seanmclean]

I've got a new Rockville 8ch in the classifieds section in case anyone is looking to buy one

 

[the MfM]

It’s dead...the black goo strikes again...

 

[the MfM]

I picked the black goo off carefully and found this half assed repair underneath.

It looks like when they tried to solder that piece back on they nicked the capacitor and melted a hole in the side of it. Then covered it all up with black goo.

 

[mark_m]

I picked the black goo off carefully and found this half assed repair underneath.

It looks like when they tried to solder that piece back on they nicked the capacitor and melted a hole in the side of it. Then covered it all up with black goo.

View attachment 99262View attachment 99263

That’s a stranger things or x files black goo repair! Hope it works out for you.

 

[Mainah]

@mfm sorry to hear about the troubles. I wrote about it in a different thread but deserves updating here. I ended up installing a jl audio car DSP that I custom conformal coated after the cheap Brazillian dsp I first went with had internal grounding issues. That solved for the crossover issues and really let me fine tune the whole system. Many days with high heat and blaring the audio for tow sports for hours. So far so good for my rockville t2 class d driving two 10 inch subs. No thermal shut down or reliability issues so far. Again I would not recommend given what you have experienced or the common crossover problems but still impressive power for the money (when they work). The t2 in my truck as a sub amp is still going strong too (behind a dsp built into my aftermarket head unit).

 

[Jgorm]

Bummer. All 3 of my Rockville amps are still kicking.

 

[the MfM]

Found a used clarion xc1410 on eBay for $45 shipped so I ordered that so I have something to use the rest of the summer... the pictures in the listing are actually of a xc2410. So I’ll see what I actually get and go from there.

I think I’m done with Rockville. But the new marine mono amps look Ok

 

[I_squared_r]

Im using this Rockville amp with this combination. Everyone compliments it and I didn’t have problems with tuning the amp. 6 hours without killing my battery. I did notice that the amp gets very hot, but I haven’t tripped the thermal protection yet.

Also, if you buy the boss audio cables shown, just toss the RCA cable in the garbage because it picked up interference from the LED accent lighting in the boat.

 

[Mainah]

Im using this Rockville amp with this combination. Everyone compliments it and I didn’t have problems with tuning the amp. 6 hours without killing my battery. I did notice that the amp gets very hot, but I haven’t tripped the thermal protection yet.

Also, if you buy the boss audio cables shown, just toss the RCA cable in the garbage because it picked up interference from the LED accent lighting in the boat.

That boss audio cabling (power, ground, rca, turn on, and speaker) is all worse than trash. Even if this were good wire I would be wary of using true 8 awg ofc or tinned ofc for even a short 4 foot run with the power demands of that amp at sustained full rms output. At full CEA rated output it would be drawing up to 110 amps rms (class ab power draw calculated at 1.2x output for wiring purposes because far less than 100% efficient). Add to that boss audio 8awg is more like true 10 awg and likely cca type wire. The inline fuse (if installed and properly sized for the wire as the inline fuse is meant to protect the wire from melting down and starting a fire) but I would not trust their fuses or holders either. You will be much safer with quality 4awg like knuknoceptz flexs and a quality inline fuse and holder. Not to mention your amp may even heat up less.

I play around with cheap electronics from time to time but I always inspect/test them and I always use properly sized high quality wire and fuses.

On the plus side I bet they those twin boxed 12s hit hard.

 

[Jgorm]

All amp wiring "kits" are trash.

 

[Cambo]

I have the RXM-6S hooked up it sounds great and has plenty of power originally this was purchased for the MIC but I ended up using the wet sounds WS-420 eq the mic on the rockville sounded better but was prone to feedback. The only issue is that it has plastic end caps that fasten the amp to the amp board my concern is that in rough water conditions it could snap the plastic.

They have a lot of different models this one looks like its not in stock anymore

Amazon.com: Rockville Marine/Boat 2600 Watt 6 Channel Amplifier + PA Microphone (RXM-S6): Car Electronics

Amazon.com: Rockville Marine/Boat 2600 Watt 6 Channel Amplifier + PA Microphone (RXM-S6): Car Electronics

www.amazon.com

Thanks to @Mainah for all the info posted on stereo set up