I've had my audi hooked up with an amp and my battery died, my question is, is this a common problem, or does it have to do with the LED voltage meter that was part of my wiring kit? 98 Audi A6 Quattro... I know most people who have amps connected do not have this problem, however i've been told for some reason audi is a pain in the *** with installing sound systems. I'm pretty sure it's probably because of the LED Voltage Meter, but i wanted to get some input. Worst comes to worst i will just get a capacitor.

 

Well a LED anything won't pull that much power at all, so it's definitely not that. Sounds like you probably have an older battery and it wouldn't hurt to get a new one.

How big of amp did you put in?
Did the battery die when the car was running?
Or how long did it take to die when the car was off?
How old of battery is it?
What speakers are you driving? And how many.

 

My car battery was about 2 years old and i have since replaced it. Currently i have a 2080 watt amp and its only pushing about 1500 to my 2 subs. My car wasnt running when the battery died. The car had been inactive for two days. I havent hooked any of the speakers up to the amp yet because im in college and havent had the time

 

Well that's a lot of power getting pulled from the battery when it's not being charged. I would say hook things up and just play music with the car on (well, especially when the subs are going) and see if anything happens. It really should be fine - if not then you know you have a problem. Again, i'm not surprised that it died with that large of an amp hooked up.

A few more questions:
How long did it play with the music on?
How loud was the music (how much power was the amp pulling from the battery)?

 

thats exactly it u didnt have your car running, and if your pushing over 1000 watts rms(continous power) that will kill me i have 2 subs in my car pushing 1500 watts rms and when im driving my volts go from 14.7 volts down to 12.1, if your going to continue doing this get a seperate battery for the subs dont do a capacitor waste of money and time i work at best buy im an autotech

 

Well I won't give you that much props for working at Best Buy (i mean eh), but you're definitely right - a new battery should be used when you're pulling that much from it.

 

Oh you must have miss understood, i'm at college an my car was parked in the parking lot for about 3 days, and then when i went to restart the car, it didn't start. But if i was to use a alternate battery to power the subs, how would i need to wire it, and would need to install a kill switch for when i park the car. Just to re-itterate, the only time i ever ran my subs was while i was driving except of course when i had hooked them up originally for testing obviously. And one more question, when i was driving to school i had a problem with my subs cutting out every so often, they would run fine for about 25 minutes then all the sudden cut off... Then about 10 minutes later they'd kick back on. Any ideas.

 

Overheat protection circuit, perhaps? I know if I beat the snot out of my old amp for about 35 minutes it would going into protection mode for about 20 minutes (until all of that aluminum cooled off), then go on working just fine.

Try taking a cooling fan out of a computer (like a 120mm) and sticking it to the heatsinks of the amp. They run in 12V and use just about zero power. If you suddenly get to 40 minutes with them on before it kicks out, there's your answer.

-Red