Okay so a while back (about 8-10 months ago) I had a private installer put my system in for me. The system consists of the following:
HU: Pioneer DEH-6900UB
Front components: PG RSD6.0CS
Component amp: Phoenix Gold Octane-R 5.0:4
Subwoofers: 2 12" dual 2 ohm Alpine Type R's in a prefab ported Bassworx box (tuned to around 45 hz I believe?)
Subwoofer amp: ED nine.1 wired to 2 ohm load
wiring: 4 awg power/grounds
All in a 98 Maxima
This is my first actual decent system with an actual front stage (only really cared about the bass when I was in high school on my previous systems) so for the past few months, I've always thought that my system sounded decent. I know I still need to deaden my doors to get decent mid bass but even then, it seems like the output of my components is not as great as it should be. Like I said, I don't really have anything to compare it to as I've never had an amped front stage before but last night, I heard a friend's speakers (Type S coaxials, not amped) and they were as loud as mine, if not louder.
What I was aiming for was, the PG 5.0:4 is supposed to do 50w x 4 RMS at 4 ohm, I bridged the amp for 150w x 2 at 4 ohms bridged. I used a Y adaptor to combine the front/rear channels into left/right. Bass boost is all the way off, I tried messing around with the gains by ear but it sounds like I'm distorting the speakers by 45-50%. I'm planning on using a DMM to set gains on the sub amp/speaker amp this weekend but before I do that, I just wanted to double check and see if maybe I'm missing some setting on the amp or something. I had HPF on the deck set to 80 Hz, and I've also tried 100.
So I guess I have several questions:
1. Does it sound like my speakers could be wired to an 8 ohm load? It's a bit too cold to take my door panels off right now but I could try and do that this weekend as well.
2. When setting gains, on both amps, I know I use a 1KHz tone for the speaker amp, and some guides say to use a 50Hz tone for the sub amp, and some say 60 Hz, does it really matter which I go with?
3. My subs sound very muddy right now as well, which I'm guessing is from improper gains. I previously had a JL 500/1 wired down to a 2 ohm load and some songs sounded louder on the old amp, than they do on the nine.1, does this sound like a setting somewhere? Bass boost was off on the 500/1 as well.
Sorry for the long post, I'm sure I'll have more, I've spent several hours on here reading in the past few weeks but every question always seems specific to the person asking so I thought I'd make my own post. I appreciate any help! Thanks!
