Monitoring amp voltage to turn volume/gains higher + bass boost question.

[RSDXzec 10+ year member]

Just an idea I had, I set my gains with a DMM and a test tone at 50hz to 350wrms but I know that during actually playing music it generally never reaches the levels that a test tone does.

My idea would be to have a dmm in parallel with the sub monitoring the voltage and making sure it doesn't go over the voltage I set it at when the bass hits. sqrt(350*2) = 26.45V in my case. If I do this would I be able to up the volume as long as it doesn't exceed that voltage and be safe? Obviously not maxing out the HU though as to avoid clipping. Doing this the max volume on every song will be different, but I'd say it should give me a nice amount of a bass upgrade.

With regards to bass boost, I never use it, but I was also wondering if there was any advantage to using it but making sure the voltage never exceeds rms. When I was setting my gains I noticed bass boost added a fair bit of voltage to the amp outputs, so if I turn the gain down a little bit to compensate and the bass boost up a bit, would there be any advantage to this? or would the volume be the same because the sub is still seeing the same amount of power?

Cheers.

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[RSDXzec 10+ year member]

really? no one has any opinions on this?

 

[MANTI5 10+ year member]

No bass boost. Unless you have RTA equipment you should leave it alone.

 

[RSDXzec 10+ year member]

No bass boost. Unless you have RTA equipment you should leave it alone.

alright then, will keep bass boost off.

Really hoping for thoughts on the DMM idea.

Cheers.

 

[BrownVanMan 10+ year member]

bass boost creats a peak. so it will put out more power say at 50hz and less at 30

 

[maylar 10+ year member]

A DMM won't respond fast enough to give a reliable reading while playing music. If you want real-time level monitoring google "Audio VU Meters".

 

[RSDXzec 10+ year member]

A DMM won't respond fast enough to give a reliable reading while playing music. If you want real-time level monitoring google "Audio VU Meters".

so if I want to use a DMM should I have a tolerance of a few volts to compensate for this?

Not really planning on buying another meter for this.

 

[maylar 10+ year member]

No. DMM's need time to sample the signal and average it out and update the display. So unless you're playing sine waves the reading will be all over the place. You're looking for something that can monitor the peaks in the music so you know you're not in clipping - that's what a VU meter is for.