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a line driver gives you a stronger signal with less distortion letting you put more power to the sub without risking blowing it up. and us spl guys gain quite a bit by turning the gain up gentlemen i know thats not what its for but i have metered about 2 db higher with my gains set higher than usally.

I don't understand why you'd bring the voltage up but not match your amp to the new voltage.

are you talking to me?

because itll produce more power but most of the time its distorted power.

So, let's make up an example.
Say you brought your voltage to 8v and your amp gain went to 5v. You set the amp gain to 5v, would it be clipping?

Because the gain isn't voltage, its sensitivity. So if you raise the input voltage you would turn the gain down, so you don't overdrive the input stage.

Now if your amp list voltages on the gain, you would be increasing the voltage acording to the knob. However you would be doing this by turning the knob down, not up.

Bill I can agree to a point that you might see a small gain, but not one of 2 DBs, unless your clipping the amp. Especially in a set up like yours. Say your running 3000 watts, in order to gain 3 DBs you would have to double your wattage to 6000. So if you got a 2DB gain from a line driver, then it would have given you an extra 2000 watts.

http://www.lenardaudio.com/education/03_db.html

solacedagony wrote:So, let's make up an example.
Say you brought your voltage to 8v and your amp gain went to 5v. You set the amp gain to 5v, would it be clipping?

If you trun up the radio so that your output voltage is 8 volts then yes it would.

Ahhh ok, I understand now. My Orion 2500d has voltages listed on the gain knob going up clockwise. So actually, when I turn my gain knob up to the higher voltages, it's actually compensating for a HIGHER input signal and LOWERING the input stage?

it should say something like 5v-.2v and if your deck is say a panasonic with 5v outs then you would have your gain all the way down or barely up a little it depends on how high you run your deck. you can use a dmm to measure your ouput voltage and adjust your gains that way.

I'm pretty sure my amp has the voltages in numerical order, I'll double check though.