LABARINTH

My friend and I installed a set of MB Quart PCE-216's in the front of my STi with and Alpine 9835 HU and a JL 300X2 amp to power the MB Quart speakers. The guy I talked to at tweeter said that the JL amp would be fine for the MB Quart speakers even tho they max at 130RMS and I am giving them 150RMS. Anyway, we hooked it up and everything works fine but they just don't sound as good as I had hoped. I wont be getting a sub until octoberish and I was hoping that they would have more bass. My stock stereo in my mustang had more bass than these do. The highs are nice but the bass sux. I can only turn them up to about 20 out of 50(I think) before the bass starts to get distorted. Is this because I am overpowering them? I really don't know a whole lot about this. Also if I am overpowering it would the 300X2 amp be good for 1 10" Rockford punch 3? Then I would just buy a less powerful amp for the MB Quart speakers.

LABARINTH

by the way I didn't buy the stuff from tweeter cause they are way over priced and I can't get ahold of my friend who helped me install them to ask him.

rcurley55

It depends on how you have them setup. You can't expect a small 6.5" woofer to reproduce full range sound, loudly, without distorting.

So far we know nothing about the installation (how are they actually installed, sound deadening, etc) or where the crossover is set at. In addition, we have no clue how the gains were set.

I think you may just be expecting a bit much from your new speakers. The 300/2 is a nice amp for components and isn't "too much" for those components.

LABARINTH

There is no sound deadening at all but there is absolutly no rattling. The distotion is comes only from the woofers. The bass is turned down a bit and I am not trying to listen to it very loudly(only at 20). I don't expect it to produce a full range of bass from 6.5" woofers...but I didn't expect the bass to be worse then what comes in a stock car. I mean there is almost no bass what so ever before it begins to distort. The liitl 4" rockfords in the back produce more bass. I don't know anything about the crossovers or the gain settings. Maybe you can fill me in a little. Like I said I don't know much about this stuff. :dunno:

ziggdoggaroni

ahhhh... very common problem.....


you gotta set your high pass crossover at 125 hz. that will filter out all the sub bass that's making the distortion.

tweeter is known for not telling anyone about there stuff.

a friend of mine got his system installed by them (pioneer 9600 dvd player/monitor, 4 sets of the same mb quart component you have, 3 jl audio 12 w04, a jl 300e, and jl 500/1). but they didn't tune a damn thing for him. after about 2 weeks he came to me and said, "steve, this sounds like sh!t". he couldn't turn up anything with out everything distorting. I turned on his high pass filter (i think i set it at 93hz - that player has weird incriments if i remember correctly) and it works great now. keep in mind, the speakers won't go below 100 - 90hz accurately at high volumes. If you set your filter (i'm pretty sure your alpine has one, i know my old alpine one) then that bass won't come through and you'll be able to turn your sh!t up!!!

LABARINTH

I took it into tweeter and they tuned the amp...I think it was the gain...but they also fawked with some other stuff...anyway it sounds great now...they didn't touch the crossover or the equalizer on the head unit at all, so it can prolly still sound better. What should I settings on the head unit should I play with to get the best sound? It sounds really good now but it could prolly get better....any tips?

Arfboy

The reason your bass is worse than the stock speakers is cause the MBQs' crossover cuts off the lower frequencies. Aftermarket components are usually designed to be supplemented with a sub, whereas stock speakers are not (they typically play full range).

In tuning it, first decide where your speakers are lacking (highs too harsh, midbass is lacking, midrange isn't defined enough). Work with the crossover slopes, the width of the bands, the crossover points, etc...