30 Bands at 1/3 Octave Spacing
As stated above in the Introduction, a 1/3 octave equalizer gives you all the
control necessary to adjust your sound system for a smooth response or to dial it in to your ears liking. The KQ30
gives you the ISO standard 30 bands at 1/3 octave spacing from 20 Hz to 20 KHz.
12 dB Boost or Cut
At each of the 30 1/3 octave spaced controls you can boost or cut the intensity of the sig-
nal by up to 12 decibels (dB). Plenty of control and then some since most systems typically need no more than 6
dB of boost or cut to get things dialed in.
High Voltage Pre-amp
There are quite a variety of head units on the market today, not to mention if you are
using a line driver or pre-amplifier in your system. The KQ30 will work with an audio input signal as little as 500 mv
up to a mind numbing 9 Volts! Plenty of range to work with anything you can throw at it. At the same time it can
deliver a full 9 volts of audio output to send down the line to your crossovers or amplifiers.
Separate Left and Right Input Controls
For the best possible sound quality and least amount of noise you
want to get your KQ30 matched up to your head unit, the separate left and right input sensitivity controls let you
do just that. Being separate allows you to tweak input channel balancing as well.
Separate Left and Right Output Controls
To minimize noise in your system you want to pass as much
audio signal voltage as you can down the line to the next component. Too much and you will cause undesired dis-
tortion...not enough and your system will sound thin and not play to it’s full potential. The left and right output
controls allow you to find just the right amount of signal to accomplish this and do any channel balancing tasks
required at this stage.
Separate Left and Right Input Clipping LED’s
Clipping the input of your pre-amp components is not a
good thing when you want clean sound. The LED indicators are a great tool to help you in setting up the input gain
controls on your KQ30. These indicators will blink as you get within 3 dB of clipping the input section of your unit.
Separate Left and Right Output Clipping LED’s
Just as with the input, you do not want to clip the output
of your KQ30. The output LED indicators will blink as you get within 3 dB of driving the KQ30 into clipping to help
you with setting up your eq.
Mono / Stereo Selector
The KQ30 is a stereo equalizer and will do its magic on both the left and right channels
at the same time. For those ‘Livin’ Loud’ tweakers who want to have separate left and right controls, you can use
two units and equalize the channels independently. Just grab two units, flip the switches to Mono, and you are
ready to go!. In Mono mode the KQ30 will sum whatever is input to both the left and right channels into a mono
signal and then pass this signal to both the left and right outputs. See the diagrams further in this manual for
details.
EQ / Bypass Switch
Whether your tweaking your system by ear to get that sound you want or using a real time
analyzer for an ultra smooth response curve, you’ll find times when you want to compare what you had...to what
you got. This is what the EQ /Bypass switch does. When in bypass mode it sends the input signal directly to the
output jacks without any equalization. So with a simple press of the switch you can compare life before the
KQ30...and after!
Three Year Warranty
When you’re ‘Livin’ Loud’ you want the tunes to roll non-stop and we couldn’t agree
more. When you purchase your KQ30 from an authorized KICKER dealer we back it up with a full year
warranty...parts and labor. If you have an authorized KICKER dealer install it for you at the time of purchase we push
that warranty out to a full THREE years! We build our products to give you years of trouble free performance and
know that if it is installed right the first time you will get just that...so we back it up!
Features
KQ30 Equalizer Technical Manual
Version 1.0
January 1, 2002 Page 6
