Excellent sound from speakers, very quiet sub

xraycat · 07-10-2007, 12:26 PM

Hi,

I have a 5 channel (4+1) amp that I have connected to my 4 factory speakers as well as a factory 8" subwoofer. I did not connect the sub until after having the whole system installed and prior to having it hooked up I had excellent (loud and crisp) sound coming from the stock speakers.

The amp is an Ultimate T2-5450 with a 4-channel input (2-channel selectable) and a 4-channel + sub output. The 4-channel output has a selectable and adjustable HP filter while the sub output has a adjustable LP filter with bass boost.

As I said, the 4 speakers performed excellent while the sub performance was terrible. I could barely hear any sound coming from the sub but I do know that it was working correctly as the filter adjustment would change the frequency range being outputted. I tried with bass-boost on and off but it didn't seem to alter the sound at all. This may have been because the output was very low anyway.

I did not have a very suitable connection to the terminals of the sub; i pretty much just wrapped the wire around rather than attaching the correct terminal spade connectors and it wasn't completely secured in it's box; it only had a couple screws holding it in. I am hoping that these are the reasons I wasn't getting very good performance from the sub. Could this be it?

The reason I only tested it as described was because I was running out of time getting the system running and ended up removing the car PC and disconnecting the fuse to the amp and re installing the factory cd player as the car PC needs more work.

iamgnat · 07-10-2007, 02:29 PM

I would fix up those connections. They *could* damage your sub and will probably give a poorer quality than a good strong connection.

Do you have a separate gain setting for the sub output from the rest of the channels? Is it turned way down? Do you have some filter enabled (on the Amp or from your HU) that is filtering out the bass?

-dave

BenOBS · 07-10-2007, 03:40 PM

How many ohms is the sub?

xraycat · 07-10-2007, 04:38 PM

The amp does have a seperate gain for the sub channel but at it's highest level it is still very quiet. I believe because it is a dedicated subwoofer channel that it already is low-pass filtered without a switch to enable or disable it. It does however have a frequency adjustment knob which also seems to work but doesn't do anything for the volume level.

I have searched and searched (I am out of town for a few days or I'd just go measure) and can't find any solid information. I had just assumed it was a 4 ohm impedence but I read one posting where someone said it could possibly be 8 ohms.

I guess I will just have to get back into the car to figure it all out. Might as well buy some good spade connectors and get my multimeter out to find out for myself. Hopefully a more solid connection on the sub will fix my problem.

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