QUOTE
Gain Controls:
Most amplifiers will have some sort of level or "gain" control. This control is used to match the output of the head unit to an amplifier. The maximum audio output voltage from different head units will vary. If there were no gain controls, some head units would not be able to drive the amplifier to its maximum power level. Other head units may drive the amplifier to full power at a fraction of its volume control's range.
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A piece of equipment that has a higher maximum output voltage is not necessarily going to sound better than one which is only capable of 2 volts output. The higher output will allow you to reduce the gains on your amp (or any down line signal processor) which will lower the noise floor of your system. If you are not having trouble with noise (alternator, hiss...), you may not benefit from the extra output voltage. You also need to realize that the voltage may be more than your amplifiers can handle. The extra voltage will not damage the amplifier but if the lowest sensitivity (gain setting) on your amp is 2 volts, and you drive it with anything more than 2 volts, it will cause your amp to clip*.
*This assumes that the gain setting is the voltage that will drive the amp to max power. Some amps are underrated and may have slightly more headroom and therefore will clip at a little higher power.
QUOTE
Pre amp voltage is the amount of voltage that the head unit can send through the pre-amp outputs. Most head units are between 2 and 4 volts, and almost every amplifier has a wide enough input gain variability to accept anything within and somewhat beyond that range. The benefit you get from having a higher pre-out voltage is that it will allow you to turn down the input gain on the amp, thereby lowering the amp's noise floor a tad. That's great, except that a good amp will have a very low noise floor to begin with, so lowering it by 3dB by doubling your pre-out voltage is going to basically be a non-issue. Also, the higher voltage that's running through your RCAs, the less noise it's likely to pick up, but remember that the 2 or 4 volts is the peak output (i.e. it's maximum output at maximum volume) and that during the vast majority of the time, you're at a very small fraction of that. In most listening cases, you're probably only pushing 50mV or less through the RCAs, so if you double that to 100mV, you're still talking about very little voltage and a high noise susceptibility either way. Proper routing of your RCAs will have a far greater impact on noise than your pre-out voltage.
this 3 article shows that the HU voltage output and amp gain are very much related
QUOTE(howiechoo @ Aug 5 2006, 11:58 PM)
actually the use of high output are to stabilize the output transmission and distance...high output = low gain setting are not true......
high voltage will let ur freq to transmit in the cable more stabil,
and more freq will be able to reach the amp as compare to low voltage..thus u get better signal amplification...and will have more details of the freq(less freq loss) from the hu output to amp
no matter low volt or high volt
the amount of freq that will reach to the amp is still the same
it's about the interference that will cause distortion to the freq
high voltage usually have low impedance while low voltage will have high impedance
so if a low voltage HU's freq is distorded + the amount of resistence
the quality of the freq will be greatly reduce
This post has been edited by driftmeister: Aug 6 2006, 11:54 AM