Shaker 500: How high do you play?

HypromanGT · 11-07-2009, 01:19 PM

Hi guys,

I've been trying to find the point in my Shaker 500 where the sound starts to distort, but I'm having trouble getting there. To be honest, I'm kind of scared of blowing stuff up1

I have the bass, treble, balance and fade set to 0 (middle). I did replace my front speakers with infinity 6x8s; the 8" door subs and rear speakers are stock. I have a amp/sub setup in the trunk, but for these tests have completely turned them off.

Anyway, I can get the volume meter to move passed all 6 CD changer icons, and one full "bar" passed that before I chicken out. At this point it's definitely loud, but I don't necessarily hear any distortion.

The end result is that I am also trying to adjust the gain on the amp/sub setup, but I wanted to first figure out a reference point for the head unit.

So I am asking everyone with a shaker 500: How high do you play??

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fordforlife0225 · 11-07-2009, 01:33 PM

i have the mach 460 system and i know that depending on the bass, treb. i can get it up almost to the top. if you are chickening out a full bar over the cd indicator then it is prob loud enough for you, why would you want to go higher especially if you have seperate subs

HypromanGT · 11-08-2009, 03:08 PM

Good question. There are two reasons: 1. Curiosity, and 2. I've been reading about line level/gain setting and it seems the first thing to do is to find out at what level the head unit can play at before distortion/clipping occurs. Then once that point is found, I would move on to adjusting the amp/sub gain while playing the head unit at that level (or just below that).

I guess it makes sense that the level I am looking for is the highest volume without distortion OR the highest volume I can stand, since calibrating the equipment at a setting outside of my normal volume is probably a stupid to do.

My main concern is that I am not recognizing the distortion, and am over-driving my equipment. I know someone is bound to tell me to use an oscilloscope, but I'm not THAT serious about this, and there's no way I am going to invest in one of those at the moment.