tune my amp
#1
01-04-2009, 04:36 AM
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tune my amp
Hi, i recently had 2 10" kicker CVT's installed in my 07 supercrew. They are in a box under my back seat and i was wondering if my amp is tuned correctly. i hear some distortion wen turned all the way up on the lows. I listen to mostly rap. Ohh and i have a 1200 watt amp.
Does this have anything to do with my amp and how its tuned?
Does this have anything to do with my amp and how its tuned?
#2
01-04-2009, 04:44 AM
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you are either hearing your door speakers getting garbled from too high a volume or your gain is up too high on your amp.
i cant imagine two tens needing much gain, 1200 watts is alot of power.
check your gain, turn it down a little bit. also, play with your LPF. if your door speakers are cutting out and getting distorted, you can set the LPF to eliminate the lower frequencies from your door speakers.
i cant imagine two tens needing much gain, 1200 watts is alot of power.
check your gain, turn it down a little bit. also, play with your LPF. if your door speakers are cutting out and getting distorted, you can set the LPF to eliminate the lower frequencies from your door speakers.
#6
01-12-2009, 01:12 AM
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You are clipping it.
Turn the gain all the way down. Then turn your door speakers to the highest volume you ever listen to them at. Then, turn your gain up until the subwoofers begin to distort, then turn it down to right where they arent distorting anymore. Then turn your master volume back down, and you're set.
Turn the gain all the way down. Then turn your door speakers to the highest volume you ever listen to them at. Then, turn your gain up until the subwoofers begin to distort, then turn it down to right where they arent distorting anymore. Then turn your master volume back down, and you're set.
#7
01-12-2009, 12:06 PM
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You are clipping it.
Turn the gain all the way down. Then turn your door speakers to the highest volume you ever listen to them at. Then, turn your gain up until the subwoofers begin to distort, then turn it down to right where they arent distorting anymore. Then turn your master volume back down, and you're set.
Turn the gain all the way down. Then turn your door speakers to the highest volume you ever listen to them at. Then, turn your gain up until the subwoofers begin to distort, then turn it down to right where they arent distorting anymore. Then turn your master volume back down, and you're set.
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#8
01-12-2009, 12:07 PM
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you are either hearing your door speakers getting garbled from too high a volume or your gain is up too high on your amp.
i cant imagine two tens needing much gain, 1200 watts is alot of power.
check your gain, turn it down a little bit. also, play with your LPF. if your door speakers are cutting out and getting distorted, you can set the LPF to eliminate the lower frequencies from your door speakers.
i cant imagine two tens needing much gain, 1200 watts is alot of power.
check your gain, turn it down a little bit. also, play with your LPF. if your door speakers are cutting out and getting distorted, you can set the LPF to eliminate the lower frequencies from your door speakers.
And I guarantee its not a 1200RMS amp. THEN EACH 10 IS DIFFERENT. AHH I hate that saying.
#9
01-12-2009, 12:59 PM
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Here's something I found along time ago. Pretty much the same thing Msall states.
1. Start by turning all of the input level adjustment ***** (gain controls) on your components fully counter-clockwise (to their minimum setting). Set the tone controls (bass, treble, loudness) on your head unit to no boost (bass and treble level = 0 and loudness is off). If you have more than one RCA pair you will want to set each gain adjustment separately. Make sure your fader and balance controls are set to the channel you want to adjust first. This can be an individual channel if you have individual gain adjustments or a pair of channels if you have one gain for two channels.
2. Next set all of your equalizers settings (if you have an equalizer) to the center (detent) position so they produce no boost or cut. What we want is as pure a signal as possible.
3. Put in some good quality source material, preferably a CD with strong output and a clean recording. Hard rock would be a bad choice here. Try something cleaner, maybe acoustic, that you're familiar with.
4. Turn the deck's volume up slowly until you begin to hear distortion. When you hear it, stop and back off slightly until you no longer hear it. If you don't hear distortion, even when the volume is all of the way up then you have a quality head unit. That's what we're looking for.
5. Now with your head unit at maximum undistorted volume move on to the next component. Adjust it's input gain until you begin to hear distortion. Back off slightly.
6. Continue this process until you have all of the components in the chain at their maximum undistorted level.
7. When you reach the amplifiers you may need to wear earplugs to adjust them to their maximum level. As before, turn up the gain until you hear audible distortion. This should be audible even with earplugs in. But honestly, if you have to wear earplugs to listen the distortion level is probably not a factor
1. Start by turning all of the input level adjustment ***** (gain controls) on your components fully counter-clockwise (to their minimum setting). Set the tone controls (bass, treble, loudness) on your head unit to no boost (bass and treble level = 0 and loudness is off). If you have more than one RCA pair you will want to set each gain adjustment separately. Make sure your fader and balance controls are set to the channel you want to adjust first. This can be an individual channel if you have individual gain adjustments or a pair of channels if you have one gain for two channels.
2. Next set all of your equalizers settings (if you have an equalizer) to the center (detent) position so they produce no boost or cut. What we want is as pure a signal as possible.
3. Put in some good quality source material, preferably a CD with strong output and a clean recording. Hard rock would be a bad choice here. Try something cleaner, maybe acoustic, that you're familiar with.
4. Turn the deck's volume up slowly until you begin to hear distortion. When you hear it, stop and back off slightly until you no longer hear it. If you don't hear distortion, even when the volume is all of the way up then you have a quality head unit. That's what we're looking for.
5. Now with your head unit at maximum undistorted volume move on to the next component. Adjust it's input gain until you begin to hear distortion. Back off slightly.
6. Continue this process until you have all of the components in the chain at their maximum undistorted level.
7. When you reach the amplifiers you may need to wear earplugs to adjust them to their maximum level. As before, turn up the gain until you hear audible distortion. This should be audible even with earplugs in. But honestly, if you have to wear earplugs to listen the distortion level is probably not a factor
#10
01-12-2009, 08:52 PM
It's more complicated than that.
This is alright, but it doesn't cover everything. No amplified head unit will ever send out low distorted watts from the internal amplifier. Considering this guy has Kicker subs and "1200 watt amp" he is already off on the wrong foot. Expect distortion with this setup and lots of it. I'm sure you have the stock speakers or low quality coaxials in the doors running off the HU. Anyways:
FYI if your subwoofer box is store bought or built crappy, if you have cheap HU, if you are using low grade wiring and/or if the wiring is done incorrectly expect the subs to bottom out and sound terrible. You are already at a disadvantage with the subs and amp you have you have.
Take the remote out of the amp so that it is turned off for the moment so you can tune and adjust the HU for the door speakers without the added bass from the subs. Set all the settings on the HU to 0. Turn the bass boost or whatever junk yours says off and leave it off because it highly distorts the signal. If you listen to rap mostly put in a good quality rap cd. Turn the HU as high as it will go and listen carefully. Now turn it down and adjust the low, mid, and high settings ( I'm assuming these are the only settings you have) accordingly until you like the sound. Now put the remote wire back in the amp. Turn all of the settings on the amp all the way down (I'm assuming yours just has gain and bass boost). Turn the HU all the way up and adjust the amp accordingly. If your HU has a subwoofer output level put it on 0 the play with it until you like the sound.
Don't expect your "system" to sound great, but with my instuctions it will sound better than it did.
Here's something I found along time ago. Pretty much the same thing Msall states.
1. Start by turning all of the input level adjustment ***** (gain controls) on your components fully counter-clockwise (to their minimum setting). Set the tone controls (bass, treble, loudness) on your head unit to no boost (bass and treble level = 0 and loudness is off). If you have more than one RCA pair you will want to set each gain adjustment separately. Make sure your fader and balance controls are set to the channel you want to adjust first. This can be an individual channel if you have individual gain adjustments or a pair of channels if you have one gain for two channels.
2. Next set all of your equalizers settings (if you have an equalizer) to the center (detent) position so they produce no boost or cut. What we want is as pure a signal as possible.
3. Put in some good quality source material, preferably a CD with strong output and a clean recording. Hard rock would be a bad choice here. Try something cleaner, maybe acoustic, that you're familiar with.
4. Turn the deck's volume up slowly until you begin to hear distortion. When you hear it, stop and back off slightly until you no longer hear it. If you don't hear distortion, even when the volume is all of the way up then you have a quality head unit. That's what we're looking for.
5. Now with your head unit at maximum undistorted volume move on to the next component. Adjust it's input gain until you begin to hear distortion. Back off slightly.
6. Continue this process until you have all of the components in the chain at their maximum undistorted level.
7. When you reach the amplifiers you may need to wear earplugs to adjust them to their maximum level. As before, turn up the gain until you hear audible distortion. This should be audible even with earplugs in. But honestly, if you have to wear earplugs to listen the distortion level is probably not a factor
1. Start by turning all of the input level adjustment ***** (gain controls) on your components fully counter-clockwise (to their minimum setting). Set the tone controls (bass, treble, loudness) on your head unit to no boost (bass and treble level = 0 and loudness is off). If you have more than one RCA pair you will want to set each gain adjustment separately. Make sure your fader and balance controls are set to the channel you want to adjust first. This can be an individual channel if you have individual gain adjustments or a pair of channels if you have one gain for two channels.
2. Next set all of your equalizers settings (if you have an equalizer) to the center (detent) position so they produce no boost or cut. What we want is as pure a signal as possible.
3. Put in some good quality source material, preferably a CD with strong output and a clean recording. Hard rock would be a bad choice here. Try something cleaner, maybe acoustic, that you're familiar with.
4. Turn the deck's volume up slowly until you begin to hear distortion. When you hear it, stop and back off slightly until you no longer hear it. If you don't hear distortion, even when the volume is all of the way up then you have a quality head unit. That's what we're looking for.
5. Now with your head unit at maximum undistorted volume move on to the next component. Adjust it's input gain until you begin to hear distortion. Back off slightly.
6. Continue this process until you have all of the components in the chain at their maximum undistorted level.
7. When you reach the amplifiers you may need to wear earplugs to adjust them to their maximum level. As before, turn up the gain until you hear audible distortion. This should be audible even with earplugs in. But honestly, if you have to wear earplugs to listen the distortion level is probably not a factor
This is alright, but it doesn't cover everything. No amplified head unit will ever send out low distorted watts from the internal amplifier. Considering this guy has Kicker subs and "1200 watt amp" he is already off on the wrong foot. Expect distortion with this setup and lots of it. I'm sure you have the stock speakers or low quality coaxials in the doors running off the HU. Anyways:
FYI if your subwoofer box is store bought or built crappy, if you have cheap HU, if you are using low grade wiring and/or if the wiring is done incorrectly expect the subs to bottom out and sound terrible. You are already at a disadvantage with the subs and amp you have you have.
Take the remote out of the amp so that it is turned off for the moment so you can tune and adjust the HU for the door speakers without the added bass from the subs. Set all the settings on the HU to 0. Turn the bass boost or whatever junk yours says off and leave it off because it highly distorts the signal. If you listen to rap mostly put in a good quality rap cd. Turn the HU as high as it will go and listen carefully. Now turn it down and adjust the low, mid, and high settings ( I'm assuming these are the only settings you have) accordingly until you like the sound. Now put the remote wire back in the amp. Turn all of the settings on the amp all the way down (I'm assuming yours just has gain and bass boost). Turn the HU all the way up and adjust the amp accordingly. If your HU has a subwoofer output level put it on 0 the play with it until you like the sound.
Don't expect your "system" to sound great, but with my instuctions it will sound better than it did.
Last edited by RED4X4; 01-12-2009 at 08:54 PM.
#11
01-13-2009, 04:02 AM
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#12
01-13-2009, 11:06 AM
My post was a general idea on how to, not a specific one. I wrote in easy to understand language seeing as how he most likely wouldn't understand technical terms. I do not know his exact setup so I can not say do this or do that specifically. His deck may or may not have certain settings and the same with the amp so I can't go into detail without knowing those things.
#13
01-14-2009, 12:36 PM
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What i did to set my gains is more complicated than that. I used a mini amp form radioshack. I first found the MUO (maximum undistorted output) of the pre-amps on my deck. Then, using the mini amp, played test tones at 5k, 1k, and 100hz (for each amp...tweets, mids, subs). then set gains accordingly with these test tones.
high quality rap? LOL.
Originally Posted by RED4X4
Take the remote out of the amp so that it is turned off for the moment so you can tune and adjust the HU for the door speakers without the added bass from the subs. Set all the settings on the HU to 0. Turn the bass boost or whatever junk yours says off and leave it off because it highly distorts the signal. If you listen to rap mostly put in a good quality rap cd. Turn the HU as high as it will go and listen carefully. Now turn it down and adjust the low, mid, and high settings ( I'm assuming these are the only settings you have) accordingly until you like the sound. Now put the remote wire back in the amp. Turn all of the settings on the amp all the way down (I'm assuming yours just has gain and bass boost). Turn the HU all the way up and adjust the amp accordingly. If your HU has a subwoofer output level put it on 0 the play with it until you like the sound.
#14
01-17-2009, 01:17 PM
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Yeah i have a diesel audio amp. so im possitive it doesnt put out neerly as much as it said it would. i also have some crappy wiring kit. Q audio or something. but take an easy guys. im only 16. i cant realy afford anything more at this point. im gonna tske the back seat off soon to get to the amp and mess with the gains. im going to turn the gain all the way down and then the head unit up. and adjust the gain untill it starts sounding good. does this mean i will have to turn the bass *** up as well so that it wont be too high when i do turn it up?