Soundstream Tarantula Owner's Manual

Owner´s Manual

and

Installation Guide

CONGRATULATIONS!

You now own the Limited Edition Tarantula Amplifier, the product of an uncompromising design and
engineering philosophy. Your Soundstream Tarantula will outperform any other amplifier in the world.

To maximize the performance of your system, we recommend that you thoroughly acquaint yourself with
its capabilities and features.Please retain this manual and your sales receipt for future reference.

Soundstream amplifiers are the result of American innovation and the highest quality control standards.
When properly installed, they will provide you with many years of listening pleasure.Should your amplifier
ever need service or replacement due to theft, please record the following information which will help
protect your investment.

Serial #

Dealer's Name

Date of Purchase

Installation Shop

Installation Date

C A U T I O N !

Prolonged listening at extremely high levels may result in hearing loss.Even though your new Soundstream
Tarantula amplifier sounds better than anything you've ever heard, exercise caution to prevent hearing
damage.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Features
Tarantula Diagram
Balanced/Unbalanced Inputs
Wiring
Installation and Mounting
Crossover Adjustments
Hawkins Bass Control™ Theory and Use
Level Setting
Power Supply Programming
Troubleshooting Chart
Sample System
Protection Circuitry
Very Serious Warnings
Service
Specifications

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p 4 -5
p 6 - 7
p 8
p 9
p 10
p 11
p 12 ~ 13
p 14
p 15
p 15
p 16
p 17
p 17
p 17
p 18

FEATURES

RUBI™ (Rapid-Use Branched Impulse) This new proprietary power supply topology eliminates “power
sags"during low frequency reproduction by rapidly increasing the duty cycle, stabilizing the power
supply and allowing it to deliver the power required when reproducing low frequencies. Also, greater
reserve gate power is stored for low voltage conditions that occur during extreme conditions.

STACT™(STabilized Apex Current Topology) Reduces power supply stress by 50%. In The STACT
design, inversion is done at the power amplifier drive stage. Since the fully symmetrical power amplifier
produces no even-harmonic distortion itself and all preamplifier circuitry is run completely inphase,no
even harmonic distortion phase reversal occurs and power is better distributed throughout the amplifier.

Advanced Trident™ Protection Topology Protects against potential harm/damage in the following
situations:

1. Output Protection against short circuits or improper loads.

2. Voltage Inconsistencies protects against ground fault (speaker shorts to vehicle chassis) and an
under/over voltage condition on the battery input.

3. Thermal Protection puts the amplifier into thermal rollback or shuts the amplifier down in extreme
thermal conditions.

Tone Sweep Calibration Routine Automatically configures and optimizes the power supply to the
connected speaker load.

Hawkins Bass Control Provides a focused parametric subwoofer boost (0 to +9 dB between 13-70 Hz)
and routes otherwise wasted amplifier power back to the audible bandwidth.

Continuously Variable Crossover Networks 24 dB/octave low pass crossovers variable from 35 Hz to
500k Hz with a range selection switch.

Input Level Indicator A three colored LED that provides visual confirmation of the amplifier’s input level
sensitivity setting.

Output Clipping Indicators Indicates clipping on the output stage of the amplifier. Monitoring the clipping
indicators allows the user to achieve maximum SPL without clipping the amplifier.

Large Mouth Bass Remote subwoofer volume control built into the amplifier

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FEATURES

Output Phase Switch O-180 degree phase control switch.
Fan Cooling With thermally sensitive speed control.
Differentially Balanced RCA Input Eliminates ground loop related noise in the audio signal.
Fully Balanced 6-pin DIN Input For professional quality performance and noise cancellation. The 6-pin

DIN plug carries (

) signal information for left and right channels, audio ground, and 15Vdc to

operate the Soundstream BLT/ BLT4 Balanced Line Transmitters and Balanced X.0 crossover.
RCA Line Output Provides a full range signal output to drive other amplifiers.
Wire Connections Power and ground connections accept 1\0 gauge cable, while the speaker

connections utilize dual 4 gauge connections.
Harmonic Bass Alignment™ The 2nd and 3rd order harmonic peaks are critically aligned to

fundamental peaks at low frequencies. This produces tighter,more accurate bass reproduction.
Symmetrical Discrete Balanced Class A Drive Boards Auto-adjust for linear performance while driving

low impedance loads.
Drive Delay II™ Amplifier section powers up 2 to 3 seconds after the power supply, eliminating turn-on

pops. Turn off process is reversed; amplifier section turns off first, followed by the power supply.
Chassisink™ All transistors are ideally located and sandwiched between the circuit board and the

heatsink to provide cool efficient amplifier operation.
Dynamically Optimized Power Grid™ Power grid is evenly distributed between primary and secondary

power supplies, providing greater dynamics and improved RF filtering.

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TARANTULA DIAGRAM

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