Poor bass on my new sub+amp

[ps2cho 10+ year member]

Hi guys,

I just installed my sub and amp for my new system and its performing really poorly. It sounds almost as bad as the 4" speakers I have do for bass. It makes the "bouncing" sound when the bass turns up the same way that small size speakers do when the bass is turned up. This is my first time doing car audio, so bear with me if I did make some silly mistakes (ASSUME EVERYTHING!)

Pretty disappointed and there must be something I did wrong.

I was looking for a nice small amount of bass to add to my music, but nothing expensive or super powerful so I chose at DUAL 580w Amp and 2 10" DUAL subs which I got for like $90.

I built my own box with correct T/S parameters and here is how it looks:

I connected everything like this diagram I made:

What could I have done wrong? I just checked for an out of phase error and the + and -'s on the amp match up with the sub.

Any ideas?

Thanks,

Click to read more...

 

[Bigrick31 10+ year member]

do your pos and neg really tie together like that in the box? or is it just the way you drew it? also did you caulk everything in your box? all seams? run your hand around the box when the speakers are playing see if you can feel any air escaping the box. and finally do you have your impedances correct? meaning how many ohms are your subs are the dvc or svc subs did you wire them in series or parallel and is that compatible with your amp?

 

[Bigrick31 10+ year member]

and your missing a remote wire from your amp to your head unit

 

[ps2cho 10+ year member]

and your missing a remote wire from your amp to your head unit

the RCA cables have the REM built in.

And no the cables on the subs are just how I drew it quickly, they are separate + and -, not one cable sorry.

As for caulking, the box isn't fully airtight yet as I wanted to make sure everything was 100% perfect before I sealed it up. It still is pretty airtight so it couldn't be affecting the very poor performance it is doing could it? I'll check tomorrow if I can feel any air escaping.

As for how they are wired -- It is exactly how I drew it in the picture. One sub into each channel on the amp (don't know what you call that of the top of my head). The amp is 2 ohm's stable it says on the front of the box. On the back it says "100 watts RMS x 2 channels @ 4 ohms and

Any other possibilities?

 

[lyttleviet 10+ year member]

impedence. You didn't check that yet.

 

[wolfman1966 10+ year member]

Honestly?? Your first problem is that you bought Dual equipment. Total Crap. You should know, IF you only spent $90, you get what you pay for.... Good car audio does not come cheap.

but that put aside....

If its the amp I just looked up, the 580 watts is MAX which means nothing, its RMS wattage you want to look at.

rms wattage on that amp is

290watts rms bridged

145rmsX2channels@2ohms

100rmsX2channels@4ohms

so, exactly what model are the subs, I can probably look them up and see what ohms they can run to.

but IF you want to get the most out of that seup, you want to bridge the amp.

to do that, if you look....one of your positives and one negative on the amp should have something other than just a + or -.

without seeing a pic of the actual hookups its hard to know what it might be, it might even just say "bridged" over them.

anyway, figure out which positive and negative are the ones, and run BOTH wires from the positive on the subs to the one positive on the amp, and run BOTH negatives to the one negative on the amp.

Its usually a positive on one side and a negative on the other side. Hope this isnt too confusing, like I said, hard to explain without a pic of the amp.

anyway, if you do like I said, you'll get the full 290 watts out of the amp, and thats the best you can expect.

 

[95BlackGA 5,000+ posts]

I had this problem today, and the subs were out of phase, I switched the pos and negative and all was good. //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/wink.gif.608e3ea05f1a9f98611af0861652f8fb.gif Try that.

 

[ps2cho 10+ year member]

impedence. You didn't check that yet.

Can you explain a little more ? //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/smile.gif.1ebc41e1811405b213edfc4622c41e27.gif I'm totally new to amps+subs.

As for DUAL being a cheap brand...I know it is and I know you get what you pay for...but as I said I only want a little bass.

EDIT: The speaker's are: DUAL DS10's

 

[wolfman1966 10+ year member]

the RCA cables have the REM built in.

new one on me. so the amp doesn't have a hookup for a remote wire, or are youjust saying that it has the REM running along with the RCA's and you have tied it into the amp and into the correct wire on the HU?

 

[Bigrick31 10+ year member]

did you even glue your box together? wood glue is what actually bonds the pieces together the screws are only to hold the pieces in place while the glue sets.

 

[ps2cho 10+ year member]

the RCA cables have the REM built in.
new one on me. so the amp doesn't have a hookup for a remote wire, or are youjust saying that it has the REM running along with the RCA's and you have tied it into the amp and into the correct wire on the HU?

Here are the cables. I was recommended them for price to quality.

http://www.knukonceptz.com/productDetail.cfm?prodID=KLM-K8

 

[Ku-sama]

what he means is: there should be a little blue wire in the back of your head unit. there needs to be a wire running from that to the remote terminal on your amp, if that there??

pretty much what I'm asking is:

are your subs even vibrating at all? and is your amp turning on?

 

[Ku-sama]

oh, and in your drawing, you have you + and - reversed in for your subs to amp connection.

 

[wolfman1966 10+ year member]

knukonceptz, good stuff!

any way you can take a pic of the hookups on the amp and post it, that would really help on telling you how to bridge it.

 

[ps2cho 10+ year member]

what he means is: there should be a little blue wire in the back of your head unit. there needs to be a wire running from that to the remote terminal on your amp, if that there??


pretty much what I'm asking is:

are your subs even vibrating at all? and is your amp turning on?

Yes they turn on and vibrate, its just when turned up they make like a bounce noise like you would expect from a 4" speaker when turned up and the bass is too much for it...if you have heard that noise before. I'll take a picture of the hookups in a sec and post it.