Bass being drowned out? Help?

[danlovaa]

Hey guys, I'm pretty new here, and I don't really know what I'm doing, so I'm too scared to mess around with what I don't know, so I'm hoping maybe you guys could enlighten me here.

I have 2 12" Kenwood subs, 400RMS each I believe, a 1800 watt kenwood amp, and a JVC head unit. It seemed fine when I first got it, but after I messed with the settings a lot to try and get it to be perfect but in the long run I think I might've screwed something up haha. It just seems to hit less hard, and tends to be a little quieter now. Anyways here's my question, when I turn my volume up loud, the bass seems to get drowned out by the music and hits WAY less hard then it does when it's quieter.

Like I said, I don't really know what I'm doing, so any help or suggestions as to how to fix this would help. I'm willing to mess with it since you guys know what you're talking about. Thanks a lot!

Dan

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[S1R-BLUNTZWORTH 10+ year member]

Are you using high level inputs on your amplifier(speaker wires instead of RCA jacks)?

 

[nabissssco 10+ year member]

If you messed it up too much and a lot of your settings are off from where you want them and you don't know how to fix them than think about doing a reset on the hu to bring it back to origonal settings. Ill give you a few pointers as far as general settings to try to help to get it to sound better.

Ill assume you have the amps gain and frequency set correct. I would leave bass boost off on the amp also.

On the hu, turn the lpf (low pass filter which is used for the subs //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/wink.gif.608e3ea05f1a9f98611af0861652f8fb.gif) up to 80hz and see how it sounds. This will allow the subs to play till 80hz and after that they will get attenuated by the xover at the slope set up to play lower and lower db as the frequency rises. If 80hz doesn't sound good and the subs don't sound as clean and neat as you would like than back it down to the next setting the deck offers as 80hz is the highest I would play my substage. Make sure loudness is off on the deck also. If you have the option and want to play around with it on the deck try to reverse the phase of the sub from 0-180. Basically what this does will make the sub's pos and neg get reversed so when the sub would move outward set on normal or 0, it would move inward instead to try and get the phase aligned better to play with the front stage and blend/sound better. If the deck doesn't have this option you could do this by swapping the neg and pos leads on the speaker box of the sub's. Not that I think this is an issue but if you have the time and want to, make sure both of your subs are in phase with each other also because if one is out of phase from the other it will cancel the bass. This can be done with a 9v battery. What you will do is hook the pos from the sub's voice coil to the pos of the battery and the neg to the neg. If the cone moves outward than it is in phase, if it moves inward that you have it out of phase so swap the wires around. Make sure both subs are the same b4 you screw them back up.

Its late here for me and im kinda sick so if I left anything out let me know and if you have any questions ask! //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/biggrin.gif.d71a5d36fcbab170f2364c9f2e3946cb.gif

 

[Chrispy 10+ year member]

I think your mids and highs just mite be keeping up with your subs.

Also I think most of us think our systems get quieter over time but really you just get used to it.