Great question.
JBucey said:
91Octane,
I took note of your comment above about "tweaking" the amp's settings. Soon I am having component speakers installed up front, with an amp under the passenger seat. I'm under the impression that the ability to adjust those settings is a key to realizing the full potential from a given setup. In other words, one can spend $500 on a decent amp and set of components, but the same setup can sound much better or worse, depending on how skillfully those adjustments are made. Put another way, a real pro can be worth his $$$s if he knows his stuff.
Not having actually installed an amp before, I'm not sure if my assumptions are correct -- do you think what I say above is generally true?
(Anyone with knowledge on this, please feel free to comment).
Thanks.
JBucey, you raise a good point. First off, I would like to say I am by no means an expert, but I think I have a handle on it for my setup. To start, I think the key thing is if your having the installation done professionally, have it done by a reputable, quality installer. By this I mean, having the head unit, amps, sub, speakers wired properly in phase.
Once this is done, the installer will attempt to set up your system the way he thinks it should sound and that's a start. But he won't know what you like as far as tonal balence. The more sophysticated the system, the more adjustments your going to have to setup and fine tune which is actually fun.
If you're using the stock head unit then there is not much to adjust there other than bass, treble, fader, balence. I would suggest to set everything to neutral (zero) before you start.
Chances are if you're buying a good quality amp, you will have high and low pass settings and full range, also gains for front and rear or maybe just one gain. Mine has front and rear.
The most important thing here is to set up the gain properly on the amp. There seems to be a misconception that the gain is a volume control...It's not. What you want to do is match the amp's output to the head unit. In doing so, you don't over drive the amp into clipping and audible distortion. To do this easily, set the amp's gain to zero, then put on a CD that has good dynamic range. Turn up the HU volume until you hear distortion, and back it off until the distortion goes away.
Then with the head unit volume at that level, go you your amp's gain and slowly increase it until you get distortion, then back it off slightly until the distortion goes away. It's going to be very loud, so you may want to have some ear plugs or at least, open all 4 doors when you are doing this. That's it! You now have your amp matched you your head unit. Pretty simple but VERY important.
With that new amp, you will have increased head room and should make for quite a pleasent listening experience.
If your amp has full range, high and low pass filters on it, you can experiment with what sounds best for you. Essentially a high pass filter cuts out mid to low range frequencies, the low pass cuts out mid to high frequencies, and the full range (you guessed it) will reproduce the full spectrum.
All this tweeking takes some time to get it just right for you but it's well worth it. Hope this helps. Enjoy!
P.S. There are alot of great articles out there explaining amp set up and the importance.
