lubetek 10+ year member
Senior VIP Member
Hey it's been a very long time since Ive been on this forum. I've pretty much have had no issues to date with any of my audio builds until now.
I recently put a new system in one of my vehicles and the amp in question is a Kenwood KAC-M3004 running bridged to my component speakers.
My head unit is the JVC KD-R988BTS This head unit claims 4 volt preouts. So since the preouts are pushing 4 volts (according to JVC) I set the 'input sensitivity' of the Kenwood amp to {4} for both input sensitivity knobs. They run from 5 minimum to 0.2 max. My thought was since my headunit does 4 volts that I should set the amp to 4 volts.
What this provides is very low output when increasing the volume on the headunit until I reach 32 to 35 on the volume, the max is 35. It sounds great but I'm not used to having to almost completely max out the volume. I am planning on playing with the amp input sensitivity some as I figure this is the amps gain adjustment. This amp bridged should be putting out around 150 watts rms per channel and from testing I have seen online it actually puts that out and then some, but I would think it should get louder lower on the volume dial. This amp does not have a gain dial per say which is what I'm used to but input sensitivity is the same thing as far as I know.
Is this normal? Shouldn't I be running the gains at 4v since my headunit puts out 4v from the preouts? Will it hurt the amp at all to say run the gains at 2 or 3 volts to make the amp work harder and allow the headunit to get louder at a lower volume? I mean I literally have to turn the volume up to 33, 34 or 35 to get the sound output I want. It's **** clean at this volume but I would prefer to have the volume at say 25 to get the output I'm now getting at 34.
All of my past amps were easy to set up but this one is bugging me.
I have other audio systems in my other cars but this one is new which I put together last weekend to add some decent sound to my 65 Ford.
Any input is welcome and if you made it this far...thanks for taking the time.
Oh I should add that I plan to pull out the multimeter this weekend and test the volts at the amp but I have never done that before when bridging the amp. I'll figure it out though.
I recently put a new system in one of my vehicles and the amp in question is a Kenwood KAC-M3004 running bridged to my component speakers.
My head unit is the JVC KD-R988BTS This head unit claims 4 volt preouts. So since the preouts are pushing 4 volts (according to JVC) I set the 'input sensitivity' of the Kenwood amp to {4} for both input sensitivity knobs. They run from 5 minimum to 0.2 max. My thought was since my headunit does 4 volts that I should set the amp to 4 volts.
What this provides is very low output when increasing the volume on the headunit until I reach 32 to 35 on the volume, the max is 35. It sounds great but I'm not used to having to almost completely max out the volume. I am planning on playing with the amp input sensitivity some as I figure this is the amps gain adjustment. This amp bridged should be putting out around 150 watts rms per channel and from testing I have seen online it actually puts that out and then some, but I would think it should get louder lower on the volume dial. This amp does not have a gain dial per say which is what I'm used to but input sensitivity is the same thing as far as I know.
Is this normal? Shouldn't I be running the gains at 4v since my headunit puts out 4v from the preouts? Will it hurt the amp at all to say run the gains at 2 or 3 volts to make the amp work harder and allow the headunit to get louder at a lower volume? I mean I literally have to turn the volume up to 33, 34 or 35 to get the sound output I want. It's **** clean at this volume but I would prefer to have the volume at say 25 to get the output I'm now getting at 34.
All of my past amps were easy to set up but this one is bugging me.
I have other audio systems in my other cars but this one is new which I put together last weekend to add some decent sound to my 65 Ford.
Any input is welcome and if you made it this far...thanks for taking the time.
Oh I should add that I plan to pull out the multimeter this weekend and test the volts at the amp but I have never done that before when bridging the amp. I'll figure it out though.
Last edited by a moderator:
