Anyone have any experience in car audio?

High pitched frequencies can certainly hurt your hearing, perhaps at lower SPL than lower frequencies but SPL is SPL. They'll both do a number on your hearing.

And I love the guys that walk into audio shops and demand the biggest speakers that will do 20Hz. Dumb.

Oh to the best of my knowledge you dont damage your hearing from low frequencies its the higher pitched frequencies that destroy your hearing, Please shoot back if im wrong id like to know.

I Put way too much money in mine (Focal utopia components and 11" utopia subs run in stereo with a Esoteric Audio E7402 and Zapco Competition gear.
All I have to say on this one Is its all about amplifier quality and signal gain, Do you have an Equalizer/Crossover?
The audio control DQ components are great and only about $500,
That will Give you a good amount of signal boost to your Amplifier and will probably give that boost your searching for without using equalization. However I would recommend a subsonic filter set to 20-25 HZ as only your neighbors will be able to hear that wave and it will ease the job on your amplifier significantly
Also I am not sure of your budget or your subs but the older Zapco competition amps are way down in price well below $500, My Z350-C2sl I think is the name, something close pushes right about 350 watts a channel and does a phenomenal just phenomenal job on my 6.5" Midrange's
Those amps are great and ignore the rating i think my amp is rated at 30 watts x 4 but pushes about 85-90 RMS and bridged is pushing well over 300

Dynamat can be an expensive venture. Especially if you do it right. But if you do decide to do it, do it right and spend the dough. One square foot pieces here and there won't do a thing to help you. Its all about full coverage. You'll need to pull the floor liner and spare tire, the trunk liner, do the wheel wells in the trunk, if you can get to them - the wheel wells under the back seat, the floor, pull the headliner and cover that, the firewall and line the under side of the dash under the steering column, all the doors, the speaker wells against the door sheetmetal and two pieces over eachother under both license plates. You're talking close to 100sq ft. That's close to $250 not including labor if you have someone else do it. And that is doing it right. And your car will be a little quieter but the sound will be much better.

It's about getting the acoustics inside correct. You won't quiet the outside world regardless of what anyone says. Dynamat doesn't do that well. It is designed to keep your panels from vibrating and resonating in order to get the sound better inside. But you will see great results if you do it right.

And your car will be 75lbs heavier. ;-)

When you say you have component spks in the front, where are the mid/woofers and the tweeters located? Are they far from each other? If your mid/woofer is near the floor, I have found that road noise (which increases w/speed) will drown out this spk. and make the sound from the tweeter stand out more especially if it's located far away from the mid/woofer. Also, are you using the stock head unit or an aftermarket one? I would think the latter considering your set up. I'm no expert on car audio but I have gone through this recently, spending quite a bit of $$ and not having the sound which I thought I would achieve. Finally, are your doors sound proofed w/ dynamat? This I did not do, but I heard it will reduce road noise and improve the sound. Good Luck.

First, do you have a sub-level knob linked to the amp that may be dash mounted? Or maybe hidden in the center console?

If you do, use it.

Do you have an aftermarket head unit? The gear you have isn't bad at all so I'm expecting that you spent some cash on a decent HU. If you did then you will have a Sub-level option on the HU to control the sub. And my advice is you turn it up until it works for you.

Your car is an entirely different environment, obviously. You'll need to either make the concession to less bass to save your hearing or enjoy the music while you still have your hearing.

And don't think you have to crank it to a$$clown volumes to get great bass. Just bump up the EQ a bit. You'll be fine. I've been doing car audio since I was 15. So 14 years now? I've wired all kinds of cars and done all kinds of custom enclosures and speaker installs. Never after an install have I been satisfied with the bass at 0. It just doesn't output anything worth the value of the sub.

Good luck with it. And I hope you found some good speaker cable other than that crappy stuff you can buy anywhere. That makes a huge difference too. But of course you knew that.

I dunno, if you say that you cannot hear the bass why don't you just crank up the bass? Let your ears be the final arbiter of the settings, not some magical number...

-RW-

Most road,tire,mechanical noise is of low frequency,so it masks your bass at speed. For adequate bass @speed it's gotta be a little excessive at rest. If the subs are in the trunk they may need a little boost to get in the interior,also phasing with the other speakers is a lot more critical than in a room.Try inverting the subs phase just for fun. A little equalization may be needed. All car interiors are in a fairly small volume range which tends to give them a mid-bass hump, where I don't recall. It's been a while.

How is the system wired? The reason for this question is that when I had a fine car system (years ago), the bass would change dramatically when the fader was set differently. I don't remember the EXACT details, but it was something like this: If I faded more to the front or the back, the bass was amplified a great deal. This had to do with a way of wiring for two fronts, two rears, and a subwoofer that wasn't exactly "by the book" because the head unit technically wasn't set up for 4 speakers (as I recall). It worked, and allowed 4 speakers to play, but the fader really screwed up the sound. I never got a satisfactory explanation for this (meaning an explanation that I could understand), but apparently the technique used was quite common for installers at the time to "cheat the system" so to speak.

So, the point of this is.....could it be that there's a quirk in the way that your system's installed? It sounds odd, but I can attest to the fact that there are installation techniques that cause non-linear deviations in tonality.....if that makes any sense.