When tuning up an amp...

[BassRulesCarz 10+ year member]

When tuning up an amp do you just set gain or is there other controls.. i use alpine amp mrd-m1005

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[Prowler573 5,000+ posts]

When tuning up an amp do you just set gain or is there other controls.. i use alpine amp mrd-m1005

Here's a good place to start. The page I linked to is the forum's stickied gain setting tutorial.

I will assume from what amp you're asking about that we are talking about your substage here...

Other than setting the gain (aka input sensitivity adjustment) you'll need to set the LP (low-pass) crossover in either your amp and/or your head unit. Start somewhere around 75Hz and make your adjustments from there to see what sounds best to your ears. Commonly accepted wisdom says that at around 80Hz bass starts to become localized (where you can tell where the sub-bass is coming from, or where it is located, rather than simply being enveloped by its presence) so you'll not want to adjust it any higher than that and most likely, actual settings being specific to your vehicle, install, etc, you'll want it set somewhere a bit lower than that for best results.

If you're using a vented (aka as ported) enclosure you'll also want to use the SSF (subsonic filter) which is also called the infrasonic filter on some amps. This is essentially a HP (high-pass) crossover but with very low frequency settings. This will eliminate frequencies that are too low for your setup to reproduce faithfully (and safely) depending on your enclosure's tuning. You'll want to set the SSF at a half octave lower (I think?!) than the box's tuning frequency to prevent overexcursion of your sub(s) below their tuned frrequency.

Hope this helps in some small way and good luck with your install!