muddy bass

[Puff the dragon 10+ year member]

First off I would like to thank you for taking a minute to read my serious inquirey. Please do not blow me off. You know how frustrating it can be to try to get help with a problem. I have built what I feel to be a competition system consisting of 6-MTX 8000 series 12" subs, 3-8100D 1500 watt amps, Focal highs and mids powered by a MTX-4244 400 watt amp, and a Pioneer 9300 deck with a 12 disk changer. I originaly had only the two class D amps and my system sounded good, then I decided to run a third and all I get is blaa muddy bass when I crank it up. I can see that the subs are reaching full excrusion at the very low bass hits but they are barely recieving RMS power. I can only describe the soung quality as a $200 system cranked up all the way. What negative effect would the third amp have? It is actualy softer now! I have 1 gauge whire ran and 2 extra batteries so I don't think it is the power supply. But if I turn the gain down then there is no bass at all, but if I even turn it up a little bit it goes all crazy on me. I have heard systems with very similar set ups and I am extremely disapointed in mine. The pros who installed mine are very reputatable around my area and they couldnt seem to be any help. I thought my built in EQ might need adjusted but my deck comes with a microphone that automaticaly adjusts it during a test you can run. If you need any additional info let me know.

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[01price 10+ year member]

So, it sounds good at low volume still? Do you have any caps? A distrubution block? Are you running in series or paralell?

 

[01price 10+ year member]

Oh, just thought of something, check the ground and how many ampers is your alternator putting out? With that much power, you need about 2 batteries, a 5 farad capacitor, and an alternator with the output of about 200-220 ampres.

 

[natem33 10+ year member]

01 Price is right about the power issue. The first thing that came to my mind was to switch the polarity on one of the speakers. If the they are out of phase, then result would be a muddy bass sound.

 

[Puff the dragon 10+ year member]

My volt meter isn't really going any were. It is staying at 14.4 volts. So I know that isn't the problem. I talked to a guy today that said the subs may be bottoming out because of the box being the wrong size. They might not have enough space at the low notes. Is this possible? And a guy from http://www.audiocontrol.com wrote: It sound like you have a phase problem. Even though you might have all the positive and negative speaker wires hooked up correct. It sounds to me that you have a phase cancellation problem. this happens when speakers cancel each other out. You need to level match

the amps to have the same amount of output. just because the gain control look to be the same doesn't mean the output of the amp is the same. Do you own a volt meter? If you do. Play a 60hz tone at low volume level with the volt meter set on volts AC measure the speaker output voltage.and adjust the input gain control on each amp separately til the output is the same.

Good luck,

Todd Huffman

I guess I'll try that before I go ripping apart a $1500 box!

thanks every one.

help is still welcome

 

[Puff the dragon 10+ year member]

All is fixed.

 

[01price 10+ year member]

Was it phaseing problems?