Originally Posted by
Airscape
You are correct, the setting on the alpine unit is called "subwoofer volume" I believe. At 2v the subs are doing nothing basically. Without cranking that up you barely hear them. I swapped between the rear pre outs and the sub outs on the deck with the fader set full rear to see what the difference was, nothing too noticeable and with the amps built in cross over using the sub pre outs and playing with the setting gave me a bit more control vs hooking up to rear outs.
Some of them will say "Subwoofer Volume" or "Level", Im just letting you know that it is gain, which is distortion and it will sound better because it's louder since your preamp isnt pushing enough, but that just means that you need a stronger preamp output. Too much gain ruins your coils over time. Say your level is perfect max constant for your subs and you turn your gain up, that is good, but crank the gain and the sup will bottom out and your amp will clip. IMO I would replace the deck or hook the rears to the rear output. Thats how mine are and they sounded great, with plenty of control, but I also have a kenwood with LPF, HPF, Bass Freq, etc etc per set of channels.