Xenon and gains... Amp swap last night

[Pillow]

Since it is spring... Time to swap amps in the old 911 that never gets driven (boo).

Pulled out an old crappy Alpine and put a new (NOS?) Xenon X100.2 in its place. Ahh much better. Easy swap no problem there.

I know they are semi hated for the power limiting, but this amp is only going to push a set of 6.5 components. No biggie. Right now the components are RSd6.5c.

So:
- Kenwood Excelon X994 HU (4v rca)
- PG X100.2
- PG RSd6.5c

Here comes the rant part with the Xenon amps... Why do I always have to set the dang gain so high on the amp!!! Well I know why but it is still frustrating. Might as well just set the gain all the way up and run the hell out of it... Since the sens is so low even at 4v would this clip it to death? Doesn't matter on a low load item like a comp set? Bit the bullet and waste $ on a damn line driver!?

Ugh!

But it sounds good.

Thanks!

[AVICJR]

Add a line driver, it will save your gain.

[trickyricky]

It really doesn't matter were the gain is as long as it is set correctly. Just because the gain has to be set at lets say 80% with a X head unit compare to Y head unit that the gains are set at 40%, as long as its set correctly the amplifier still puts out the same amount of power.

Now why does it have to be like that well may be is because the amplifier is designed to accept a larger input voltage than the norm....which is in this case very true with xenons. IIRC xenons accept up to 8v, so lets say the input voltage is 8v counterclockwise and fully clockwise is 2v (what most head units are) then your more than likely be in the 80% range because you don't have a line driver....nothing really wrong with that since the design of that amplifier has down to a 2v input so as long as its not all the way max'ed out (fully clockwise) then you really don't require a line driver, but if it bugs you then go for it and get you a line drive..then your gains will be set around 8v which is nearly completely counterclockwise.


So to answer your "Since the sens is so low even at 4v would this clip it to death?", no...as long as the gains are set correctly why would it. Especially if your ears don't hear any clipping going on then why would you worry.

[Bfowler]

in my last xenon install i had a line driver. to run the xenon 200.2 with its sens on min, and reach max un-clipped power i was running 11.8 volts out of my tld66. xenon's just like a hot signal.

[THUMP-LUMP]

Especially if your ears don't hear any clipping going on then why would you worry.

Normally, by the time you can hear it, it is actually clipping rather severely.