Turn up subwoofer volume?

Question

Hi, I just installed an Alpine CDA-9855 cd deck in my car. The subwoofer volume coming from it sounds very weak compared to my old deck, a cheaper sony. I noticed it was also weak when the deck was in my brothers truck before I got it. I havent spent much time trying to adjust the volume except turning just the subwoofer volume on the deck itself all the way up. How would I turn it up so it would sound louder again? I have the subs connected to the subwoofer out on the alpine but I had them connected to the rears on the sony because it did not have a sub out. Also, I havent touched the gain or any other settings on my amp. All help is appreciated, thanks

Answer 1

Umm, it sounds like you are missing an amp

Answer 2

Yea, You need to wire the subs up to the amp because the headunit does not have enough power to possibly think about powering the sub. When you get the subs and amp hooked up then you need to play about with the amp controls. First turn the gain the whole way down and turn the volume on your headunit up to the normal listening volume then slowly turn your gain control up til either you have a pleasurable amount of bass or until it starts to distort, when you get distortion turn it back down a wee bit, and there you go!

Answer 3

It sounds like you may have wired the subs improperly when you put them in the new vehicle. The set-up should be great. That amp is rated for 750 watts into 2 ohms, so if you have the subs wired into a 2 ohm load then they should be seeing all 750 watts. But if you have the subs wired up in a 4 ohm load then you're only getting 375 watts to the subs and that's why they don't sound right.

Other things to look for...make sure your amp is set to mono if it has a stereo/mono option. make sure the crossover isn't set too low, it may be cutting out most of the lows. Make sure the sub-out non fader is turned up and make sure the phaze is set to normal (even if it's reversed it still shouldn't be that much different).

Good luck.