need advice on sub/amp working poorly

[meathead333]

paid good money about 3 years ago for my current stereo setup. worked and sounded great. my wifes been driving the vibe for the last 2 1/2 years. she gets a new car and now im driving thge vibe. for some reason, the bass sucks now. i tried adjusting the setting, but no luck. the amp seems to be working and on...the subs work, can see them bump, but they do put out hardly any bass.what could the problem be? could the amp be bad? or is it the subs?a year or so ago, i did swap the subs into a different box, and then back into the original box. could that have hurt it?

[AKLGT]

oh. gonna have to have jahntassa or one of those guys better answer that. i'd check all your cables, make sure the power and ground is good... other than that, don't have a clue. sorry.

[RePo]

I had something similar to this in my Monte Carlo install: I see you typed subs as plural, I take it you have two subwoofers in a box. Check this: see if one is polarity backwards. If so that would cause this, they cancel each other out. One kicks out, and the other pull back and you end up with a net volume change of nothing. They should both kick outward in unison, giving a nice punch.

[Jahntassa]

I'd go with RePo's suggestion first. Make sure the polarity is right. Also, could possibly be that the cabling came loose behind the radio or at the amp, so something isn't connected correctly anymore.

[meathead333]

thanks, ill try that later today!

[meathead333]

that was the problem...i unpluged one of the subs and BOOM, it started kicking again. so i just plugged in the cables to the opposite terminals and now all is fixed. thanks, you guys are great!

[binary]

It's amazing what a difference that makes - it doesn't seem like it would be a big deal. But I've also ran in to that too... going from a muffled woomf to a thunder boom just by flipping a pair of wires.(post 999... tee hee hee... I'm saving the big 1k for something good. )

[Jahntassa]

It's a pretty interesting effect, usually called 'Phase' in the audio industry. You can do it with your cabin speakers too. It makes stereo sound really wonky. If you have something (in stereo) that's mixed to sound like its dead center, and your cabin speakers are out of phase, you'll hear it like it's definitely coming from the two speakers, not right between your ears. It also cuts out nearly all bass, as you can see from your subs.It has a lot to do with the way waveforms interact. Pretty cool stuff.