Alpine Calibration!

[Ducati]

So installed all my stuff - no problem all went well. My only issue is that it sounds kind of poopy.

I was talking to my neighbor he said "you'd prolly need to spend a while to calibrate it".

How do I do this?

I have the Alpine 9857 model.

[jajou318]

He just means tuning it.. what else did you install? or was it just the headunit?

Mess with the settings till it sounds more pleasing to you.

[Ducati]

I installed all of that.

[O 16581 72452 5]

Do you have all the speakers wired up + and -, it'll suck sound in if you don't have it wired right!

Not really, but it does make a difference. Make sure your grounds are extra good, you can never have a good enough ground, especially on your amp, screw it to the floor, sand your ground to bare metal and spray over it to prevent rust.

[StereoInstaller1]

OK, start with this:

Turn the stupid BBE crap off. (page 16 of your owners manual, or here)

Set your bass and treble to zero. Turn the nasty sounding "Punch Bass" shit on your amps off. Mess with that after you get the basics down, OK?

Turn the subwoofer off.

Find a decent sounding CD, preferrably NOT some screaming-ass heavy rock, but try and find some nice female vocal (Diana Krall would be great)

Now, turn all of the gains on all of your amps down. Set the volume to about 28, or 3/4ths of the way up. Slowly increase the gains on your FRONT channels up until you hear distortion...then set the "HP filter" on your amp to about 150Hz.

Now, bring the rear up until you have achieved enough sound from the back to make you happy. In my case, that would be none at all, but you obviously want some rear sound, so bring it in.

Now set the rear HP filter to about 120Hz.

You should have clear clean sound with absolutely no bass whatsoever.

So now, turn the subwoofer back on.

Set the gain on your sub amp to about 3/4ths, set the "LP Filter" to about 80Hz and listen. You should have clear, clean, dramatic sound.

You certainly have good enough gear. If it does not sound good, blame the installer.

Now, put whatever you normally listen to in. Do NOT use ANYTHING you downloaded...real CD's only. MP3 sounds like shit, .WMA is better, but not enough...so as I said, real CD's only.

See if you still have adequate front/rear balance. See if you are OK with the bass. If your front or rear speakers distort, try raising the HP filter slightly first, then bring the gain down if you have to. Try to not turn the sub amp gain all the way up. Try using the sub level on the deck.

You will likely want to turn the treble up a bit, like +3, but set to 15K.

HTH,
Luke

[Ducati]

Thanks for the sick info. I'll do this in the morning.

[StereoInstaller1]

Hey man....4:52AM is morning, you know.

[Ducati]

I took it to work, I asked the people at the Install bay, I work at best buy to calibrate it.Thet said they didnt have any idea what i was talking about.

So I did it myself with my girl (She's an audio tech for her univ) so she guided me through the frequency shits and this thing sounds intense.

The only thing which is wierd - is my sub doesn't hit as hard as I thought. Could it be due to the box? (I have a sealed q-logic)

[StereoInstaller1]

Fosgate P3 sub + sealed box = boring bass.

One of those subs in a 2.3 cu.ft ported box, tuned at about 32Hz would make damn near anyone happy.

What is the airspace? Did you punch out the ski hole?

Glad you are happy with progress so far.

Luke

[netcsk]

why the gap in the low pass and the high pass, Luke?

[Ducati]

Fosgate P3 sub + sealed box = boring bass.

One of those subs in a 2.3 cu.ft ported box, tuned at about 32Hz would make damn near anyone happy.

What is the airspace? Did you punch out the ski hole?

Glad you are happy with progress so far.

Luke

I have the option of going ported - it came with a slot. I guess I'll throw the ported on there to see if I can feel it a bit more.


Also, I rarely listen to rap but when I did today - my speakers shut off and all that was working was the sub. I had to restart the radio and it was fine. What would be the cure for this?

[AndrewBird]

Sounds like you amp shut down or something. Possibly overheating? Where did you mount it?

[netcsk]

If it happens again, look at you amp and see if the power or protection lights are on. Take note of which one.

If it's protection, then your amp is likely overheating (due to driving too much or driving incorrect spec'd speakers. i.e. wrong impedence).

If you still see the power light, then it's a headunit problem.

If it turns out to be your amp overheating, then you may want to look into where your cut-offs are (high-pass frequency). Since it happens during rap, it would make me think you have your high-pass way too low or even off.

[StereoInstaller1]

why the gap in the low pass and the high pass, Luke?

Commonly known as "Underlap", Sir.

I personally would not run a 5.25 below those numbers, unless it was really meant for it, and those aren't. E30's have a pretty serious midbass suckout, but his rear speakers will help that.

His woofers hava an enormous moving mass, thus anything over about 90Hz is tubby as hell...the crossovers on his amp are 12db/oct, so he will only be 6 or 8 db down at 100Hz.

[Ducati]

That's my current setup right now. I'm going to dynamat my panels and the trunk this coming saturday. That should give me a little bit of 'tighter' sound.