Is my sub setup alright?

[swilley07]

Hey everyone, i've owned a few subwoofers and currently have a new setup that i'm pretty happy and confused about. I'm really trying to make my system sound more "crisp" and hit the lows harder (for a cheap sub at least).
Here is the subs box and amp setup that i paid 250$ used from craigslist; which i found to be a great deal. All my wiring gauge is correct i know for sure.

-Alpine CDA-105 headunit

- 2 12" kicker comp subs in ported kicker box at 2 ohm(kicker 10dc122)black and yellow pair:
Peak: 600 watts per system / 300 watts each sub
RMS: 300 watts per system / 150 watts each sub
Sensitivity: 100db
Frequency: 27-500 Hz
Ported box specs:
Width (inches) 32-7/16
Height (inches) 16
Depth (inches) 17-9/16

- Alpine (V-power) mrp-m500 mono power amplifier:
300 watts RMS x 1 at 4 ohms (500 watts RMS x 1 at 2 ohms)
variable low-pass filter (50-200 Hz, 24 dB/octave)
variable bass boost (0-12 dB at 50 Hz)
subsonic filter (15 Hz, 24 dB/octave)
speaker- and preamp-level inputs
fuse rating: 30A x 2

The amp is clearly bumpin both my subs no problem but i'm still confused on how to set my amp or if i should use another amp. Any ideas on settings of the amp? here's what i can choose from on the amp itself.
gain: (min - - normal .5v - max)
Bass Eq: 0db - 12db
lp filter: 500-200

Help me not look stupid!
Cheers and thank you all for reading!

 

[Grador]

This forum is primary for home audio, I'll throw you a bone but I'm not even positive the mods will leave this up.

First off, the sound is going to depend in large part upon the box used. I'm no expert on this and don't really know what exactly you're looking for sound wise so that's as in depth as i can get there.

So there are two ways to wire two subs to an amplifier, in series or parallel. In series means essentially that both subs are hooked up in line with each other inbetween the amp, while in parallel you have them both hooked up to the amp individually. You will have to hook them up in series (yielding a 4 ohm load to the amp) as, if you hook them up in parallel you will be giving the amp a 1 ohm load, which it will not deal with.

As for the gain setting, the quick and dirty way to think about it is as a volume setting. It adjusts how sensitive the amplifiers input is to the pre-amp output of your headunit. There are tutorials you can find about properly setting it, but mostly what you're looking for is that on the maximum volume setting on your headunit the output from the subwoofer should not be distorted. If it is, lower the gain on the amplifier. That statement only comes into play if you're looking for the most volume you can get, otherwise the gain is where you would set the subs so the level matched your main speakers.

As for the lp filter, that stands for low-pass. I assume you had a typo and it's 50-200. This filter adjusts what frequencies the amp gives to the subwoofer. If you wanted to do things properly, you would need to adjust this so that the subwoofer picks up where your fullrange speakers drop out. I get the impression that you're not necessarily into making this sound correct or right, if that's true just play with it and do what sounds right to you. A higher setting gives higher frequencies too the subwoofer, you're probably going to want this to be set as low as sounds right.

The bass boost is exactly what it says, it boosts base around 50hz.

Hope this helps, I would strongly suggest searching for some of the many more in depth tutorials you can find online on this.