To get the full performance of your car stereo, you have to ensure that its stereo settings are set correctly. This is no matter how much the system had cost you and how much dampening materials you have used. Purchasing of a quality car amplifier like BOSS Audio Systems R1100M will save you the hunt of quality and powerful audio from your car speakers.
A car stereo works by processing the music and pushing it into the car amp to the connected speakers. Purchasing of powerful speakers like JBL GTO629 PREMIUM 6.5 and quality tweeters like Rockford Fosgate Prime R1T-S will help produce quality audio output.
On the other hand, a car amp has various settings like a crossover to ensure that the correct frequencies are going to your speakers.
Therefore, you don’t want to have sub-bass frequencies affecting your mids and high speakers.
However, tuning your car amplifiers could be hard for a newbie. Fine-tuning is not easy and requires a lot of experience and professional assistance.
Here, we will analyze the best ways of setting a car for mid and highs to achieve the best possible sound for your car’s stereo.
Before that, we will educate you on the most common amplification terms to make your read and comprehension simpler.
- Gain-this is the component that adjusts amplifier sensitivity. It determines the limits where distortion comes in and tells you how much power your speakers can handle.
- High pass and Low pass filters– these are built-in frequency settings. when turned on, you should set the highest or lowest frequency range that goes through your output jacks.
Lowering the Gain from the highest level that meets distortion, reduces distractions bringing you the maximum level of power with sound clarity. For tweeters or small speakers, you will be required to use the High Pass Filter and subsequently power on HPF on related output channels.
For medium-sized speakers, you are required to use the “full” filter settings, which enable the full range of frequencies that is low, mid, and high can be played. Therefore I would recommend buying of a powerful speaker like
Frequency– this is the speaker’s musical ‘pitch.’ They can be easily adjusted by using the frequency label on the speaker’s casing. You might also find other frequency settings from the labels at each of your speaker’s rear. It is important and essential to use the specified frequency numbers to adjust the amplifier correctly.
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How do you tune a car amp for mids and highs?
Turning the gain control
Gain control is placed on the car’s amp to match it with the RCA voltage running through the cables from the stereo. Therefore, most people mistake this for a volume control knob.
If it is the set up to highs, your mid and highs will sound deformed and clip at high volume levels.
However, you might not have all the right and best tools like an oscilloscope at home, so we recommend using your sense and ears.
- Play music, any song through your car stereo.
- At the back of your car, turn down the Gain on the amp but not entirely, just a bit more than halfway down.
- Turn the volume to the almost highest level on the stereo and back it down until you hear any distortion from the front and back speakers.
- Go back to the amplifier and slowly increase the Gain by using a flat head screwdriver. Stop increasing the Gain immediately when you hear any distortion coming into place.
Turning on the High Pass Filter
Turning on the High Pass Filter causes the bass frequencies to be blocked out from the door speakers. This is important. After all, their design does not allow them to reproduce low deep bass that a sub-woofer is made capable of playing because they have a larger cone area.
On most amplifiers, it is adjustable and gives you the option to switch to the frequencies you want to start blocking the lower sound spectrum.
This is done by:
- Turning the switch that can flick into the ‘High Pass Filter’ setting on the amplifier. This will activate the filter.
- It usually is adjustable right from 80 Hz to 200 Hz in most instances. The recommended setting for enhancing the high pass filter is around 80 Hz. Simply because anything below 80 Hz is usually meant for the sub-woofers to handle.
You should then set the low pass filter on the bass amp to 80Hz and below to enable it to play bass and the higher frequencies above that the mids and highs take over and come into place.
Setting it up in that way will make sure that your car stereo plays audio right through the frequency range and does not create a gap between canceling out some sound.
In addition, there are several factors you should remember when tuning your car amplifier.
Factors to consider when tuning your car amplifier
- Setting Gain correctly– Turning the wrong level on a gain setting can cause your entire car audio experience to be unnecessarily noisy. Therefore make sure you turn the Gain setting correctly so that the speakers can perform correctly too.
- Type of Amplifier– When adjusting your amplifier, you should consider the type of amplifier to help you maximize the output you have to purchase the best quality and read its manual.
- Power of the speakers- Having powerful speakers is an added advantage while tuning an amplifier. This increases the power output from your amplifier and therefore allows you to enjoy music.
- Connectivity cables– Using the best cables in the market . Having used and tested BOSS Audio Systems R1100MK Car Amplifier and 8 Gauge Wiring Kit have speaker wires, power cables, ground cable etc. I recommend it for a long term solution to your amplifier connectivity solution
Conclusion
All the mentioned methods will give you a good sound without needing any professional or technical tool. So, take your time and tune it all for your ears, and you will never be wrong.
However, technical tools are also crucial in their way because they enable you to track the distortion without going back and forth so much. Some of these tools use phone apps with a microphone connected to the phone to allow you to test each amplifier component separately.
In conclusion, both the type of head unit and the type of amplifier you use to make tuning different every time. Some gain components need should tuned too high, while some don’t need that much power.
It is also important to remember that more Gain doesn’t mean more volume.
