Help with Alpine CDA-9815

[aleath]

I got the Alpine CDA-9815 installed today by a company called Audio Express. They did a good job and everything looks good, but it just doesn't sound as good as the factory head unit. I have the JBL system that came in my 02 Solara, all they did was bypass the factory amp. I was thinking that the crossover settings, equalizer, etc need to be set, but I'm not sure what to set them to.

The number one thing I notice is that the sound is unbalanced from front to rear. When I turn the fader up for the front just one level, it drops out the rear speakers a whole lot. Also, when bass hits it doesn't have and depth to it, its just like hearing it hit, but not feeling it like before. Anyone have any ideas on how to better set this head unit up? I hope this isn't going to be the result of getting the new head unit.

I will probably call the shop tomorrow and talk to them, but until then anyone have any ideas? Gunman?

[prophesized]

i think it might be because they bypassed the factory amp. your speakers are probably getting less power now so they arent being pushed to their full potential. although the speakers are stock so you still cant expect too much from them. i dont know what could be wrong with the fader though.

[aleath]

Well I remember Yanks saying that the JBL amp pushed about 13-17 Watts RMS to the speakers and this new headunit should be pushing about 27 Watts RMS. There is so much to setup on this headunit: crossover, equalizer, bass focus, etc etc. I think and hope that if these are setup right, the audio will sound a lot better.

[Yanks0114]

Get someone who has experience with this headunit to tune it. You should DEFINATELY be getting great sound out of that headunit. Its a great cd player that has a ton of power. Chances are it isn't tuned properly.

You are correct the stock system is 13-17watts RMS/channel.

Did they run the yellow wire right to the battery? On the 60 x 4 alpine headunits you must run the power wire right to the battery, thats just to give you an idea of how powerful it really is

Very good choice on cd players

[prophesized]

if thats all the stock amp puts out then it should definitely sound much better. try putting all equalizer settings to flat and turn off the crossovers and see what happens.

[Gunman]

whats going on is your rear deck is playing full range when it wasnt before , so it throwing your sound off. A better headunit that has crossovers built in would have been a better choice. An amp with variable crossovers will correct that, and then you can properly fade to give you a much better front image.

[aleath]

whats going on is your rear deck is playing full range when it wasnt before , so it throwing your sound off. A better headunit that has crossovers built in would have been a better choice. An amp with variable crossovers will correct that, and then you can properly fade to give you a much better front image.

The 9815 does have active crossovers built in, just you have to adjust them (unless you mean something totally different). I messed around with it for about an hour tonight and saved a few different settings on the 1-6 buttons. Before changing the settings a lot, I zeroed out the slope on the crossover so that it would not be applied at all and it ended up sounding very good. On the crossover I can turn down the output of the rear speakers by 1 - 12 db, so it seems to compensate for the front image fairly well.

The only thing I noticed in the manual was that they setup my head unit as a 2-way system, so I can't go above 200hz on the crossover settings. If they had put the switch to 3-way, I could go up to 20kHz. Not sure if that would even matter since all speakers are stock, just throwing that out.

I see what you're saying about the full range being played on the rear deck. What is really throwing me off is that I am hearing more of voice than bump from the rear speakers and more bump than voice from the front, or at least thats how it seems. Seems like its getting better the more I mess with the settings, I'll have to get it tuned by someone who knows what they're doing sometime.

[aleath]

Get someone who has experience with this headunit to tune it. You should DEFINATELY be getting great sound out of that headunit. Its a great cd player that has a ton of power. Chances are it isn't tuned properly.

You are correct the stock system is 13-17watts RMS/channel.

Did they run the yellow wire right to the battery? On the 60 x 4 alpine headunits you must run the power wire right to the battery, thats just to give you an idea of how powerful it really is

Very good choice on cd players

Yea I'm definitely enjoying the new head unit.

They didn't run the yellow wire right to the battery. They said normally they do not do it as most cars can handle it stock, plus the quoted me an extra $100 on the parts and install. However, I plan on directly connecting it to the battery myself in the future.

[Gunman]

the alpine does have crosovers yes, but what i meant is that they arent independent. What ever cycle you set for the rear are set for the fronts as well, which really sucks, since you want more of a mid bass response from back there and clearer mid range up front. So if you set it for 80 hertz, thats too low for the fronts, and vise versa, if you leave it higher, you get the undesired response from the rears. So a amp that has variable adjustments is what your looking for down the road.

[aleath]

the alpine does have crosovers yes, but what i meant is that they arent independent. What ever cycle you set for the rear are set for the fronts as well, which really sucks, since you want more of a mid bass response from back there and clearer mid range up front. So if you set it for 80 hertz, thats too low for the fronts, and vise versa, if you leave it higher, you get the undesired response from the rears. So a amp that has variable adjustments is what your looking for down the road.

When I go into the crossover settings I have the option to set it for the front, rear, and low. Changing the settings on the low does nothing and changing the settings on the front and rear works fine. I set the rear to 100 hz with a slope of -6db/oct (setting 1 on alpine) and the front to around 150hz with a -12db/oct (setting 2 on alpine) -- doesn't that make the front and rear speakers independent of each other? Bear with me cause I'm new to this stuff . After trying that for a few minutes, I set the crossovers to 0 again and it sounded better all around. Dunno if I'm setting the crossovers incorrectly or should just leave them off altogether.

I was playing some Simple Plan the other day on the way to the install and noticed how much it was shaking my rearview mirror. Played the same thing with my head unit a few minutes ago and noticed that the bass seems deeper in the back, but the mirror shakes no more. I dunno it doesn't matter that much, as it is now it sounds pretty good to me. Just really going for identical or better than what I had with the factory JBL setup -- I was happy with how it sounded, I just wanted to play MP3s (with the 2 line display of the 9815) and have satellite radio later.

Thanks for the help Gunman and everyone, much appreciated.

[Gunman]

No, you want them on for sure, Thats good to know that they are independant and allow for db per oct's now. I would try going a little lower in the backs to about 80 if possible and maybe down to 120 for the front, Although they are stock,they should be able to handle it. The low is only gonna work when you have a sub and amp hooked up to it down the road. In about two week we have our alpine new product training, and I have many many questions for them.

[aleath]

No, you want them on for sure, Thats good to know that they are independant and allow for db per oct's now. I would try going a little lower in the backs to about 80 if possible and maybe down to 120 for the front, Although they are stock,they should be able to handle it. The low is only gonna work when you have a sub and amp hooked up to it down the road. In about two week we have our alpine new product training, and I have many many questions for them.

Yea I did a whole lot of research on the CDA-9815 and other alpine hu's and it really seems like a great unit -- I knows its still very new and a lot of installers haven't really gotten to mess with it all that much yet.


What should I set the slope or db per octs to on the front and rear? I can set it from 1 - 4 with each setting being -6dbs/oct. So like 1 would be -6db/oct and 2 would be -12db/oct and so on.

I'm going to go try the frequencies you suggested for the front and the back. I can go as low as 20hz and as high as 200hz on the front and rear, so if you think I should go lower than 80 on the rear let me know.

[Gunman]

Try 80, and if you can get your hands on a test tone cd, and then you can play a 80 hertz cycle to see how it really handles, and then go lower. For the most part what kind of music will you be listening to? That can be an important factor as well.
If anything you could try a minus 6db, since the rears reflect off the rear glass and can be overpowering at times and experiment, You want to try to achive an even sound all around, with the focus up front where you are. I hope that helps you out a bit. It take a long time going back and fourth and you gotta be patient.

[aleath]

Try 80, and if you can get your hands on a test tone cd, and then you can play a 80 hertz cycle to see how it really handles, and then go lower. For the most part what kind of music will you be listening to? That can be an important factor as well.
If anything you could try a minus 6db, since the rears reflect off the rear glass and can be overpowering at times and experiment, You want to try to achive an even sound all around, with the focus up front where you are. I hope that helps you out a bit. It take a long time going back and fourth and you gotta be patient.

I listen to rap, alternative, rock, almost everything. More rock and stuff with guitars than rap, but I still like to hear the bass even if its just the drums in a rock song.

I tried the settings you said on the way home just now and the rears sounded good when listening to rap. I could hear the fronts, but its not quite like they were before -- just kind of flat, not even a slight bump. When listening to rock the fronts really sounded washed out / flat, so I dunno if I should go lower or change the slope or what. There is also time correction, equalizer, bass focus, and media expander -- any idea how to set those up? The manual says how to adjust these things, but it doesn't really explain what setting would be used for what setup. Jeez I got myself into a lot more than I expected . Oh well, I'm pretty good at working out unexpected things. Thanks for the help

[Gunman]

yeah alpine can kinda get complex.
The MEDIA EXPANDER, is basically their version of BBE. (Barcus Berry ) what that does for you is correct the signal leaving the radio to the spk. What happens is that the higher freq, travel alot faster than lower freq, and arrive at you speaker before the low one do. That can give you a ''off'' sound, so what bbe did as well as the media expander, is it delays the higher freq so that they both arrive at you spk at the same time giving you a fuller sound. The first thing people notice is better bass and clearer sound. Most people refer to it as a loud or bass boster, which is far from what it is. What the expander does to be different is ''adds'' sound in, since so many of us are listening to mp3's and xm. These are recored and transfered at lower rates, mp3 typically 128 and xm at approx 96. So this feature allows for more headroom lets say and gives a fuller sound to those formats.
Time correction is simple to explain. Think of it as a balance and fader controll. Why we need that is because of where we sit in a car and where the speakers are in relation to where we are. For the most part we get a left side bias beacause of the fact that we are closest to the front left spk, so thats what we hear first. So with time correction you can delay them so the sound hits you all around at the same time giving you a great image in your car, Now bass focus is very similar, what it does it plays with your ears and tricks you into thinking the bass is up front rather than banging away in the rear,
And of corse the eq is simply put an eq built into the radio so you can customize the sound to how you like it.