Music has become an essential element of our life. We spend many of our daily hours while listening to it. Being an extraordinarily important thing, many advancements have been made in this field. Music wholly depends upon the speaker because it is all about the sound quality which you get at the end. Thus, we must ensure a good sound quality for listening to quality music. In this regard, several things in the market can provide you with a loud and quality sound.
An amplifier is one of these things. It is used for amplifying the sound you produce so that it can reach a larger audience. It has widespread usage in the world. Most people have this device in their homes. But many people don’t know how to tune it. In this article, we are going to let you know how to tune a monoblock amp before playing any instrument.
What Are Monoblock Amplifiers?
This article is all about monoblock amplifiers. It means you must know about it first. It is a one-channel amplifier that is used to power a subwoofer. It only amplifies a single channel rather than being shared between multiple channels. It is normally used in cars to make your journey amazing with the addition of beautiful music. Now comes the main question, how to tune a monoblock amp?
General Terminologies For a Car Amplifier
While reading this article, you might be an encounter the technical terms. So, you must be familiar with these terminologies. Let’s have a look at these simple terminologies.
Gain: It is used for adjusting the sensitivity of the amplifier. It makes the power coming out of the amplifiers compatible with the capacity of the speakers. By setting it at a certain level, you can reduce the distortion as much as possible.
Frequency: It is the pitch of sound coming out from the speakers. Usually, the frequencies are mentioned on the outer casing of the speakers. Moreover, you can also find it at the back of any individual speaker. You must know the frequency as it is highly helpful in tuning an amplifier correctly.
Low pass/high pass filters: These are the filters for adjusting the frequencies coming out from the jack. These are built-in filters. If you have small speakers like tweeters and high frequencies are to control, then you need to turn on the high-frequency filters.
How To Tune a Monoblock Amp? – Steps
There are certain simple steps that you must take for tuning a monoblock amplifier. These are not some advanced steps but you can have a good how to know about the basic level tuning. Lets’ have a look at these steps one by one.
- First, come to head unit settings. All these head units on the amplifier must be at the minimum level.
- Turn up the volume head unit to the maximum level.
- Turn down to the minimum level the bass boosts head unit.
- Turn up the low pass to the loudest level.
- Apply a 50Hz and 6db tune and gradually increase it till you notice any distortion in it.
- Adjust the subsonic filter to the level where the subwoofer is normally tuned.
- Bring back low pass filter down to 80.
- If the subwoofers have been adjusted, then keep the phase at zero degrees otherwise keep it at 180 degrees.
- Continue to adjust it till you get your desired results.
How To Tune a Monoblock Amp With a Multimeter?
- The above-mentioned method is an actual manual method in which you have to listen to the sound again and again to get the best sound. However, if this kind of tuning doesn’t serve your needs then you can also try tuning an amplifier with the help of a multi-meter. Now, we will guide you step by step for this kind of tuning.
- First of all, measure the speaker impedance with the help of your digital multi-meter.
- Disconnect the speakers from any kind of power supply.
- Assess both the negative and positive terminals.
- Connect the black probe of the multimeter with the negative terminal and the red probe with the positive terminal.
- Now, check the impedance of the speaker on the multi-meter.
- Compare the recommended wattage of the amplifier with the output it is given with the help of impedance. In this regard, you must also have a look at the user’s manual. Also compare it with the recorded speaker’s resistance.
- The voltage of the amp must also be compatible with the user’s manual.
- Unplug all the additional accessories like subwoofers, speakers, etc. By disconnecting all the positive terminals will make your work quite easy.
- Turn off the equalizer and set its setting at zero.
- The gain must also be zero at this stage. You can do it by turning the dial in the anti-clockwise direction.
- The maximum volume must not be more than zero.
- Now play 60 Hz test tone CD on the amplifier. Observe the amp gain knob and multi-meter while doing this activity. Calculate the reading on the multi-meter with the help of the output voltage reading. Now, set the amp’s gain according to your requirement.
- Now, the device is ready to play. In this case, you must plug everything back in. Turn off the audio system and reduce the volume to zero. Reconnect all the accessories with the wires correctly.
- It’s time to turn On the play button.
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