There are three basic subwoofer enclosure alignments, sealed, vented, and bandpass. There are however, a number of variations of each of these styles. Most subwoofers are designed to function optimally in a specific type of box. Contrary to popular opinion, you don’t just select a subwoofer and then decide you want to put it in [...]
Check with manufacturer or dealer for appropriate box volume and design. Some subs can’t be used in certain types of boxes, and have very small tolerances for box volume errors. If a sub is installed in a box larger or smaller than what is supposed to, it will sound [...]
Equalizers/Crossovers
Equalizers give you the capability to fine tune your system. It is virtually impossible to get speakers to reproduce sound perfectly. In a multiple speaker system things are even more complex because the different drivers interact with each other. With an equalizer you can boost or cut certain frequency ranges to tailor the overall sound [...]
Head Units
Ideally, your head unit would be used to provide a signal to your amplifiers that is line level and you would not use its internal amplifiers (if any). They usually do not have the power and strength to drive speakers both loudly and cleanly. The line level signal is cleaner than the speaker level [...]
A trick that professional installers use to get more power out of amplifiers is to wire up speakers in different ways, playing with resistances to achieve a desired total impedance “seen” by the amplifier. Even though speakers are active loads (resistance changes with frequency), it is [...]
Check speaker polarity To make sure all your speakers are in phase, unhook the speaker you want to test at the amp (both wires preferably). Using a 1.5 volt battery (any size), touch the positive terminal of the battery to the positive wire [...]
