9887..the right choice?

[xdeadpixel 10+ year member]

Wow what a rough night.

I ended up helping a buddy of mine by buying his head unit for a pretty good price. It's a Clarion DX585USB. I don't know much about head units, but I got my speakers to sound AMAZING, and the sound restoration feature actually works **** well (IMO). However, I got my JL amp during the process of having no HU, so I havn't even heard it or hooked it up yet. But my subs don't sound as good now. I can't tell if its the HU or the amp. I have 2 JL 12w3's powered by a new JL 500/1. I didn't hook them up, but I'd assume they are hooked up right..he also adjusted the amp settings, so I'm not sure exactly what thats on, but I'll get that for ya tomorrow. However I did do all the head unit settings myself, and tried a variety of things.

When at lower volumes, the subs hit hard for the volume they are at. Very nice sound. However when I turn the HU up (past like 20ish) it sound crunchier. I'm not quite sure if it was the 6x9's distorting, but I doubt that. It might have just been an extreme rattling of my trunk, but I'm not sure of that either because with similar volumes with my old HU, my subs would pound clean. I wish I had more info right now but I didn't get it all hooked up till 1 PM. What do yall think tho, cuz I'm lookin at this asap tomorrow. I gotta call off work cuz my stupid roommate left the deadbolt on (no key hole) and he sleeps in the back with a tv on..Took me 2 hours to wake him up..lol

sorry just had to press some anger

but anyway..

I'm gonna finish editing this with info when I wake up.

 

[Fusion_FREAK 10+ year member]

Wow what a rough night.
I ended up helping a buddy of mine by buying his head unit for a pretty good price. It's a Clarion DX585USB. I don't know much about head units, but I got my speakers to sound AMAZING, and the sound restoration feature actually works **** well (IMO). However, I got my JL amp during the process of having no HU, so I havn't even heard it or hooked it up yet. But my subs don't sound as good now. I can't tell if its the HU or the amp. I have 2 JL 12w3's powered by a new JL 500/1. I didn't hook them up, but I'd assume they are hooked up right..he also adjusted the amp settings, so I'm not sure exactly what thats on, but I'll get that for ya tomorrow. However I did do all the head unit settings myself, and tried a variety of things.

When at lower volumes, the subs hit hard for the volume they are at. Very nice sound. However when I turn the HU up (past like 20ish) it sound crunchier. I'm not quite sure if it was the 6x9's distorting, but I doubt that. It might have just been an extreme rattling of my trunk, but I'm not sure of that either because with similar volumes with my old HU, my subs would pound clean. I wish I had more info right now but I didn't get it all hooked up till 1 PM. What do yall think tho, cuz I'm lookin at this asap tomorrow. I gotta call off work cuz my stupid roommate left the deadbolt on (no key hole) and he sleeps in the back with a tv on..Took me 2 hours to wake him up..lol

sorry just had to press some anger

The 9887 has 4-volt preouts, I'm not sure what volt preouts the other HU has, but most likely 2 volt. With higher volt preouts, your gain doesn't have to be as high. Check your gains, and turn them down.

 

[xdeadpixel 10+ year member]

yes, however if i turn them down, the sub is NOT loud enough at all. When I hear that crunch sound, the subs aren't even really hitting super hard. It might just be some rattling issue in my car maybe, but I didn't have it before.

btw this has 5.7 volt preouts

 

[xdeadpixel 10+ year member]

Hey guys, just got done tuning everything as best as I could. Now I got everything to sound a LOT better than yesterday, however the eq and filters on the HU got me in a hole. The subs only sound loud enough when I turn the "Bass gain" up on the HU. However, this for some reason isn't just for the subs..its also upping the bass on my speakers, which is I believe the 6x9's rattle, making that crunch sound I heard. THAT SUCKS. I even tried messing with the center frequency for the bass boost, from a choice of 50, 80, or 120. Also, for some reason on the HU, the high-pass filter (which I thought was only for speakers..) settings ALSO affect my sub, so when I turn it on, it's making my subs a little weaker.

What I ended up doing to make the HU sound the best was turning the Digital-Z Enhancer (DZE) to setting #1 with a level of +3. This cancels out the bass, treble, and boost button on the HU.

I've got the gain on about 80% on the amp, Q is at about 2.7, cent freq on the amp is at around 60, bass boost is all the way up. Turning down the Q makes the frequencies closer to the center sound great, but kills the higher and lower, so that doesn't solve the problem. I've got the Amp LP Filter on slope of 12 set at about 120ish. Infrasonic filter is off (sealed box) , input voltage is "low" (turning it on high like halves the output), signal sensing off. For the preamp, I THINK thats off. I didn't mess with it. It should be on full range. If not, it's on amp filter, with a slope of 24db, on a HP filter set to 40.

Does that all sound right? I can either get clean speakers with a weaker sub, or great sub but rattling and too much bass out of my speakers. I thought it might be the amp, but my old amp was an offbrand C4, which is shitty compared to this JL amp. And I know it's not my head unit cuz I had a horrible sony before.

Thank you!

 

[helotaxi 5,000+ posts]

I don't even know where to start...

 

[MyPoison1 10+ year member]

I don't even know where to start...

//content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/laugh.gif.48439b2acf2cfca21620f01e7f77d1e4.gif try from the end, then work your way through if you dare.

Dude I think it's going to take a while to figure all that stuff out, i've read that sometimes it take about 40min just to set the clocks on some units, so just mess with it as much as you can and I think the manual would be a good reference.

I'm sure that after you figure most of the stuff out it'll be worth it.

 

[Krown 10+ year member]

You're going to need bass blockers on your door speakers and/or 6x9's. Or, an external amp to filter out the lows.

 

[xdeadpixel 10+ year member]

Wow I'm an idiot. I finally figured it out, but I feel alot smarter now. I've been tweaking with the settings and made it all sound great! But I confused the amp gain with the EQ boost. I had the gain on the amp at like 35%. I turned all the bass down on the deck and turned the gain to about 80% on the amp. Sounds great! Thanks all for your help! Problem solved, and this thread has fulfilled it's duty.