jag5311

Ok, like my other post, i have everything hooked up. Well, i paid a place 45 bucks (with a grill for my sub)to install the 4 ga wire to my batterys so it powers everything. Well, i took out the fuse on my kenwood amp since i don't have anything hooked up to it yet. Well, both the lights are on the amps, so you know they are powered, but when i play my music, the sub barely sounds like it is bumping out any bass. Its moving, but very small. The eclipse head unit i have has a separate volume control for the subwoofer (called a nonfader out). Well, i had it at its highest (16) and still nothing really was coming out. I had the place take it in the back and test it to makes sure power and noise was going through the wires, and they said everything was fine, and that i might just need to turn the gains up or whatever on the side of the alpine. Thing is, the sub and the amp were taking out of my old 99 grand am that was attached to the factory head unit. Now, between the time i took it out of my grandam and had it installed into this car, i haven't touched the gain controls and it bumped in the grand am. They said it could possibly be something internal in the amp, but that can't be because once it was taken out of my grandam, all it did was sit in my back seat with a jacket on top of it to keep people from seeing whats in my car. So tommorow i am giong to check the gain controls.

Can someone tell me the proper bass settings i should have it set to.

the amp i have is an Alpine v12 monoaural mrv-100m 150 watt max.

Let me know if there are any suggestions

thanks
bryan

p.s. Do most sound audio shops have a policy where you can't go into the back shop where they install stuff due to insurance?

i asked to go watch what they were doing and they said they can't allow anyone to go back there do to insurance policies.

You know what pis.sses me off, was when i took it to this place today, and i was talking to the guy, I told him how my gf's father helped me and he is an electrical engineer for an automotive corporation, so he knows what the hell he is doing regarding wires. And the guy was basically trying to say that having me and him hook it up could have screwed it up. He actually told me this, "it takes more then an electrical engineer to install a system"

I was like, WTF... (didn't say anything but i thought it). That was rude. He was like, my father is an electrical engineer and him and I tried to install a system one time and it didn't go very well. I mean, i went in there to have the stupid wire hooked up to the battery, and the guy basically is trying to market to me that i should basically get my whole system rewired. What an idiot.

Matt93SE

iTrader: (44)

I'm an electrical engineer too... I can spout off hundreds of equations on voltage and current and skin effect on the wires and interference and noise transmission and etc etc etc..

but that doesn't mean squat about installing a stereo.

then again.. knowing how to install stereos has helped me a lot in my education at school. I knew at least the basics before it was covered in class, so that when it came to actually understanding what the material was about, I'd have something to say "well had to do xxx when I installed Jeff's system because of yyy.. that's the same thing we did in class today"



as for what's with your sub, it could be a host of things..
1. speaker leads shorting to ground somewhere
2. gain not correctly set on amplifier.. if the amp was wired directly to the stock system in your old ride, then it's probably set up for a high voltage input. (gains too low). adjust the gain before you do anything else. if that doesn't work, then check the wiring for shorts..

disconnect it from the amplifier and check both + and - speaker wires for any resistance to ground. if there's anything there, then you've got an install problem.


go do that and see what happens.

zboy

iTrader: (2)

Gee, my dad's an electrical engineering too...

Anyway, I had a similar problem to you when I installed a sub in my last car...could barely hear it. I had everything connected correctly (sub was connected to a 150W amp and the amp to the line out of my head unit). What I ended up having to do was use the high-level inputs on my amp, which tap directly into the speaker wires (I used the back speakers). Once I did that, the sub worked great. I don't know the specs on you're amp, but I would imagine there might be something similar. I had the 4 RCA jacks for line-level input, and 4 spade terminals for the speaker-level input. You either used one or the other, and make sure you hook up both channels (even if it's a mono amp)

hope that helps

jag5311

Hey. Wow, lots of electrical engineers. All i was saying is knowing about wires comes quite handy when dealing with installing car stereos. My gf's father had this meter thing that he checked all the connections to make sure everything was receiving a signal. Kinda interesting actually. Anyway, with the sub, ZBOY, you kinda lost me. My Alpine amp has 2 jacks for the rca cables. Then it has 4 slots on the side where wires go into. The guy who installed the wire from my sub to the amp said they could be hooked up to 2 of the 4 either way. I believe he currently hooked it up to the far right 2. Here is alink on the specs of my amp if your interested.

http://www.sounddomain.com/sku/ALPMRV100M

Its pretty detailed

hope that helps
bryan

can you explain this real quick though

Speaker level inputs (or high level inputs) are input terminals on amplifiers and pre-amplifiers that can accept amplified signals (ex. signal from the speaker outputs of a factory head unit) as an input signal without a line-level convertor or any other voltage step down device. ???????

DMAN11

Hey Bryan,

I was thinking after reading your post, and here's my thoughts. First of all -- it sounds to me like you might not be getting correct signal to your Alpine. Apparently you do have power, but it just don't sound right with the signal part. So, here's my ideas. I know it's Eclipse, but not sure of the model, so how many RCA outputs does your head unit have? 1,2,3?? If it has 3, you should have a separate output for the subwoofer amp, do you have RCA cable running from the sub out to your Alpine?(look at the pic I sent ya) If you don't have that third RCA pre-out, you have to get the signal to your Alpine amp somehow. Either you will have to maybe use splitters(Y-plugs) on one of the RCA outputs behind the radio, or maybe use the factory speaker wires from your rear speaker outputs on the head unit to get the signal to your Alpine. I think it would work that way, but not sure.

I agree witht the other guys too though, first check the gains, and see how they are set. If you had it running on your factory system in your Grand Am, it may have been set for high signal(spkr wires), and not for low signal(RCA's). So check that stuff out and I hope it works out for ya. Good Luck!!!,,,,,,,DMAN

THX

iTrader: (1)

This has happened to me several times. Each time it's because I have one of the High-Pass Frequency (HPF) settings set to ON on my Head unit. Try turning all the HPF settings off, I know you have a dedicated sub pre-out but just see what happens.

jag5311

I don't know how to turn that kind of stuff off. I will read through the manual.

zboy

iTrader: (2)

The idea about checking to make sure there are no high-pass filters on is a good one. Here's what I was talking about. If you look at the installation manual for your amp (available at http://ecominet2.alpine-usa.com:80/h...rv-100m_om.pdf ) and go to page 2 it talks about the speaker level inputs. In the top left picture, it shows a wire labeled #7 with a #8-#11 on the other end. those wires would splice into the speaker wires already going to your rear speaker, and the sub will get it's signal from there instead of the RCA cable. If the shop didn't give you this cable, you should go back and ask for it. You paid for it, so it shouldn't be a problem getting it. There's also a little diagram showing the speaker leads in the bottom right (it looks like they go directly to the head unit instead of speakers...you can leave your speakers connected and splice in wherever it's easiest).

Hope you get everything figured out and working without too much trouble

jag5311

Wow. that was confusing. I think what confuses me is this

The eclipse is attached to my 4 speakers. (2 in the front and 2 in the rear). I have a pair of rca cables running from the NONFADER OUT on the back of the eclipse to my alpine. So i can control the sound for my speakers, and then i can separately control my sub sound. Sorry, i know i am repetitious, but i didn't understand anything of that last comment made. Its ok, don't worry about reexplaining it to me.

thanks

bryan

zboy

iTrader: (2)

well, lemme try again

right now, the alpine is connected to the eclipse via an RCA cable (or 2). So the amp is sending an amplified signal to the speakers, and a low-level signal to your alpine. Problem is the low-level signal is so low, the alpine isn't making the sub loud enough (relative to the other speakers).

so instead of hooking the alpine up to the low-level signal from the eclipse, you can use the speaker-level input's on the alpine. The way you so it is plug in the little adapter the alpine came with, which has 4 wires on it (2 each for each channel..a + and - ). Take some extra speaker wire and connect the + and - of the adapter to the + and - of the rear channels (connect 2 wires for each speaker). That way, the alpine will get a much stonger signal, and hopefully you will be able to get the level to your liking.

Hopefully that's a little clearer (if not, send me an email). Another thing you could try would be if your eclipse allows you to turn off the internal amplifier. It might do this because when you use the pre-amp outs to your own amps for all the speakers, you dont' need the amp in the head unit on (it'll just make unneeded heat and such). If you can do that, the sub will still get the low-level signal from the pre-amp out, and you can crank the volume to see if the sub reaches an acceptable level (even though the speakers would probably be sounding terrible at this point). That will just let you know that it's strictly a gain problem.

HTH

-zach