i just installed alpine 6.5" type-rs install front doors and rear deck. also used dynomat around the speakers. im using an alpine 9885 Headunit if your not trying to blow away the neighbors it sounds sound great at low to mildly loud DB ranges with the deck only. this week i decided to add a alpine 40rms x 4 channel amp and it now sounds perfect! highs are great and the bass with all type-r`s kicking sounds like i have a 10 in the truck...

 

haha! yeah, I hear ya on the subs....I used to have 2 JL 12's in a Honda del Sol....good luck not drowning out EVERYTHING in that car...haha! I do like the idea of a built in sub volume control, but have found that with my external EQ and the Alpine Imprint software, I haven't touched gain or anything else in months since my last imprint was done, so I probably wouldn't utilize it anyway if I had it. In reality, yes you are adjusting bass for what you like (which I am not against btw), but the bass will not stay true to the original recording that way. If properly tuned, a system should have bass transparency (bass blends seamlessly with every other speaker and you can't point to any location in the car, or home as the case may be, where bass is coming from) and will hit damn hard on those recordings that were recorded with heavy low end bass, but be nearly non-existent with those recordings that little bass. This is how mine is setup...took some getting used to, but I realize that I'm hearing the recording as it was intended. Double crossovers can create sonic issues....if you have both a sub crossover on the HU and a low pass cross on the amp, just use the amp and try to turn off all sub crossovers in the HU. From there, I would cross your coax's somewhere between 80-100hz and the sub at about 100hz if they are decent subs. Just some thoughts to get the most our of your setup (again, don't dump the sub volume control if you like utilizing it)

 

I started out with Alpine coaxials front and rear running off an Alpine HU with a separate sub and sub amp. It was OK. I upgraded to a 5 channel kicker amp with better Alpine coaxials in the rear and Alpine components in the front (disconnecting the crappy stock tweeters). The sound is night/day better. Components, even mid-grade ones, are well worth the money and effort to install (I do my own installs).

 

yeah...lol...that's why i like the sub volume knob...cuz 2 12's can easily over power the rest of the speakers...i pretty much have it set...but if a cd has too much low end or not enough i can adjust it to fit how i want it to sound...some original recordings suck to me...lol...some you can't hardly hear the bass others it's too much....i listen to mostly rock music...yeah i fooled around with different crossover points on the coaxials and the subs....i didn't like how it sounded when i cut the lows out of the coaxials...it just turned them into tweeters almost...lol...it sounds best to me to let them have all the signal...which really you only hear the mid bass not really the lower end ....and then i add the subs until i get the right amount of low end to complete the sound depending on the music that is playing

 

oops double post...lol

 

Yeah, I don't know what producers were thinking on some masters.....they use studio monitors to dial them in and some stuff just sounds horrid! haha! I too listen to a lot of rock (I'm a hardcore metalhead at heart) and definetely understand your frustration....production is so different from band to band, not to mention album to album within a discography. Due to this, I do tend to boost my mid range just a tad to give a bit more "oomph" when listening to metal. When changing the crossover point on the coax's, you're not taking out the bass, you are just adjusting where bass kicks in. if your speakers can't accurrately reproduce 40hz bass, but you are sending that, it will affect the rest of the sound spectrum by muddying up the sound. By adjusting the coax's to 80hz, you are then only sending bass down to the 80hz range where it gets cut off. You then set the subwoofer crossover point to 100hz which means the subs will get all bass up to 100hz. Therefore, it frees up your coax's to handle what they are best at....vocals and mids and leaves the heavy lifting to the subs. If it isn't enough bass, just bump up the bass a bit for the coax's. By crossing this way you also are not causing 5 seperate channels to play the same bass tone which can lead to bass cancellation and actually making bass worse (not quite as big an issue as a home theater setup, but still applicable)

 

yeah i know what you are saying but i tried it and it sounded bad...i don't have an amp on my coaxials...just run by the hu.....when i used the hu crossover on the coaxials it took out alot of the mid bass so they sounded weak even when i turned the subs up it didn't sound as good as leaving the coaxials full range...the sound below 80hz doesn't come out of the coaxials very loud anyways so it doesn't really interfere with what's coming out of the subs..i found that 80-85hz is good point for the subs...if i raise it much higher it sounds more rumbly...less tight...which i don't like too much...that's why i set the sub crossover on like 90 and if i use the hu crossover it can cut it down to 80 so nothing above 80 comes out the subs...but i can switch the hu crossover to 125hz and then the sub crossover allows 90hz and below to come out....lol....hope that makes sense...i have found leaving the hu crossover on 80hz makes for the best sound outta my subs...tight low bass sound...not too much rumbling...on a side note i got my home theatre sub crossover on 100hz and it sounds good

 

Well, hey if it works and sound best that way, go with it...haha! I know I would. Yeah, I think I have my home sub crossed at 100hz and my mains crossed at 80hz (recommended settings for THX and Dolby reference I believe) and it is nice and seemless across the soundstage.