I finally installed the utopia's and the sound stream van gogh 500.4. currently I have 125 watts going to the utopia's. I set the cross over on the tweeters to -2db.
Lets just say these things are amazing, the 6.5 drivers can really dish out some bass. I am still tuning, as the volume gets louder, it seems to get too bright, way too bright. I have an alpine 9835 hu. Any of you guys running the utopias and the 9835 have any suggestions on setting the eq to lower the brightness at louder levels. I have the crossover right now at 80hz for the utopias. They can handle 50hz but on some songs its too much , so i would rather play it safe, and since i have the alphasonik 8 coming in that will handle the frequencies below 80 hz. Also i noticed if i run mx expander at lower levels it reduces the brightness, but the speakers cant handle it at higher levels.

 

I have my Utopia crossovers set at -4dB. The front channel on the 9835 is set at 63Hz and a slope of 12dB/oct and the level set at 0. I also have s-pods with Poly-K's set at the same settings, and the sub channel is set at 50Hz and slope is 6dB/oct.

I've found these setting to be very warm with good bass.

Glad to hear you've got your system up and running.

 

Yeah, I maxed my tweets to -4db at the crossovers and that was about enough to stop my ears from bleeding - even though it sounded really clear! I've been tuning, after listening to HarleyMB's setup and Josiah's setup I realized I have a long way to go. After the tuning I think I have caught up some!

So I also set the x-over on the 9835 to dropoff flat at 50hz (just yesterday!) and it made a world of difference - before that the midbass was struggling to go where it shouldn't and it was really muddying up the sound. What slope do you have it dropping off from 80hz, that sounds kinda high to me...

Actually I had to bring up the midrange on the 9835's eq a little bit to fill in - maybe if you bring the mids up, you will realize that you are listening to it really loud already and not feel the need to trim the highs and lows...

Did you also do the time corrections? They help too. I would turn off the mx expander as it is just artificially coloring the sound in an environment that doesn't need it.

-JD

 

I will try setting the tweeter to -4 db. Yeah, you describe it perfectly, feels like my ears will start to bleed. I have the dropoff at 80hz set at 6 db slope. I dont like setting it at 50hz because for some music its fine and then some music the speakers can't handle it. When i listen to trance I have to move the hz up to 125 hz, but other than that I leave it at 80hz. JD, so you have the mids and highs at 50hz and flat? I will try that tommorow, but I suspect it will be too much for the mids to handle. I have the time correction set on the left channel at 1.1 ms. I should be receiving the sub this week so that should fill in some of the lower frequencies which i am not hearing now due to my 80hz setting. What exactly does the slope affect? JD, when you say bring up the mids on the eq, what frequencies are you referring to? Let me know.

 

Jim,

By the way, I used your advice about not securing the amp rack with the provided screw, it makes it so much easier to pull the amp out quickly to tune and also to reach my crossovers for adjustment. I did some pretty spirited driving over the weekend to make sure the rack would not move around, and it stayed in its location nicely. Thanks once again for your great product.

 

Yes, I have the 165w's set to cutoff at their rated 50hz. Now when you say mids and tweets, are you doing a 2-way or a 3-way system? Since I have front and rears so I am doing a 2-way... It almost sounds like you have yours setup as a 3-way, with one pair of wires (fronts) going to an amp for the tweeters, another pair of wires (rears) going to an amp for the mids, and then another pair going to the amp for the subs... If so This doesn't sound right to me. Focal has a wonderful, perfectly tuned crossover, bring one signal to it, don't try to emulate it on the HU.

Anyhow, a 1 db/oct slope means that the decibils decrease 1 db for every octave - it is a way of tapering one speaker's range to another, and definitely important between the mid and tweeter. A 6db/oct slope means it is tapering off as slowly as the HU will allow, so at 50hz you have only attenuated it -3db - very little indeed. In fact according to the i-personalize chart, at 20hz you only have -6db of attenuation, so you are pumping a ton of signal too low for you speakers into them. (Hmm, I just tried to do this with I-personalize and it would only let me go to a 24sb slope, I swear I just set it to flat on the HU itself!)

Since I am not worried about tapering down to my sub, I have the speakers getting 100% signal down to 50hz - and absolutely no sound below that. That is a flat cutoff. That is what made the difference.

 

I have mine set up as a two way system. One pair of wires from the front channels of the amp going to the crossover for the mids and highs. The rear channels of the amp are for the sub.

So let me make sure I understand this correctly, when I have my signal at 50 hz with a 6 db slope, that means there is signal lower than 50 hz reaching the speaker, explaining why the distortion appears? So the higher the slope number the faster the lower signal is cut off, so when you say your's is set at flat, that means there is absolutely no signal below 50 hz reaching the mids? So would it be wise to say it would be better to set the crossover point at 63 hz with a 6 db slope or say 12 db. So the lower the slope number, the slower the signal tapers off thus allowing lower frequencies to arrive at the speaker. This would make perfect sense. I will try setting my cross overs today with this new info. I still have to change the tweeters to - 4db.

Have you guys used bass focus? I dont understand what its for and the alpine manual does not explain it too well either.

At certain volume levels I still feel the mx expander helps out, especially at lower levels, as I cross the 20 mark, the music begins to come alive with out mx.

 

you guys sure about the 0=flat setting for the slope means no frequencies are reproduced below the set crossover point? Is that even possible? I've always thought that you would need a steep slope, setting 4 = -24dB if you didn't want frequencies reproduced below your crossover point. I don't see how you can claim to have a cutoff exactly at 50 hz by using the flat setting.

 

I am not sure on that, i am trying to get confirmation on that actually. When i set the slope to flat it actually sounds like the mid has more bass than with a 6 db/oct slope. Your assumption based on what I hear from my speakers sounds correct, but I am no expert, so I am waiting for the experts to chime in on this.

 

Hey I just thought of something, when I am in the cross over in the 9835, i have three bands sub, mid and high. Does the high only relate to the tweeters. I thought the high addressed both the mid and highs, and you would only use the mid if you where running a three way system. Is this correct? Please tell me I have not been sending 50 hz signal to my tweeters the whole by setting the high channel to a 50hz cut off, and not the mid. I doubt this will hurt anything since the signal still has to go through the focal cross over, but this would also explain why my mids cannot handle much since they are probably set at a low frequency on the mid channel since I have never adjusted that one. Please let me know.