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Setting the Gains in Your System
Proper gain setting is one of the most important factors in setting up
a stereo system; at the same time, it is the setting most often done wrong.
Turning up the gain of an amp is the very last thing you should ever do to a
system.
An amplifier is a step up transformer, Period. Anything you put in
gets boosted by a fixed factor. Music, hiss, or any other noise. It doesn’t
matter.
A large number of noise problems are simply a matter of improper
gain settings. The goal of gain setting is to achieve the maximum amount of
musical output from the amp while getting the least amount of hiss or noise
from the system; you are attempting to find the “maximum unclipped” signal
level.
The basic gain setting is very simple and requires no special tools.
Advanced settings can be made with a Digital Volt Meter, but these should
be left to an experienced installer. Whether you have a system with a deck
and an amp, or a system with a deck, line driver, eq, crossover, and amp,
the procedure always is the same.
Start at the deck! Not at the amp!
First, hook up the system with all gain controls at minimum (turn all
gain pots fully counter-clockwise with a small screwdriver). Then turn on the
head unit and turn up the volume. If you get clean sound, and more volume
than you want, you don’t need to make any adjustments. However, if you
turn up the volume and begin to hear distorted sound before it becomes
loud, you are clipping (distorting) the deck (probably a little over ¾ volume).
If this happens, turn the deck down just enough to hear clean sound again.
This is your “Maximum Unclipped” volume. Now move to the next
component in your system. With the deck playing at “maximum unclipped”
volume, adjust the gain of the next component in the system to its
“maximum unclipped” volume. If you adjust your gains this way, always
starting at the head unit and working down the line to the amp, you will get
the most performance out of your amp with the least unwanted noise.
You do not “feel” high volume sound in your ears, it’s distortion that
makes a system “uncomfortable”. Proper gain setting will allow the
maximum volume with the minimum distortion so you can turn the system
up till the windows rattle, and it will never sound “too loud”.
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