New Alpine Sound Setup..is this right? .Please help...

[DougFNJ]

Hi all, very new to this forum, and also new to building my sound system. Alot of you seem VERY knowledgable, I was hoping you could answer a question for me please. First my setup....

2000 Nissan Maxima
Alpine CDA-9847 Head Unit with Sirius and Ipod Attachments
2 Infinity 6002si speakers in the rear 180 Watts each
2 Sony 1630A speakers in the front 180 Watts each
1 Infinity Basslink Powered Subwoofer in the trunk
and 1 Alpine MRP-F240 Amp

Now that I have that out of the way here is my question.....

There is a setting in my Head Unit that is Power IC on/off
What it says in the manual is that if it is off, All of the power comes from the amp, if it is on, it is powered by the Head Unit. Before I had the amp installed if Power IC was off, it produced no sound at all (except for the basslink in the trunk), now I wanted to hear the sound difference with it on and off figuring I would hear a different sound quality when it was working off the amp, and when it was working off the head unit. There seems to be very little difference if any when I switch back and forth. I pushed up the gain on the amp and heard the volume rise on the speakers as I did this, and then I performed my test again with the on/off and again no difference. Is this related to the install? Or does Alpine remove the feature when running an amp?

Just a note, it SEEMS to sound better after the install than before (I am am not a good judge though), but I am curious if this is install related because if something was done wrong, I don't want that mistake to cost in other areas. Thank you for bearing going through the long explanation, I'd appreciate any help on this.

[ngsm13]

The Power-IC function on alpine HU's turns the INTERNAL HU amplifier on and off. If you have an external amplifier powering your speakers...then keep it in the OFF position. Also, when you have this external amplifer powering your speakers...it'll obviously make no difference since the external amp (not the internal HU amp) is powering the speakers. So, keep it off. peace

NG

[DougFNJ]

I definitely planned to leave it off. I was only doing it to hear difference in quality. I have very limited knowledge on amps. I thought when I was switching Power IC on, I was getting the head units amp only, and when I turned it off I thought I was getting the external amp only.

for learning purposes on this equipment, when an external amp is hooked up, what is the head units amp doing? Is it normally just automatically shut down or is that something the installer has to do manually? I appreciate the quick response

[ngsm13]

Originally Posted by DougFNJ

I definitely planned to leave it off. I was only doing it to hear difference in quality. I have very limited knowledge on amps. I thought when I was switching Power IC on, I was getting the head units amp only, and when I turned it off I thought I was getting the external amp only.

for learning purposes on this equipment, when an external amp is hooked up, what is the head units amp doing? Is it normally just automatically shut down or is that something the installer has to do manually? I appreciate the quick response

Well, like you've learned...in alpine's case at least you have the option of turning it off. Normally, it would most likely just stay on but not "feed" power to anything...

NG