How do I tune my Amp?

Vindicate · Post by **Vindicate** » Wed Jan 04, 2006 11:47 pm

Exactly as the title says. How do you guys tune yer amp? Bass Boost I understand. Gain I do sorta. Crossover I have no clue what freq to set this to. Are there certain levels on the x-over for each individual sub? It says in the manual that Gain matches the output of the head unit to the input level of the amp. Where do I go find these levels? Please help!

JeremyC · Post by **JeremyC** » Thu Jan 05, 2006 5:01 am

http://www.caraudiocentral.net/forums/s ... +bass+bost

That link will help with the sub, you do components th same,but the X over will be higher and set to HPF not LPF.

smoker · Post by **smoker** » Thu Jan 05, 2006 5:10 am

my personal opinion on bass boost is if you need to turn it on you dont have enough power or the box is wrong....as far as setting gaini always set the comps first, then see if i can bring the bass in to match and then readjust the comps and then the bass again and give that a listen and then just play with it for a while.

Vindicate · Post by **Vindicate** » Thu Jan 05, 2006 9:53 am

I dunno what I'm doing wrong. My old Kenwood deck I had the amp hooked up to without RCAs connected I could have the bass rumbling where I could feel my hair move. The gain and bass boost were set to hardly nothen. I put in my new Alpine CDA-7897 deck and now even if I boosted EVERY bass thing I have, the bass is nowhere near what it was. There's no distortion cuz it doesn't even reach near what it was before the deck change.

smoker · Post by **smoker** » Thu Jan 05, 2006 10:02 am

what kenwood amp is it? did it connect to your old kenwood hu via a din cord?

Vindicate · Post by **Vindicate** » Thu Jan 05, 2006 11:31 am

I dunno the exact model. It was KDC somethin somethin lol. Cuz that helps right... Anyways, the amp was connected to the deck thru the Speaker left/right in the Kenwood, and I'm using the RCAs with the Alpine. The Kenwood deck only gave me the tuning options of Bass/Mid/Treble. This alpine deck lets me customize those along with a stand alone "Subwoofer" level. Also I have a remote bass thing I have running from the amp to my dash. I tried turning all my bass levels to 0, all my mids/trebles to -6 cuz I didnt wanna blow those speakers in the process. So here I am at lowest lvls for mids/trebles/gain and bass boosts on amp. With my bass midway on the deck. The subwoofer level was 0/15 also. I set my volume to 25/35 just under 75%. I then tried just boosting my gain. Even at the loudest gain I got nowhere near distortion levels. I dunno what I'm doing wrong.

JeremyC · Post by **JeremyC** » Thu Jan 05, 2006 3:45 pm

smoker wrote:my personal opinion on bass boost is if you need to turn it on you dont have enough power or the box is wrong....as far as setting gaini always set the comps first, then see if i can bring the bass in to match and then readjust the comps and then the bass again and give that a listen and then just play with it for a while.

I agree completly.

Hay vindicate does it have a switch like the JL does next to the gain. See where it says input voltage next to the input sensitivity (you might have to scroll over on the pic some)

http://mobile.jlaudio.com/products_amps ... amp_id=253

smoker · Post by **smoker** » Thu Jan 05, 2006 3:57 pm

im gonna level with you.....alpine hu + kenwood amp = no worky right

regardless of what anyone says it sounds like you have an older kenwwood amp from the days of the 500mv preout and din cables which in my experience i have never been able to blend very well....people will tell you differrently and say it is just an electrical signal and they are right but in this case it has never worked well for me

smoker · Post by **smoker** » Thu Jan 05, 2006 3:57 pm

by the way kdc denotes a cd hu
amp should be kac

Vindicate · Post by **Vindicate** » Thu Jan 05, 2006 8:56 pm

hehe sorry for the confusion.. I read the post where u said Kenwood amp.. but I musta just jumped over the word "amp" oi... The amp is a Kicker KX350.2. The Kenwood was the OLD deck I was using and it was just connected thru speaker inputs. This new deck has the RCAs.

In regards to the voltage thingy. There is none. Got the left/right +/- speaker connector the L/R Input/Outputs for RCAs. The crossover Switch Off/High/Lo on that. I set it at low. Thats along the top. The bottom is just the connectors for the big cable that powers the amp and then the Remote Bass connector.