b0r

if your deck goes up to 47 out of 50 (for example) and you think its good to have your reference point "25".....then sure, you can do that. The thing is, now you have go turn the gains on the amps up higher to make up for that loss of voltage. More gain = more noise. I would rather feed my amps as much clean voltage as possible, and have my gains barely notched up a hair, then have them up 3/4 of the way (or more) to make up for it. also, you setting someones system at a reference of 25, out of 50, will work fine (a bit noisy possibly), but what is going to happen as soon as your boy decides a song isn't bumpin hard enough for him one night while riding with the lady's? he is gonna turn that shit up to 35. Well instead of 35 being well within the limits, now it is full blown distortion. Not good. Make sense yet? Steve, I set his amp with the DD-1 with the volume at 25 on track 7, which is the -15db 40hz tone. After about 30 minutes of listening at 23, the amp was so hot I could've cooked an egg on it, but it never went into protect or anything. His ground is super solid, and zero gauge throughout the car even though it's only a 1300 watt amp. I'm pretty sure the gain up 3/4 or more was causing this, plus whatever song we were playing. The thing was SLAMMING and was crystal clear, louder than I had ever heard it, but the amp was taking a beating. go back and re-do it. don't use that -15 track. Let him get that same BASS he is looking for with the volume knob and not the gain screw. Roger that. Would you recommend the -10DB track for the sub? Thanks again man. Hope some people learned a little from this as it could've cost us a sub and/or an amp. Always follow the instructions and don't go rogue like I did! -10 db should be good on your woofer IF the amps output matches the subs power handling capability. Not just the rating on the side of the box. That PLUS your tuning, box size, port size, etc. For the most part though if your sub and amp match in rated power capability, -10 is ok. A sub can handle more distortion then a tweeter can so if it ends up seeing some, due to a bad song or some other reason, it should be ok. But that is where being a responsible owner comes into play. If they are getting hot and smelly, back off some. I'll have an Fi BL 15 and a Rockford T1000-1bdCP (I'd be lying if I said I didn't buy the amp because you rock them in a 40,000 watt system). The birth sheet on the T1000 is 1604 watts at 1 ohm. The sub can handle 1500W RMS, but I've seen videos of people raping the BL with 2k all day, so I'm sure my measly 1600 watts won't be a problem. Besides, I'm not sure I'll be at max volume or that my electrical can 100% maintain 1600 so I'll be feeding it a solid 1300 or so of clean power.

Definitely! My new sub/amp/box cost me $1,100, and while that's a far cry from the tens of thousands in Steve's truck, I appreciate my setup as much as he appreciates his own, and I worked hard for my $2k total setup. Money isn't a problem, I'd just rather buy my kids something instead of a new Sub because I didn't understand something. The information I gained in this thread alone will stick with me forever and we all need to pay it forward to those that don't understand because I am CERTAIN I am not the only one that has attempted this.

if your deck goes up to 47 out of 50 (for example) and you think its good to have your reference point "25".....then sure, you can do that. The thing is, now you have go turn the gains on the amps up higher to make up for that loss of voltage. More gain = more noise. I would rather feed my amps as much clean voltage as possible, and have my gains barely notched up a hair, then have them up 3/4 of the way (or more) to make up for it. also, you setting someones system at a reference of 25, out of 50, will work fine (a bit noisy possibly), but what is going to happen as soon as your boy decides a song isn't bumpin hard enough for him one night while riding with the lady's? he is gonna turn that shit up to 35. Well instead of 35 being well within the limits, now it is full blown distortion. Not good. Make sense yet? Steve, I set his amp with the DD-1 with the volume at 25 on track 7, which is the -15db 40hz tone. After about 30 minutes of listening at 23, the amp was so hot I could've cooked an egg on it, but it never went into protect or anything. His ground is super solid, and zero gauge throughout the car even though it's only a 1300 watt amp. I'm pretty sure the gain up 3/4 or more was causing this, plus whatever song we were playing. The thing was SLAMMING and was crystal clear, louder than I had ever heard it, but the amp was taking a beating. go back and re-do it. don't use that -15 track. Let him get that same BASS he is looking for with the volume knob and not the gain screw. Roger that. Would you recommend the -10DB track for the sub? Thanks again man. Hope some people learned a little from this as it could've cost us a sub and/or an amp. Always follow the instructions and don't go rogue like I did!

if your deck goes up to 47 out of 50 (for example) and you think its good to have your reference point "25".....then sure, you can do that. The thing is, now you have go turn the gains on the amps up higher to make up for that loss of voltage. More gain = more noise. I would rather feed my amps as much clean voltage as possible, and have my gains barely notched up a hair, then have them up 3/4 of the way (or more) to make up for it. also, you setting someones system at a reference of 25, out of 50, will work fine (a bit noisy possibly), but what is going to happen as soon as your boy decides a song isn't bumpin hard enough for him one night while riding with the lady's? he is gonna turn that shit up to 35. Well instead of 35 being well within the limits, now it is full blown distortion. Not good. Make sense yet? Steve, I set his amp with the DD-1 with the volume at 25 on track 7, which is the -15db 40hz tone. After about 30 minutes of listening at 23, the amp was so hot I could've cooked an egg on it, but it never went into protect or anything. His ground is super solid, and zero gauge throughout the car even though it's only a 1300 watt amp. I'm pretty sure the gain up 3/4 or more was causing this, plus whatever song we were playing. The thing was SLAMMING and was crystal clear, louder than I had ever heard it, but the amp was taking a beating.

Shit, I didn't realize the BOSS replied to this thread. User error man! I've always said nothing but good things about the DD-1 and have used it CORRECTLY on 3 vehicles, but this one was specific and wanted it louder so I altered the steps thinking I was correct in doing so. As to the clipped tracks, I ONLY use 320kbps tracks in my car, so unless the music comes from the producer being dirty then it shouldn't be in my car.

Yeah, I'm gonna go track 5 on the sub and turn down the mids/highs at the headunit so he can get to a louder subwoofer volume. He didn't like my sub in my car because my LISTENING volume was 32, but 32 was no where near the DD-1 setting of 47, so the sub was getting no where near all of it's power because I was comfortable where I was at with the bass and the mids/highs.

Right, and I appreciate the honesty, no feelings hurt here. I have to learn somewhere. I used track 7, which is -15db, because the manual said (and not verbatim, going from memory) Use track 3 for a sound quality setup, 5 for a in the middle and 7 for a louder setup". Naturally my buddy said "louder please".

Correct, and I knew that going into this. I just figured if we "made our own" max for the HU that it would pick up distortion at the new level. User error and not knowing how the voltage worked.

And the grounds are OKAY i'm pretty sure. I think the amp is roasting because we were clipping the dog shit out of it. User error, but a lack of understanding how it works more importantly. There was no distortion, though. The sub hit deep and hard with no issue.

Ok, let me just put this out there because my understanding of the DD-1 is clearly not on par with the communities. When I set my system, I followed EVERY direction as closely as possible and ran for 2 years without a hiccup or any heat. My buddy wanted more bass than I had, because my listening volume was 32/50, but I set it at 47/50, so technically, I could go to 47, but my ears would be pierced by my speakers. In his truck, the sub hits so much harder and is louder when we set the gain by ear. When I grabbed the DD-1, I said to myself: "This device detects distortion. Excellent. We can't listen to this at 47/50, so we will leave the volume on 25, and this should tell us if it's clipping." My assumption was: If we leave this at 25, when we listen to music, 25 IS THE MAX, and the sub will be playing at it's maximum potential. Is this not the case? Let's say his max without distortion is 47/50. Wouldn't we have to play it at 45 to get close to the MAX? My idea was LOGICAL to me, but apparently I'm missing a critical point. Essentially, we can never hear the sub at it's full potential unless........? we turn the door speakers down at the HU?

And just to clarify, this isn't a complaint post, it worked for me perfectly. It's a "why is this happening" post. I understand the manual completely, but said to myself "We CAN'T listen to this system at 47/50....our ears would explode, so we will set it to where we will be listening to it"

Yep, just read another post about it. My question is, why does the HU have to be at max volume if that's not where it's going to be played?

So, I bought my DD-1 pretty much when it released and have nothing but good things to say about it. I upgraded to a Fi BL 15 and Rockford Fosgate T1000-1bdCP, so I gave my old system: RE SXX 12 and JBL BP1200.1 to my friend. His max/everything else is different when compared to my headunit, so I grabbed the trusty DD-1 and headed over to his house. His HU goes up to 50, but the comfortable listening volume is 25, so we didn't have to test for clipping from the deck, we just went straight to the woofer. I disconnected the sub, put the red lead in the + channel on the amp, grounded the DD-1 to the amp's ground with track 7 playing at 25, since this is where we want our "balls to the wall max", but most listening will occur at 20-22. The 40hz light comes on on the DD-1 at about half way on the gain, but continuing to crank it all the way didn't give me any distortion. what? His JVC headunit only puts out like 2.5V or something, but how is there NO distortion with the gain cranked? That doesn't seem possible. Well, doesn't seem probable, anyway. I decided to crank the gain down a 1/4 turn and head out on a drive slamming at 22-23 and do a heat check when the drive was over. The sub was HOT....not "pull your hand away now" hot, but it was definitely 105-110 degrees F or so. (No real idea on the temp, I just know it was hotter than 98.6.) The amp on the other hand was untouchable after about 2-3 seconds. It was scalding for the most part. So how can we have NO distortion with MAX gain, but the sub and amp are hot enough combined to cook an egg? (and this is with me turning the gain down a 1/4 in disbelief that it didn't distort at all) When I had the sub and amp, I set the gain with my volume at 47/50, even though my listening volume was 32. I got enough bass to keep me happy and I don't recall my amp ever being over my body temp and my sub was certainly never "hot" to the touch. This can't be normal. Any reason for the lack of a distortion light? It's not broken, as it kinda lit up and went off like it does, but never got solid. When we turned the head unit up to 35 instead of 25, it came on at about half way, but that's not where we want to be.

You gotta be specific on the interwebz LOL. I know my bad long day! lol.

God damnit lol...Looks like I can't get a point across without people jumping on it. In hindsight, it looks bad. What I meant was, the DD-1 just made me realize I want more out of my mids and I'm going to replace them and get a new amp....