No! They are not volume controls! Read that sentence again and understand it! It is a fact that very few people, including professional installers, know how to set gains correctly. Failure to do so yields higher distortion, a higher noise floor which decreases dynamic headroom, less than optimum operating conditions for electronic equipment, and higher failure rate for both the electronic equipment and transducers! So, why don't more people learn to adjust gains correctly? Because they are too lazy and simply don't care, which is a shame!

Not many people have a scope, so I will give you a couple of methods using little or no investment.

Suppose we want to set the gains in a system that consists of a head unit, two way crossover and two amplifiers. We do not have any test equipment whatsoever. First, turn all the gains to the minimum position. We have probably heard by now that we want the highest signal voltage possible to keep the signal clean. The reason the signal is cleaner with higher voltages is because the amplifier's gain is supposed to be turned down accordingly which reduces noise. For the gain setting, do not use music. Use a 1kHz Sinewave tone from a test disc. Start with the first gain in the chain which is the headunit in the dash. Turn it up until the speakers start to distort. Then back off a bit and remember that this is the limit of the headunit and that you should never cross this limit since everything after the processor will not be able to correct the distortion.

Obviously, the next piece in line would be the xover. Most of the time when I look at a vehicle, the xover is set improperly (too low) and the amp is turned up. By doing this you just starved the amp for signal voltage and tried to compensate by turning the amp gain up. Not cool guys and gals! Treat the gain on the xover as you did the headunit. Use the same steps. Increase gain until it distorts and then back off a bit.

If, by miracle, your 4V headunit actually does put out 4V, your gain should be close to the minimum position. Let's say that your wonderful headunit does indeed put out 4V. In this case, the amp gain should generally be set to match the 4V input, which will probably be the minimum position, and will yield full rated power. If a gain is set in the 50% range, that doesn't mean that the amp is putting out 50% of its available power. Read this paragraph again... Again...

Now then, let's go to the next level with a little investment. The only investment will be a small amplified speaker such as the Archer brand unit offered by Radio Shack. This cool little toy will remove any doubt of where the clipping starts that causes distortion. Using the Archer is very easy. Simply plug the RCA outputs from the head unit into the Archer's inputs. As you turn up the headunit's volume, the sound will of course get louder. When you clip the output of the headunit, the Archer will reproduce a noticeable distorted gain in output. This is the threshold of clipping. When a signal is clipped, a DC offset is briefly sent through the RCAs. This DC offset contains smaller sinewaves that are actually 127% more powerful than the unclipped sinewaves! This translates to about 2.1dB of SPL, but rather BAD, DAMAGING SPL. Again, not cool boys and girls! Anyway, turn the gain back down until the sound is normal again. Then move back to the next signal processor in the chain. It is important to remember that the goal is to get the gain as high as possible at the front of the chain and as low as possible at the amp.