Speakers seem to "dim" or go "flat"?

[warr40 10+ year member]

Hello i have some CDT comps on a sundown 100.2

and if i turn the volume up to a decent level, the speakers seam to "dim" or go "flat" not really sure on how to explain it.

What should i start checking?

could it be a voltage drop say when the bass kicks in?

Speaker wire gauge?

Gains?

Please help?

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[bobdole369]

You are clipping most likely. You've got the gain turned up too high on the amplifier, and/or too much signal coming from the HU/crossover or whatever - to the amp.

Hard to see without an oscilloscope, but try just turning the amp gain knob down a quarter turn.

 

[PaulD 10+ year member]

clipping will make it sound a little brighter .....

 

[warr40 10+ year member]

any other ideas?

 

[Ronmeister]

What vehicle? Do you use an OEM integrator? Or do you have a regular HU?

 

[warr40 10+ year member]

its a 2003 lancer with a alpine dva-9861 HU

 

[warr40 10+ year member]

could it have anything to do with phase?

 

[crawlinYJ 10+ year member]

depending on the crossover, if it gets too much heat build up it may shut the tweeter off. diamonds are notorious for it. the protections mechanism melts when heated up, destroys the connection to the tweeter and when it cools, it reforms and the connection is there. this is most likely the case.

 

[warr40 10+ year member]

that seems highly possible, what do recomend i should do

 

[crawlinYJ 10+ year member]

that seems highly possible, what do recomend i should do

set up the gain properly. find out where your deck clips at, if you have a processor, find out where it clips at too. then if you still have problems, maybe some gear change is in your future.

 

[warr40 10+ year member]

im new to this should i use the multimeter method to set up my gains?

and what does clipping sound like?

i dont have enough expiernce to do it by ear really.

 

[warr40 10+ year member]

ok just installed this set in my new mercades with the tweeter close to the woofer like CDT suggests and still have the same problem

 

[T3mpest 10+ year member]

You may be running into power compression. Does it kinda stop getting louder as you turn the dial near that point? If so that's the problem. They dynamic range of the recording stops mattering because even though your amp is adding power to the speakers, they simply don't have the ability to intensify that much.

 

[warr40 10+ year member]

it will be loud at a set volume then say a dynamic part of the song comes or just like 30 seconds into the song it goes flat

 

[91caprice 10+ year member]

to me it seems like your sending a pretty clipped signal to your comps. my buddy had the same problem in his silverado with some ARC Audio FD6.5 comps(and some MB quarts before that). at mid volume they sounded great but once he turned it up the would get loud but then a few seconds in or if some very high notes hit the tweeters they would attenuate(shut down) but if you turned the volume down they would come back on.so i added a line driver to compensate for his low volt rca signal and turned his gain down to about 1/4 from 0. and it never happened again and his tweets would be loud n crisp at higher volumes