What did I do wrong? Why isn't it loud?

[Justinw303 10+ year member]

Alright, I've been laboring for weeks to get my sister's system hooked up and pounding. She has two 12" Infinity References in a sealed box, around 1.25 ft^3 per sub, powered by a PG Xenon 600.1 amp in the truck of her '95 Pontiac Grand Am, facing the rear. I calcuted the gains should be set at about 17 volts or so, so I set it and put in a CD and... very quiet bass. The subs were clearly moving and I was getting some nice (although possibly clipped) excursion, when I sat in the car it sounded like some factory 6.5's in the back.

What's wrong with it?

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[Fast1one 10+ year member]

Make sure they are not out of phase....

 

[Justinw303 10+ year member]

Ok, when I wired the sub into the box, for each sub there was a round wire and a squarish one. I couldn't remember which was positive/negative when it came time to hook up to amp, so I tried it first with the round one as positive, and got no sound, so then I made the square one the positive and it worked, so I just did the same with the other, so I'm assuming they're in phase.

 

[luvinthebass 5,000+ posts]

most likely they are out of phase or they would be hittin like a mother****er.

 

[Megalomaniac 5,000+ posts]

what is phase? i have it on my amp i just keep it on 0degree its seems fine

 

[jujumantb 10+ year member]

Ok, when I wired the sub into the box, for each sub there was a round wire and a squarish one. I couldn't remember which was positive/negative when it came time to hook up to amp, so I tried it first with the round one as positive, and got no sound, so then I made the square one the positive and it worked, so I just did the same with the other, so I'm assuming they're in phase.

wow, sounds like.... you should stop installing.

 

[Wonderbread 5,000+ posts]

Phase means (in this case) that they are wired so that one is "pushing" and one is "pulling" effectively working against each other. Give it a shot, try and reverse them. How do you have them wired? To what load?

 

[Twistid 5,000+ posts]

wow, sounds like.... you should stop installing.

//content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/imwithstupid.gif.ff72b14418b3c35ebdf1ccd38da21695.gif

 

[jujumantb 10+ year member]

what is phase? i have it on my amp i just keep it on 0degree its seems fine

'in phase' is when the subs both are working together (both move in and out together)

'out of phase' is when one moves out when the other moves in, effectively cancelling eachothers waves out.

 

[Justinw303 10+ year member]

lol, don't laugh... They should have put a plus sign on one of the wires to make it less confusing, but I'll double check everything to see if the phase is correct...

 

[Justinw303 10+ year member]

They seem to be operating together... They are single 4 ohm sub, and I have each sub wired directly to a "channel", then the channels parallel inside the amp so its a 2 ohm load.

 

[James Bang 5,000+ posts]

it's not a good thing to just guess which is + or -

you should've made sure in the first place you lazy ***.

 

[Twistid 5,000+ posts]

lol @ this thread

 

[James Bang 5,000+ posts]

also, if your HU has a phase feature, switch from 180 - 0 or vice versa to check.

difference should be dramatic

 

[Justinw303 10+ year member]

also, if your HU has a phase feature, switch from 180 - 0 or vice versa to check.difference should be dramatic

Yeah it has a normal and reverse phase, I tried that, didn't hear much of a difference, but I can't remember if I had it up very loud when I did this... I mean, I can heard bass coming from the speakers, but just not in the car...