CoronaOperator wrote:Your HU has x-overs for your front/rear speakers, and for the non-fader out. It also has a parametric eq. You should check out your manual to learn how to set these.
http://www.eclipse-web.com/us/manuals/m ... 30360).pdf
Start by making sure your HU x-overs are set properly. make sure the X-over NF is set to
upper - on, lower - pass and pick an appropriate frequency. Around 80-100hz should be fine. You can then set your x-over on your amp to the same (low pass) and same frequency. This should give you a 24db/octave slope, much higher slope than just using one x-over at 12 db/octave. That should eleminate the highs comming out of the mouth of the sub you mentioned. While your at it, set your x-over FR to
upper - pass, lower - on at the same freqency you set for your non-fader out. That should clean things up tremendously and give you MUCH more clean volume on your speakers. For now, make sure your parametric eq is defeated and all tone controls are flat. You can play with these later to take out that peak I mentioned earlier. Don't be afraid to turn up your gain on your sub amp as far as you need too as long as the clip lights don't come on for more than a breif moment on the peaks. A slight touch of red barely noticable won't hurt anything, just stay under 33 volts. If you need too, your HU non-fader out has a level adjustment you can increase to give you a stronger signal.
I wouldn't worry too much about the speakers in the rear deck, free passive radiators
What i would do however is remove the factory sound deadener between the rear seats and the trunk as this can and is designed to block low frequency pass though. The foam on your seat backs is invisible to freqencies below 80hz give or take.
Im still going to mention leaks again. Check around the driver, the entire driver chamber (no such thing as too much PL), as far as you can reach in the mouth, and ESPECIALLY the access panels!
As far as positioning your sub, make sure you have a good 6 inches clearance in front of the mouth and that the mouth is as close to a rear corner as possible. Sounds counter-intuative but having the mouth 6" away from and pointing towards the tail lights is louder than the mouth right up against the seat backs due to cancellations.
Thats all I can think of right now. Let us know your progress.
Wow, thank you VERY much for all of your suggestions! I'm a little bit familiar with how to set up car audio but not too knowledgeable. I did in fact look up how to adjust settings in the manual the other day, but I still don't understand a few things...
When I go to the X-Over FR / NF screens, all I can seem to do it set them at either PASS or ON, I'm not sure what you mean when you say to set UPPER to ON and LOWER to PASS, etc. Also, you and the manual say I can change the frequency of NF and FR, I can't find a way how
My amp is the Alpine MRP M500, btw. I forgot to mention that in the list.
I actually thought about the sound deadening between the back seat and trunk, the only thing there is a 3/16" thick piece of plastic with some cloth on the trunk side, is that the sound deadening material they installed? I wasn't sure with it being so thin that it would be much of an impact, I'll find a way to remove it in the mean time. Right now, the sub is in the back most part of the trunk with the mouth facing the driver side corner.
Now, for my biggest eye opener...
I decided to bring the AT inside and swap it with my TT in the living room so I can run a 30hz tone to check for leaks. First thing I noticed was that anything above a volt or two, the cab started to sound echoey or just plain crappy, not very clean. I found 2 tiny leaks on the panel opposite the mouth and if I stick my arm in the mouth, I think I can feel leaks, could also just be the air rushing by from the woofer, with all that PL in there it's hard to picture leaks anyway. So I decided to crank it up a few volts, I made it to about 15-16 volts and it just sounded like garbage (this is all at 30hz). I guess I could describe it as VERY distorted bass or gongy (not a real word but hopefully you'll get the idea). Not very happy, so what did I do next? I put the AT on top of the TT so I can swap back and forth and compare spl and sound quality at diff frequencies... HOLY Mother of GOD!! What a difference between them! I mean, I know there is a major size difference between the two but I had no idea that the sound difference would be so dynamic. Maybe my AT is just porly built or it's just that dramatic. The one fact I can give you is that at about 5.5 volts and 30hz, the AT hit 102 db at the mouth while the TT hit 116 db at the mouth. At 2.5 volts and 40hz, just about the same spl (103 and 117), does this data sound right? What a huge difference! And not to mention, so much cleaner coming out of the TT, almost no gongyness (
) or distortion. What's your take on that?
Anyway, I'm done fiddling with this thing tonight, still in shock... I never realized how loud and clean my TT was until I did a side by side, lol.
Last minute note for Bill, for the TT at it's normal width, what kind of voltage can it be expected to handle? At 30hz and 10 volts it was awesome, a bit scared to turn it up more actually, haha!
