OK so I hooked my Alpine MRP-M500 (I think that's the right model) with 300 watts rms to my Pionier premier 10 inch in custom box on the back wall of my 04 Dakota Crew Cab. Rest of the equipment includes an Alpine CDA 9883, Eclipse EA4200, Eclipse SC8362 components in the front, infinity coaxials in the rear.
The front comps are crossed at about 75 HZ, the rears at 80. I think the EA4200's crossover has a 12 db slope if I remebmer right (lost the owner's manual.) The Alpine's manual says fixed slope of -24 db.
The gains were already set perfect on the speaker amp, then I set them on the new sub amp by getting as close as I could to 34.6 at a volume of 26 out of 35. I think I ended up at 34.9 V.
Then I decided I wanted to see what the Alpine sounded like crossed over at closer to 90 HZ and the mid/high amp crossed over a bit lower. So I bumped up the x-over, took another reading with the DMM at the same volume, and was now up to about 43V. I adjusted the gain downward to account for for this, listened for awhile, changed my mind again, decided everything sounds smoother and the really low bass seems to hit harder with the sub crossed over right around 80 HZ and the mid/high amp crossed over around 75-80.
Now here's my question: Seems I was getting a higher voltage and went into the clipping range on the sub amp by raising the crossover. Am I correct in assuming by lowering it again that I've given myself a bit extra head room on that amp by narrowing the range of frequencies that the amp needs to push to the sub? It sounds perfect so as long as I've moved further away from a clipped signal rather than closer to it I'd rather not have to fiddle with it anymore to try to get exact numbers.
