New radio too loud!

[vilmar5]

Hey everybody. I just put a Alpine CDA-9847 head unit with the Metra Turbo2 kit in the car. The car has the Monsoon system. I find that it is way too loud now. I can't go past 4 on the dial and when I'm on 1, I can hear a hiss behind the music. Anyone has this problem? Is there a way to fix this? Is there a way to bypass the amp in the car if it has one?

[simplyred]

Bypassing the amp would be stupid, the problem might be that a stock stereo pushes out no where near as much power as an aftermarket one... and theeeen, your pushing that thru and amp IMO thats probably the problem!

[GTPGuy82]

Really? After I installed my Pioneer, it got a lot louder, but sounds a lot better. Even with the volume at 1 it's loud as hell. But there are a lot of options on the radio to configure..bass, treble, loudness, slant, HPF, LPF...etc.

I can put it up to around 8 before the speakers really get pushed to the limit, but at around 7 it sounds fantastic!

[ginuwine]

i have the hiss on mine i have a sony cd player with that dso button on it i have to turn that off & it goes away i can only hear it a low levels though

[jayco59]

You might have an impedance mismatch between the new radio's output amplifier and the cars speakers. In a home system most amps have there output power rated at 8 Ohms and if you connect it up to 4 Ohm speakers you will notice it will be loader and there could be audable distortion in the sould quality. Check the car stereo's manual and see what it says about the output impedence of the amp and verify the speakers are the same. If you use a multimeter set to measure ohms and connect it to the speaker wires connecting to the amp you can get a close approximation to the speakers impedence although your measurement will be a bit low as the multimeter is measuring DC resistance and not AC impedence which is the DC resistance + the AC impedence at a specific frequency. In this case the frequency is probable the average audio frequency some where between 20 and 20,000 Hz.
I've measured speakers this way and got DC reading of ~6 ohms for a speaker that's rated 8 ohms so you can use that as a guideline if you want.
It's almost like GM engineers the design of the stereo and speakers in their cars!

Another possibility is that you have the audio power output of the new system going to the input of another amp. That could explain the huge amount of volume you get at very low settings and would also explain the distortion and buzz.

[vilmar5]

That's what I think, with the Monsoon maybe there is an amp in the car already?
Another thing I tought about. I had the option of having the sound go up and down depending on the speed of the car. It was set to medium and I did not turn it off before removing the factory radio. Could this be my problem?

[simplyred]

no.. that will go away with the stock radio.. but yes, the monsoon system does have an amp.. and crossovers, thats its appeal to having it!

[vilmar5]

OK. Do you have an idea on how to bypass the factory amp?

[Mmartin_47]

Same here im interested in knowing how.

[the TANK]

LMFAO



I cant belive that some wrote that their radio is now TOO loud




hahahahaha

[jnak]

I wouldn't bypass the amp. I would run the stereo off the preamp outputs at the back of the aftermarket stereo.