Budget Amplifier Gain Setting Tool, No Volt meter! Best Car Audio Hack Ever!

[@Triplej863]

i set my gains with a DMM... but i recently found that i could do the same thing you did here to find the clip point of my head unit. All my speaker are coaxial, so they have caps on them. This helped me to figure out that my head unit actually had a bit more usable volume knob. The rule of thumb you always hear is 75% volume... what most dont tell you is that's mainly for factory HU's. Any decent aftermarket one can actually be set clean closer to 90% volume. For the longest time I was setting my gains right, but at the wrong volume. So, ultimately the gains were set too high because i was setting for vol 38/50 instead of vol 43. Huge difference those few clicks can make. Moral of the story... just as important as knowing how to set gains, is knowing EXACTLY what vol level to set at.

[@slowbrezze]

yes learn the hard way this should be a pin comment and included with gain setting because most kinda skim over this and starting out deffently didn't realize the vol on radio does increase voltage gain .yes amp was set but didn't realize turning it up didn't clip the subs but clipped my s doors which was on a amp . didn't know that overall volume for subs was not for my other speakers

[@RotaryTurbo]

Neat trick. If I'm understanding this right, from an electronics standpoint the capacity of the capacitor (micro farads) wouldn't matter so much as long as the voltage rating has headroom over the amplifier's AC voltage output.

[@CarAudioEnthusiasts]

yup

[@uzyh7622]

What is the value of the capacitor?

[@CarAudioEnthusiasts]

7UF 100v

[@jcooksey19]

I use a 40 dollar o scope off Amazon

[@CarAudioEnthusiasts]

i need to get one, so i can compare accuracy. i mean I know an oscope is solid, but i wonder if the circuits and screen pixels are as accurate as the sound?

[@jcooksey19]

@@CarAudioEnthusiasts that I don’t know but it seems to work fine.

[@CarAudioEnthusiasts]

im sure it does, you only really need to be close anyway, however I am now curious.

[@LMN22]

Man, coming through with perfect timing as always i was close to crying once and buying once some SMD gear lol

[@c0uchsl0uch]

Amazon has $40 oscope