Luke

How do you guys set up your gains???

Ive got Gain on crossovers and amps. What % of head unit power do you use??? and also on Amp????

I know that most will say Listen but is there a general guide??

chiark

Eek, you're active then?

What sort of headroom does your amp have? If it allows large voltage inputs, you may find it worthwhile winding up the gains on your x-over until clipping, then winding back. Doing this makes it *verrrrrry* difficult to balance your signal as you will invariably find that the pots on your x-over are slightly out of kilter with each other. For this reason, my x-over gains were set at neutral when I was using it...

Really, you should start at the head unit, find out the highest volume without clipping, and work down the chain checking for clipping, but that's damn difficult.

This could take a long time. Good luck!

Nick.

nom

Hideous stuff working with actives. Never could be bothered myself - the sound ends up 'seperating' too much anyway for my tastes. Always seems to disconnect the vocals from the rest of the music. Anyway, getting back to the question...
I thought that a good guide was:
1. Set the crossovers up at the 'correct' point as far as the manufacturers are concerned. Turn amp gains to minimum.
2. Go to about 80% of the maximum volume on the head-unit, then turn the mid/woofer on the amp up until clipping occurs, then back off a bit.
3. Turn up the tweeter until the same amount (or more likely until it sounds right).
4. Fiddle endlessly with crossover frequencies until tweeter burns out or the whole thing sound terrible, and then start again
Or just go passive which is much easier.