subs overpowering

[pjhabit 10+ year member]

i have a bass control knob. i want to keep the bass as loud as it is for when i want to show off. ontop of that, i want to turn up the door speakers (on a different amp) when its that loud, becuase the subs overpower it. so like a control knob..just for my hifonics amp for my door speakers

You can't make a speaker louder than it wants to be. Sounds like you need to upgrade your front stage.

 

[endofdays89 5,000+ posts]

once again, how many watts are you sending the front stage?

 

[taintedplay 10+ year member]

Problem is budget. If the bass is overpowering the treble, and you can't afford a better front stage, nor a better amp for them, then the only thing to do to balance the sound is turn down the substage.
As for bass control knob.. I meant a remote one - up at the front, so if it's too loud, you can just turn down the knob, and then turn it back up if you want to impress someone.

Make sure the gains are set correctly for the front - if they are, then there isn't a thing you can do to safely make those louder without putting out some more money. You'll either have to turn down the subs or get better speakers and/or amp.

i got one with my amp, little black knob installed on my dash.

endofdays, i have my door speakers powered by a hifonics txi6408

 

[endofdays89 5,000+ posts]

i got one with my amp, little black knob installed on my dash.
endofdays, i have my door speakers powered by a hifonics txi6408

that doesn't say much. How many watts is it at 4 ohms? And i hope they aren't stock speakers.

 

[taintedplay 10+ year member]

2 x 340-Watts RMS @ 4-Ohms

and no, its the polk and pioneer speakers in my sig

 

[endofdays89 5,000+ posts]

2 x 340-Watts RMS @ 4-Ohms
and no, its the polk and pioneer speakers in my sig

what, there is no way you are sending 300 watts to speakers and they are being overpowered. Something is terribly wrong here. Either you got your gains set too low or your not really sending that much power.

 

[Plutoman 10+ year member]

what, there is no way you are sending 300 watts to speakers and they are being overpowered. Something is terribly wrong here. Either you got your gains set too low or your not really sending that much power.

Whole setup is horribly wrong.

Pioneer's are rated for 40 RMS. Polk's for 60 RMS. Amp puts out 85 RMS to each channel. You should NOT bridge the amp, run each speaker to a separate channel.

Set the gains low, way low, for the pioneer's, and slightly low for the polk's.

You can't turn those up enough to compensate for the subs...

If you've bridged the amp, you've probably ran it @ 8 ohms, and are putting about 170 RMS, depending on the gains, to each side.

 

[endofdays89 5,000+ posts]

Whole setup is horribly wrong.
Pioneer's are rated for 40 RMS. Polk's for 60 RMS. Amp puts out 85 RMS to each channel. You should NOT bridge the amp, run each speaker to a separate channel.

Set the gains low, way low, for the pioneer's, and slightly low for the polk's.

You can't turn those up enough to compensate for the subs...

If you've bridged the amp, you've probably ran it @ 8 ohms, and are putting about 170 RMS, depending on the gains, to each side.

yep, i figured that they were not great speakers. Like i said OP, i have 150 rms speakers being powered by 150 rms and my two type r's overpower them too. You need to get better speakers.

 

[shaneb 10+ year member]

whoa whoa whoa. The hifonics is running at 85wrmsx4 NOT bridged. The speakers are not see too much power. There is a LITTLE play left in his 4channel gains that he could adjust.

The system was tuned to be bass heavy, my guess is, when different quality sources of music got in there, the tuning went out the window. Tainted turn the gains on the hifonics up 1/8 of turn. NO more than tha.

 

[vellocet 10+ year member]

Turn the gain down on your sub amp. You can't magic more db's by sprinkling magic spl fairy dust on your amp. You have to balance what you have. Either that or save your $$$ and upgrade. Your probably going to end up doing that anyways. This hobby is an obsessive thing.

 

[audioholic 5,000+ posts]

if his gains are set right, he shouldn't touch them. This mean you need better/more highs. I read if you have to mess with you eq, you don't have enuff power/speakers. Like if you have 4 18"s and have to turn up the treble, you need more components. Eq should be set flat and everything is suppose to be heard.

If the EQ should be set flat, why bother having an EQ at all?
When setting up a system to 'blend' properly, adjust all your gains to the maximum safe level (see gain setting tutorial), then adjust gains of the loudest speakers DOWN to match the output of the quietest speakers. This will blend the speakers together, for any volume level you play the system at.

If the subs seem to to dominate the front speakers more at higher volume levels than at lower ones, you may have some nasty vibrations that get much worse at higher volume levels, there by increasing output even more at certain freqs. Or, your front speakers may be hitting their compression limits given the amplifier power available to them. A larger amp with more 'headroom' for transient peaks may be in order, or simply better speakers with more power handling (and a bigger amp) may be necessary. Try turning your subs down to match the front speakers first though, before you decide you need to buy anything.

 

[James Bang 5,000+ posts]

If the EQ should be set flat, why bother having an EQ at all?
When setting up a system to 'blend' properly, adjust all your gains to the maximum safe level (see gain setting tutorial), then adjust gains of the loudest speakers DOWN to match the output of the quietest speakers. This will blend the speakers together, for any volume level you play the system at.

If the subs seem to to dominate the front speakers more at higher volume levels than at lower ones, you may have some nasty vibrations that get much worse at higher volume levels, there by increasing output even more at certain freqs. Or, your front speakers may be hitting their compression limits given the amplifier power available to them. A larger amp with more 'headroom' for transient peaks may be in order, or simply better speakers with more power handling (and a bigger amp) may be necessary. Try turning your subs down to match the front speakers first though, before you decide you need to buy anything.

what's w/ this blending crap. it's all about the boom.

 

[endofdays89 5,000+ posts]

If the EQ should be set flat, why bother having an EQ at all?
When setting up a system to 'blend' properly, adjust all your gains to the maximum safe level (see gain setting tutorial), then adjust gains of the loudest speakers DOWN to match the output of the quietest speakers. This will bland the speakers together, for any volume level you play the system at.

If the subs seem to to dominate the front speakers more at higher volume levels than at lower ones, you may have some nasty vibrations that get much worse at higher volume levels, there by increasing output even more at certain freqs. Or, your front speakers may be hitting their compression limits given the amplifier power available to them. A larger amp with more 'headroom may be in order, or simply better speakers with more power handling (and a bigger amp) may be necessary. Try turning your subs down to match the front speakers first though, before you decide you need to buy anything.

it doesn't necessarily work that way, although it looks like his best bet is to turn the sub gain down. Sometimes you just need better speakers, especially with his sub stage. 100 watts or whatever he is sending is not going to do the job. I don't get why people use shitty speakers when running loud subs anyway, whats the point? I'd rather get better highs and then upgrade my subs, boom boom isn't what i like to hear with my system.

 

[James Bang 5,000+ posts]

~5 watts to my highs and it can keep up w/ my sub.

 

[audioholic 5,000+ posts]

it doesn't necessarily work that way, although it looks like his best bet is to turn the sub gain down. Sometimes you just need better speakers, especially with his sub stage. 100 watts or whatever he is sending is not going to do the job. I don't get why people use shitty speakers when running loud subs anyway, whats the point? I'd rather get better highs and then upgrade my subs, boom boom isn't what i like to hear with my system.

It does work that way. I dont care if you are trying to blend stock front speakers off deck power with your 1500 watt substage, you would still blend them together using that same method.
Most people dont bother trying to get their system to blend however, they just turn everything up to its max, assume all those independent systems work together well... just because, then brag about the amazing SQ.