door speaker amp help

sevsev

Member
:
'03 P5
Alright, well I am running an infinity component set in my front door speakers, I have a clarion amp that does 50w rms to each channel. My headunit is a clarion vrx755vd. And I have the stock speakers sitting in the rear doors.

The problem is that if I have the amp cancel on so it's putting out to the rca's that the door speakers dont get very loud on full volume, even with the gain on the amp on full. But once I turn amp cancel off which outputs to the speakers on the harness (which I only have my stock rear ones in) it gets way way louder. I am now thinking of ditching the door speaker amp and running them off the 23w rms the headunit has to offer. But why am I seeing these results??

Why is the 23w rms from the headunit yeilding nicer results than a 50w rms amp?
 
There is no way that the HU is going to sound better that the external amplifier. I am not familier with that HU but my guesse is that you have the wrong rca's going to the amp. Check the rca and make sure you are using the front speakers. Read over the manual for the stereo very carefully and I am sure you will find the problem. If you can find a link to the manual online send it to me and i will take a look.
 
You were kinda right, I was fading it more to the front so that the stock rears would only function as a bit of rear fill. According to the manual it's on the rca's for the front, but when I fade it to front the door speakers get lower. Ugh, I'll use this thread to ask another question about it then.

Over excursion, mostly caused by low frequencies?? I want to turn the gain for the door speakers all the way up and set the crossover to cut out pretty much all bass. The speakers will be safe like this? They sound real loud and crisp when I set it like this.
 
Although you can be used as one, the amplifer gain is not a volume knob. It is adjustable to compensate for the output of your head unit. Follow these instructions to set your gain and fader balance...

1) Turn the gain to 10-15% on the amp and disable the crossover for now.
2) Turn on the head unit and play some music. Turn the fader on the HU all the way to the front and turn the volume to 95%.
3) Verify you have the RCAs connected to the right outputs on the head by trying the different sets. (The rear outputs should be silent because of the fader setting)
4) Go back to the amp and turn up the gain until it is at the loudest level you intend to listen at or it starts to distort.
5) If distortion kicks in early, use the crossover to cut out lower frequencies. Start at 50Hz and work upwards until you find a good crossover point.
6) Re-adjust the gain after you have played with the crossover if necessary.
7) Go back to the head unit and fade back towards the rear until you get a desired balance between front and rear.
8) Turn the volume back down before you finish (or you'll get a rude awakening the next time you turn the car on)
 
nice step by step...
Did you just write that? Can I use it to train my NON-Audio friends?
 
I just wrote it but it's pretty common knowledge among car audio installers. Actually the 95% on the head unit is just a guess. Most head units distort somewhere between 90-100% so you want to stay in the clear when you are at full volume but you also want to make sure you utilize most of the signal potential when listening at loud levels.

There are ways to determine the exact point where your head unit distorts but it involves expensive equipment or a home-brewed tool composed of radio-shack parts. It's much easier to just assume that when your aftermarket unit goes from 0-30 it will prolly start to distort around 28-29 and you don't want to turn it up that far. In fact, my clarion head unit goes to 33...I just pretend that 30 is the highest level...but sometimes I bump it to 31-32 if I need a little extra volume...but if I go to 33 the distortion becomes obvious.
 
I knew about it in a general sense (I'm a DIYer), but I haven't seen it layed out in step by step....
 
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