Way Crossover

Way Crossover

What should i set my gain/bass boost/crossover at?

i just got off the phone from the guy from circuit city....he said to have the most bass
set gain 9/10th the way up
bass boost 8.5/10 the way up
crossover 3/10 the way up

my subs rms=720
amp rms=400

does this sound right
and also how loud could i turn it up at these settings?
thxx

the gain is a setting that tells your amp what voltage to expect from the head unit. generally, if you know what your head unit output is (somewhere between 100mV and 7V), you can set your gain accordingly. the higher the voltage, the lower the gain. typical settings on the amp have 100mV at max gain, 0.5V at medium gain, and 5 or 7V at minimum gain. matching these values will cause your amp to perform at its optimal best. depending on how you listen to your music, you may deviate from this setting but not too much because you will run into two problems:

1: too low - amp will not get as loud as it potentially can, and you may as well had bought a smaller amp.
2: too high - amp will get as loud as it can too soon, will potentially be disproportionate to the rest of your system, and if pushed much louder will distort (not be damaged, just not sound as well as it ought).

the bass boost setting can be put wherever you want, as long as it sounds good to you. the only problem you are likely to encounter if you set it too high is the frequency that the bass boost is set at will dominate the other frequencies your subs are trying to make and it might sound funny.

the crossover setting depends on the crossover range. chances are, your sub amp does not have an actual crossover, but a low-pass filter instead. that means that whatever you set the filter too, any frequency higher than that will be substantially quieted. typical filters have a range of 50 to 150Hz. depending on the rest of your system, you can set this anywhere that it seems like the sound from your subs blends in with the sound from your regular speakers. if you are just going for boom, then lower is typically better.