I have a 1995 Monte Carlo LS with a pretty decent audio system in it. I want to get the most out of my system but I don't know what the best settings are for my amp. I have a Sony Xplod 1200 watt amp hooked up a pair of 12 inch MTX Terminator subs rated at 1200 watts, 400 RMS. Everything is run off a Sony CDX-GT510 with 2 volt preamp voltage. The settings that I'm talking about are: level (gain) / low boost (40Hz) / filter / LPF. So should the gain be half way since the amp goes from 6v to 0.2v with 2v being the half way point?. I'm not using the low boost because the head unit has low, mid, high, and a separate sub settings on the e.q. Any other help would be greatly appreciated, thanks!

 

68-85 would probably be around where I'd cross that kind of sub over at in fact idk if 85 is very good, might want to do even lower because the quality of the bass might leave a bad taste in your mouth. gains should be around 60% if gear is properly selected, i don't know if it was from the info you gave but I'd start from the bottom work my way up but dont go beyond that. you want head room in your power, gain's aren't a max power output but a center line, you need head room above your power otherwise your clip and you have distortion. tweaking your gains isn't gonna make you any happier with your system.

if you'd like help selecting new gear I'd more than happy to point you in new directions if you're unhappy. but it's all in the tunning, what is making you unhappy in your system, if it feels low, pull it up in your EQ, if it feels over bearing, turn it down. i doubt you're decks EQ has enough granularity to properly do this type of tuning, you may get some decent sound but to truley tweak your outputs you need to add an EQ, this can be done with a cheap 10 band EQ for 25% or a large one for 75$.

heres a large 20 band EQ (one i'm very unfamiliar with)
Technical Pro EQ-B7151 20-Band Professional Equalizer


heres something that might be more in you're ballpark

Alphasonik PEQ70E 7-Band In-Dash Parametric Equalizer 1/2 DIN

if you want something a little bit more digital :

Pioneer DEQ-7600 Audio 15 Band Digital Graphic EQ New! | eBay

do your leg work, research, and you'll be happy, get lazy you'll never be happy.

 

buy my head unit i have for sale :p

 

Make sure that your charging system is up to par for everything also. I changed my battery out to a competition battery specifically built for audio systems and it made a huge difference.

 

There is nobody on the face of the earth who could tell you where your gain should be set, if anybody thinks they can and tells you where it should be set then you should never take audio advice from said person. Gain isn't set based on how much power your amp puts out, it's set based on the strength of the signal from the source to the amp and how efficiently your amp converts the signal. I used to always set my gains by ear and never had a problem but I've recently learned of a new way to do it that takes the guess work out of it, I highly suggest you set yours this way. The direction are on the bottom of the chart



It's not 100% spot on, but it's better than setting it by ear. No matter how you set your gain it's always gonna change a bit anyway depending on the source you're playing. This is what I mean, The test tone you use should be recorded at 0db, which is an indication of how much the volume has been boosted or cut from the original source recording. Not all mp3's are recorded at 0db, some are boosted a bit to say 3db, others are cut to say -3db. There's gonna be a huge difference in output with a -3db recording than a +3db recording, that will have an effect on whether or not your amp will clip. With the settings you end up with on your amp using the above posted method, you might not clip when playing songs at -3db or 0db, but play something at +3db and you might have some clipping. If you don't already know, clipping is what kills subs.

Keep the boost off, all it does is get your amp to the clipping threshold faster. As for xover point, that's 100% determined by not only how low your mids can play but also your personal preference. Some people, like me, really like 80-85Hz for my subs, other people prefer lower (like 60-65Hz) while others prefer it to be higher (100-120Hz). There is no magic setting that sounds good for all systems across the board, the performance of my mids/highs is likely alot stronger/better than yours so I can cross my subs lower since my mids can play so low.....If your mids stop playing at 100Hz, you don't want to set your subs xover to 50Hz cause you'll miss out on alot of bass in the 50-100Hz area. Just the same, if your mids can play down into the 80Hz range, you won't want to cross your subs at 100Hz cause then your mids and subs will have some overlap. For this setting I would put on some songs you're very familiar with and know what it's supposed to sound like and experiment with the different xover points until it sounds good to you. I'd imagine your deck only has 3-4 different xover points for the low pass so it shouldn't be a big deal at all. I'd start at 80Hz and go from there.