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Hello everyone I'm pretty new to car audio so I would like to learn. Thank you very much for your time reading this and helping if you can I have read a lot of forums about setting the gains and a lot of them says to tune by ear , but I don't feel like I can tell the difference and I'm afraid to not damage the speakers if set incorrectly. I don't have an o-scope , only a DMM . I know how to set the gains with a DMM but I've heard this is not the right way... So I have a 5 channel amp , 1 ch to each door , and a sub. The speakers are 100w rms, 4 ohm each , and the amp can put out the same power for each ch. The sub is 500w rms 4ohm , again the amp can do the same. So I have set the gains using a DMM , HU on 75% then adjust the gain until I've reached the correct voltage (20v for each ch and 44v for sub ) . I set them with test tones of 0db... now i've read that this is not right...( AGAIN ) , and should use a -5db or even -10db test tone. I've been running this setup for 1 year , and I feel like it's not powerful enough , i think even my small pc subwoofer of 60watts sounds louder . So I started raising question marks and found this forum , read some old threads , and found out I'm doing everything wrong.. Can someone please shed some light.. I appreciate it

So, I have a JVC KD-AHD69 head unit in my F-150 and was pleasantly surprised with the quality for what I payed but was kinda looking into trying another brand (Pioneer or Alpine) for my Jeep. Anyway the really cool thing about the JVC deck I have is that it has a Volume Adjust setting. The JVC has 50 volume levels so lets say it distorts at 42 for example. You then can go into the Volume Adjust and set it to -8 and then you can crank it all the way up to 50 and have no distortion. You could also increase the Volume Adjust if it is not already distorting at 50, which probably wont be the case. It's not a huge deal nor is it an advertised point just a nice bonus feature so you don't have to worry about going over a certain number. So I was wondering if anyone new if other decks had that feature??? Again I didn't really see it advertised anywhere on mine when I got it from Crutchfield and they give pretty much every spec and feature they find on a product so it will probably be one of those things you have to have the head unit to know... Thanks