Which head-unit setting matter when setting gains with a DMM?o

[kabosh 10+ year member]

I'm sure this has been asked but I can't find it. I need to know which settings could cause my amp to clip after I set.gains with a DMM. On my head unit I.have bass level, bass boost 1-3, loudness, and subwoofer level. If I set my gains and I'm not getting as much bass as I expect( atleast as much as I had with my old head unit hooked up to same sub n amp) which of these settings can I turn on or higher to get more bass without causing clippinf?

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[gamehawk55 10+ year member]

I'm sure this has been asked but I can't find it. I need to know which settings could cause my amp to clip after I set.gains with a DMM. On my head unit I.have bass level, bass boost 1-3, loudness, and subwoofer level. If I set my gains and I'm not getting as much bass as I expect( atleast as much as I had with my old head unit hooked up to same sub n amp) which of these settings can I turn on or higher to get more bass without causing clippinf?

For one you shouldn't be using loudness at all. For proper tuning you should have EVERYTHING on the Head Unit set flat BEFORE setting your gains. So that means loudness off, bass boost off, All EQ settings at 0, and depending on how your sub volume on the deck works you will either want it at 0 or maybe about half way up so you have room to adjust afterwards.

If you tuned your amp with a DMM with all this stuff off and THEN turned them all back on then THAT is whats causing your clipping. Because you already tuned the amp to put out max power with all additions off and then as soon as you turn anything up higher than what you tuned at your going to clip.

I always leave my system flat even after tuning and NEVER use loudness. It's the number one thing that's causing your clipping for sure. It's only meant to be used at lower volumes. The only thing I use after tuning to adjust the sub is the sub volume on the head unit because some songs have more bass than others so they need a little more or less.

What kind of amp/subs are you using? Maybe you just don't have the right setup to put out the kind of bass you're looking for

 

[gamehawk55 10+ year member]

I'm sure this has been asked but I can't find it. I need to know which settings could cause my amp to clip after I set.gains with a DMM. On my head unit I.have bass level, bass boost 1-3, loudness, and subwoofer level. If I set my gains and I'm not getting as much bass as I expect( atleast as much as I had with my old head unit hooked up to same sub n amp) which of these settings can I turn on or higher to get more bass without causing clippinf?

Also what exactly did you tune with? Did you tune with a 0db test tone? If so then try using a -3db or -5db test tone. My amp is currently tuned with a -5db tone and so far everything seems great and gets good sounding bass, but obviously some songs are still louder than others so would need to be attenuated down a little from the head unit to prevent clipping on 0db material. But from what a lot of people say, apparently a lot of music is more in the -3db, -6db range for bass. So if you tuned with a 0db tone then that's why you aren't getting much bass on some music.

 

[BoomBoxStereo 10+ year member]

Also what exactly did you tune with? Did you tune with a 0db test tone? If so then try using a -3db or -5db test tone. My amp is currently tuned with a -5db tone and so far everything seems great and gets good sounding bass, but obviously some songs are still louder than others so would need to be attenuated down a little from the head unit to prevent clipping on 0db material. But from what a lot of people say, apparently a lot of music is more in the -3db, -6db range for bass. So if you tuned with a 0db tone then that's why you aren't getting much bass on some music.

tht's one thing i never understood... if you tune with a -3db tone and the bass sounds good, then won't you clip the hell out of your system when a random song comes on your shuffle that is 0db?

 

[gamehawk55 10+ year member]

tht's one thing i never understood... if you tune with a -3db tone and the bass sounds good, then won't you clip the hell out of your system when a random song comes on your shuffle that is 0db?

As far as I know I think the amount of time that 0db peaks actually happen in music isn't enough to actually hurt your system. Unless of coarse you were tuned with say a -10db track then had a bunch of 0db peaks. I've been just analyzing a bunch of music in audacity and while the transient response of the tracks are usually going up past 0db and clipping. The average RMS response in the track is around -3db and lower. Although I don't completely understand the whole thing myself I'm learning as well.

Hopefuly someone else with more knowledge on the subject could chime in and better explain things. Cuz from what I can gather is that the transient peaks in audacity do not matter much when measuring the waveform. Because if they did then we would be tuning our systems with +2db tones and not -5db tones because 90% of music that I look at in audacity the transient peaks up to +2db but the RMS is much lower.

Take a look at some tracks in audacity and look at the light blue waveform (RMS) vs dark Blue (transient peak). Just make sure you switch it to see the waveform in Db

 

[gamehawk55 10+ year member]

Take this example from Viking Death March by Billy Talent, There is a TON of clipping in the transient peaks but if you look at the light blue (RMS) it's around -12db on average. Also looking at the light green bars shows the average audio level as -12db.

View attachment 26540504

 

[gamehawk55 10+ year member]

Or you could also use the equalization tool to take out everything above 80hz and see how much the actual sub bass clips. It's ALOT less than you might think

 

[gamehawk55 10+ year member]

tht's one thing i never understood... if you tune with a -3db tone and the bass sounds good, then won't you clip the hell out of your system when a random song comes on your shuffle that is 0db?

From what I've seen so far if you listen to mostly metal/rock you could probably safely tune to about -5db or maybe even -7db but if you listen to a lot of rap or dubstep or really bass heavy music I would probably tune to a more conservative -3db. Either that or tune to -5db and just be smart about your sub volume on the deck when switching music styles.

 

[kabosh 10+ year member]

I have a hdc3 12 being pushed by a brz1200. I'm not having any clipping problems, just making sure I avoid them. I recently went from a mid tier Sony HU to a kenwood excelon and I cant get it to sound as loud and deep for some.reason. and this is setting.gains.with a 0db 50.Hz

 

[BoomBoxStereo 10+ year member]

From what I've seen so far if you listen to mostly metal/rock you could probably safely tune to about -5db or maybe even -7db but if you listen to a lot of rap or dubstep or really bass heavy music I would probably tune to a more conservative -3db. Either that or tune to -5db and just be smart about your sub volume on the deck when switching music styles.

so say i want to tune to -3db, should i find a -3db 50hz test tone and tune to that?

currently i'm tuned to decaf music. tuned to a repetitive 45hz decaf track

 

[Beatin' 10+ year member]

I got a question, if you tune the amp for lets say 500wrms with a 0db tone, does this mean that at the tuning volume on your HU, if you play a -3db tone it will come out as 250wrms? A -3db drop is twice as soft, so half the power.......right?

 

[gamehawk55 10+ year member]

I got a question' date=' if you tune the amp for lets say 500wrms with a 0db tone, does this mean that at the tuning volume on your HU, if you play a -3db tone it will come out as 250wrms? A -3db drop is twice as soft, so half the power.......right?[/quote']
I'm not sure if it works the same way the other way around. I just know that if you have a +3db of clipping it's like asking the amp to put out twice as much power which is impossible if it's already maxxed out.

 

[gamehawk55 10+ year member]

I got a question' date=' if you tune the amp for lets say 500wrms with a 0db tone, does this mean that at the tuning volume on your HU, if you play a -3db tone it will come out as 250wrms? A -3db drop is twice as soft, so half the power.......right?[/quote']
I'm not sure if it works the same way the other way around. I just know that if you have a +3db of clipping it's like asking the amp to put out twice as much power which is impossible if it's already maxxed out.

 

[gamehawk55 10+ year member]

I got a question' date=' if you tune the amp for lets say 500wrms with a 0db tone, does this mean that at the tuning volume on your HU, if you play a -3db tone it will come out as 250wrms? A -3db drop is twice as soft, so half the power.......right?[/quote']

I'm not sure if it works the same way the other way around. I just know that if you have a +3db of clipping it's like asking the amp to put out twice as much power which is impossible if it's already maxxed out.

 

---------- Post added at 04:52 PM ---------- Previous post was at 04:52 PM ----------

 

I got a question' date=' if you tune the amp for lets say 500wrms with a 0db tone, does this mean that at the tuning volume on your HU, if you play a -3db tone it will come out as 250wrms? A -3db drop is twice as soft, so half the power.......right?[/quote']

I'm not sure if it works the same way the other way around. I just know that if you have a +3db of clipping it's like asking the amp to put out twice as much power which is impossible if it's already maxxed out.

 

---------- Post added at 04:53 PM ---------- Previous post was at 04:52 PM ----------

 

Wow sorry for the quad post. Reply's completely messed up there for a minute and weren't registering lol

 

[gamehawk55 10+ year member]

so say i want to tune to -3db, should i find a -3db 50hz test tone and tune to that?
currently i'm tuned to decaf music. tuned to a repetitive 45hz decaf track

Mines tuned with a DD1 right now to -5db. I'm not sure how the decaf tracks are recorded but I would suggest using an online tone generator that produces uncompressed WAV files for the tones and burn it to a CD, so that you know you're getting the cleanest signal possible for tuning.

Sine Waveform | Online Sine Tone Wave File Generator

That site allows you to generate any tone up to 10s long and at whatever Db level you want. That's what I used to tune my system before I got the DD1.