Karpinator

I have a little knowledge on the sound quality of a system but not much. Please help me out.

First off, I have a kicker zx750.1 amp. The amp has a few settings on it. They are cross-over frequency, bass, gain and has a push button to switch from HPF and LPF.

HU has EQ (50hz,125hz,315hz,800hz,2khz,5khz,12.5khz), Loud (off,low,medium,high) , Sub W.1 (normal/reverse) , Sub W.2 (graph that goes up and down when changed from -24 to +6. Also goes right to left with 50, 63, 80, 100, 125 hz) , Bass (0 to +6) , HPF (Off or 50,63,80,100,125 hz) , SLA or FM Level (-4 to +4) , and balance which is easily understandable.

Can you explain these settings (what they do) and maybe how I can go about fine tuning my system properly?

ancorp

iTrader: (1)

Sounds like you have a Pioneer. Google the model number and read the PDF manual, it has a good explanation of all those settings actually. Same goes for the Kicker.

But things to keep in mind are - avoid cranking the gain on the amplifier too much, avoid using the bass **** on the amp (leave it at 0), cross over should be LPF at around 60-120hz (user preference, I usually set mine to 100), it is to filter out the higher frequencies that your sub woofer should not be playing.

Karpinator

Thank you for the good info. Yes it's a pioneer and I'll jump on that manual here now.

On the HU, should I leave the HPF setting off since I have the amp set to LPF? I'm a newb at this for the most part. Does LPF and HPF effect my front and rear speakers and/or my subs or what do they effect?

VWdude

AMP:
crossover freq: the frequency that the amp will cut it off at. if you set it HPF, then it cuts off all frequencies below that value. if you have LPF selected then it cuts off all frequencies above that value.

bass: this is a synthetic bass boost. all it really does is add distortion. not good to use.

gain: this is the 'volume' of the amplifier. most amps will distort above 2/3 or 3/4 gain. i recommend having a professional set this to prevent damaging your speaker. without proper tools you cant tell for sure if your amp is 'clipping', which will damage your speakers.

HPF and LPF: covered earlier. It means High pass filter or low pass filter. which frequencies you want to let pass through the filter. LPF for subwoofers, HPF if you are power your speakers (mids/highs).

DECK:
refer to your manual for this (as earlier stated).

ancorp

iTrader: (1)

Setting the hpf on the deck to match the LPf is a good start.

Karpinator

I'm trying to set my gain while playing hard hitting music 3/4 vol. I've found a chart for how much voltage I should be trying to achieve when testing with DMM. I have the gain all the way up and I couldn't get close to the voltage I was looking for. Also, with gain all the way up, I turned the bass on amp all the way up and the most voltage I got to Red Hot Chili Peppers - Cant stop was around 20 Volts. My target range is 30-32. Any ideas?

Karpinator

Did some messing around and turned my bass controller up front up and the bass boost (db) on amp up and got around the 30 volts. Turned them down some and tweaked my equalizer for the sounds I want and tested again and tweaked the gain and bass boost on amp back up some more. I got it around 30 volts. I have a 750.1 watt amp and phoenix gold subs in an enclosed box that I am not sure of the specs on so playing it safe with them.

VWdude

you need to turn that gain down unless you want to blow these subs up as well. dont tune just based on numbers. if you had an oscilloscope then you could play a sine wave and see whether you are clipping or not.

what is the formula that you are using that requires you have 30 volts?

you might need a line driver in order to get what you are looking for with this amp. check the signal voltage (voltage going to your amp through your RCAs). if thats inder 2 volts then that might be your issue. get a line driver and it will be boosted.

the thing is, if you have a "4volt output" head unit, that gets you 4 volts with the deck at full power, assuming you have 14.4 volts in your charging system. since its bad to run your deck at full power because of distortion, you run it at max of 3/4, which means you get 3 volts (assuming its linear, which it usually isnt) when the deck it turned up. chances are you will be closer to 2 volts, which means a line driver could boost you to 6 or 8 volts. this should get you the 30 volts on your amp with the gain down to safe levels and your distorting bass boost off.

just an FYI, when I set up my system, my radio is maxed at 15 (it goes up past 30), and my amps gain is just under 1/2, and its too loud to listen for more than a few minutes. even at that level, there is zero distortion to be found, and this is running off a factory deck. if you properly match up components you can get this to work.

Karpinator

I cant remember where I found the info. to go off of but it was all prepared on an excel sheet. You may have ran into this same one at some point. It stated to go off what had the lowest OHM rating and RMS. It was approximately 30 volts is what it said for my setup. So I played a handful of hard hitting songs with the positive detached from the amp as I tested the volts with a multimeter. I set the gain and bass boost to where my reading was a max of 30 volts for any of the songs I played. If I had all EQ settings to 0 and all bass boosts to 0 and just tweaked the gain while using the multimeter, I ended up turning the gain all the way up and it was still only reading 5 V so I set the EQ and turned bass up some to get where I needed it to be.

I'll check what I'm getting from RCA cables and post the results in next couple days.

VWdude

if you insist on tuning it yourself rather than having it done then i would rather you tune it by ear then tune it by the volts. I have never been a fan of that, so i probably have not seen that sheet.