Subs arent loud as expected

[cfox10 10+ year member]

No that's true.. On alpine radios you don't get **** for output voltage from the sub without your sub out at +15.. It's not a knob where 0 is flat and your really at +15.. +15 gives you your normal preout voltage and anything lower is attentuation. IIRC on my old setup 15 was full out for my amp and taking it down to +10 had my subs and mids blending pretty nicely a little bass heavy for true SQ and by +5 you could barely tell my subwoofers were on, even for SQ it'd be a hair low. 7 in my case was normal SQ reference listening level for the amp and sub, that was 2 15's on 2k for reference lol. By 15 the mirror was falling off and headliner was flexin.

Yes but if he set the amp to clipping before adjusting the input voltage higher on the headunit... he's going to be clipping. He would need to set it at +15 then set the gain on the amp, right?

 

[southport2014 10+ year member]

No that's true.. On alpine radios you don't get **** for output voltage from the sub without your sub out at +15.. It's not a knob where 0 is flat and your really at +15.. +15 gives you your normal preout voltage and anything lower is attentuation. IIRC on my old setup 15 was full out for my amp and taking it down to +10 had my subs and mids blending pretty nicely a little bass heavy for true SQ and by +5 you could barely tell my subwoofers were on, even for SQ it'd be a hair low. 7 in my case was normal SQ reference listening level for the amp and sub, that was 2 15's on 2k for reference lol. By 15 the mirror was falling off and headliner was flexin.

I broke my window wiper already lol in a dang prefab

 

[shizzzon 10+ year member]

When you set it with a Dmm, was their a load on the amp?

If there wasn't, you have the amp heavily attenuated.

also, no matter what amplitude sine wave you were using to set it up with, there will never be one that's good enough to set a gain for music because ALL music is normalized or not normalized the same meaning.. some things clip, some don't on same volume.

This is why you use your senses and not values to set a gain if you are specifically relying on the preset values themselves to get you the best clean output because that's impossible, lol.

And clipping isn't bad either. It's what clipping causes sustained that's bad.

But clearly, it sounds like you are under-gaining the amp.

And just for the sake of it- clipping lights are not accurate when music is playing..

Clipping lights are NOT for music.

 

[dragnix 5,000+ posts]

No that's true.. On alpine radios you don't get **** for output voltage from the sub without your sub out at +15.. It's not a knob where 0 is flat and your really at +15.. +15 gives you your normal preout voltage and anything lower is attentuation. IIRC on my old setup 15 was full out for my amp and taking it down to +10 had my subs and mids blending pretty nicely a little bass heavy for true SQ and by +5 you could barely tell my subwoofers were on, even for SQ it'd be a hair low. 7 in my case was normal SQ reference listening level for the amp and sub, that was 2 15's on 2k for reference lol. By 15 the mirror was falling off and headliner was flexin.

I will not say that what you're saying is wrong. However, in my experience with the Alpine units I've had, not one ever needed the sub setting to go to +15 to achieve proper power output.

Yes but if he set the amp to clipping before adjusting the input voltage higher on the headunit... he's going to be clipping. He would need to set it at +15 then set the gain on the amp, right?

Totally this. Either way, OP is clipping if he did indeed set the gain right from the beginning. Which at this point, is beginning to sound suspect

I broke my window wiper already lol in a dang prefab

I think you may just have a shitty window wiper

 

[T3mpest 10+ year member]

I will not say that what you're saying is wrong. However, in my experience with the Alpine units I've had, not one ever needed the sub setting to go to +15 to achieve proper power output.
Totally this. Either way, OP is clipping if he did indeed set the gain right from the beginning. Which at this point, is beginning to sound suspect

I think you may just have a shitty window wiper

You can def get output from an alpine at less than +15, but certainly not much less than +10 IME. If he had that knob set anywhere between 0 and 5 is very unlikely he woudl be able to get voltage from the amp without cranking his gains.. My main point was that the subwoofer output on the deck is NOT clipping with it set at +15.. I've used a crap ton of alpines, newer and older.. On the newer ones, +15 on subwoofer output, headunit volume at 27 seems to be the sweet spot to get volume without cranking your gains super high and having plenty of room to attentuate.

Also, I didn't multiquote, but yes, he SHOULD "reset" his gains, don't simply turn the SW output to max with gains where he had them before, that isn't inherently safe lol. He CAN however, run the sub at +15 as that's not a "boost" it wont' cause excessive distortion. That'll simply allow him to get the 2volts from the HU it's rated it with a 3/4 volume knob setting. As I said, HU at 27 SW at +15, turn gains up until you hit required voltage on whatever tone you feel safe with (or by ears if your experienced enough). Doing it that way +10-+15 on the SQ output will be pretty bassy, more than enough to demo and have room for quieter recordings, louder ones, etc. 0 will still sound like the subs are turned off and the 4-8 range is likely where the sub will "blend" with the mids, somewhere in that area anyways.

 

[Lowflyin 10+ year member]

I will not say that what you're saying is wrong. However, in my experience with the Alpine units I've had, not one ever needed the sub setting to go to +15 to achieve proper power output.
Totally this. Either way, OP is clipping if he did indeed set the gain right from the beginning. Which at this point, is beginning to sound suspect

I think you may just have a shitty window wiper

My 9887 requires +15 to get the full 4v output.