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JL 500/1 Gain?

4K views 4 replies 5 participants last post by  dipitydoo 
#1 ·
I finally got around to properly setting my 500/1 gain with a DMM and 50hz tone.

I turned my deck to 55/62, it's a Premier FH800BT, set all the EQ to 0 with no boost or anything.

When I set the gain to give a voltage of 44.7v gain is very low, only like 20% up from zero.

When I hook everything back up the sub is playing at a really low volume until I get the deck up to around 55, but the fronts/highs are way overpowering at that point. Proper gain level for the front amp was 24.5v, which is about 75% volume, it's a 300/2. I used 50hz for both amps.

To balance it out for now, I went ahead and bumped the 500/1 gain up to about 60% of full to get more output and it sounds great.

Anyone see anything weird here?

I guess my question is why is the gain setting so low on the 500/1 in comparison with the 300/2. Should I use 1kHz on the 300/2, do you think that would make a difference?
 
#2 ·
I max the gain on my amps and use as little of the headunit as possible. The amount of distortion/crap you get with a headunit is far worse then the amp I use. When I hit volume 27-28 on my headunit out of 35, my distortion meter goes off. When I max out my gain on my amp and jack up the volume, I know it is the amp that will distort. I have now effectively eliminated the weakest link and know I'm just running out of power then other issues that I can get from the headunit.

Your issue is understandable. You have to set the gains in correspondence to your speakers, not just with the head-unit.
 
#3 ·
I use a scope to set all gains except on the sub amp.I have before and no one likes it that way.I tend to set the sub gain about 2/3 up and use the sub controls to adjust it from there.Most HU are set up so when the sub out is maxed out it is equal to the highs and not boosted so its really just an attenuator.
A lot of older music like Motley Crue and Judas Priest has very little sub content so you need that extra head room.
Unless you ad an epicenter.That really makes a difference.Holly Crap!
 
#4 ·
The problem here is that you can not use a 50 hrz test tone to set your highs. Your hpf is filtering most of that out it should be anyway. Try a 200 hrz test tone for your mids and highs.
 
#5 ·
you're missing the final step to gain setting multiple amps. when you set gains on amps with these procedures, they give you the maximum clean power (or somewhere around there). with multiple amps, once you have these values, you should always reduce the gain on one of the amps to blend the output of the mids/high and the lows, not increase them. that being said, if you feel that you are not getting enough volume with these settings, you may want to set the gains with the hu volume at a lower level. its common to have some gain overlap to account for differences in media recording levels.
 
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