Turning my bass down on speakers, but not sub

[Pkoblish]

I recently got a boss audio bv9986bi head unit and there is no option for subwoofer volume.. if I turn my speakers up loud the bass on my front and rear speakers sounds terrible, and I don’t want anything damaged.. when I turn down the bass on the head unit the subwoofer also gets turned down.. any way around this? I have a 12” kenwood excelon and an alpine s-a60m.

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[Buck 5,000+ posts]

What I would do is turn the bass down to wherever you need it for your door speakers, then adjust the gains on your subwoofer amp to make the sub louder.

You could also install an RCA based inline bass knob on your sub amp, that way you can control the subwoofer volume independently of the radio.

 

[Pkoblish]

If I install the RCA bass knob and then turn the subwoofer up with the bass on the EQ set way down , wouldn't it effect which frequencies the sub play at still?

 

[Popwarhomie 5,000+ posts]

A higher end headunit would give you more tuning options to cross the door speakers higher. I think "Bass blockers" are your only cheap option. They are inline caps that block frequencies under 80hz for example.

 

[Deiimos]

I prefer running an amp to the speakers. This will give you adjustable crossovers which is what you need, and lots of headroom for clarity / more volume. Say, 75 watts RMS per channel at 4 ohm. Yeah you might still have the stock speakers installed, but you can set it properly to where you don't have any issues and the sound will be way better than what the 15w head unit will do. Don't need to break the bank on a crazy high end exotic amp either.

 

[Pkoblish]

I have 85w per channel from the aftermarket head unit going to 2 Polk audio MM1 5x7s and 2 Alpine RS65.2s.. Def have some money in those so blowing them would be the last thing I'd wanna do. I turned the bass down on the head unit and it seemed to fix the issue, the sub is a bit quieter but not by much. Im gonna get a remote bass knob that plugs in to my amp and see how that works

 

[nauc 10+ year member]

"Im gonna get a remote bass knob that plugs in to my amp and see how that works"

i wouldnt even do that. id turn your amp gain up until its at the right level

 

[Deiimos]

Not to be argumentative, and that isn’t my intention so don’t Take it that way. That Boss head unit does like 15 watts per channel, which is not even close to a real 85 watt amplifier, night and day difference. Especially with the proper crossovers an amp provides and a remote bass knob doesn't, those speakers are not performing even close to what they can do running them like that. I'm not trying to put anything or anyone down, just give useful information that you could get way better performance out of the system.

 

[Pkoblish]

Not to be argumentative, and that isn’t my intention so don’t Take it that way. That Boss head unit does like 15 watts per channel, which is not even close to a real 85 watt amplifier, night and day difference. Especially with the proper crossovers an amp provides and a remote bass knob doesn't, those speakers are not performing even close to what they can do running them like that. I'm not trying to put anything or anyone down, just give useful information that you could get way better performance out of the system.

I'd like to do an amp setup I don't got the money right now, def something i'd like to do in the future

 

[nauc 10+ year member]

x2 what Deiimos said. most decks only put out around 20 watts per channel, continuous (RMS)

fwiw, peak/max ratings are dew dew. you wanna look at continuous/RMS power ratings

 

[1aespinoza Premium Member]

I'd like to do an amp setup I don't got the money right now, def something i'd like to do in the future

Just like Popwarhomie said, add bass blockers to the positive speaker wires behind the radio to protect them from anything under 80 hertz. These are them-

After that, you can turn up the volume without distorting them too bad. That is in ebay.

 

[Pkoblish]

Should I get different frequency blockers for the 6.5 vs the 5x7?

 

[1aespinoza Premium Member]

Should I get different frequency blockers for the 6.5 vs the 5x7?

I think you should be ok with those. If uncertain, you can get some that block at 100 hertz.