Hi guys.

Finally I finished my empeg install last night - looks great in the dash with a Darkstorm smoke lens and a black Anoface.

Just wondering on the correct procedure to setup the amp and the player. The volume seems really low and I've tried twiddling with the amp but I'm guessing. Is there a 'right' way to go about it for optimum sound and no distortion?

Also the blue wire on the PCATS tuner thats supposed to connect to antenna remote - do I need this? I forgot to connect it and don't really want to rip my dash apart again if I don't have to.

Cheers,

Phil

well, the best idea seems to be to set up with the empeg at 0db (or lower if there is clipping) to give a decent signal to the amp.

Then just change the amp gain to suit.

Slight adjustments are likely to involve reducing the empeg gain a bit, bringing the amp up a bit, so that when you are on the motorway you can increase the volume.

I tend to have mine at -18db for city and -6db for motorway. I take it up to 0 on some noisy roads. I also have voladj set to medium. This means my amp sits at about 3.

Cheers guys

The antenna remote lead tells the car's antenna to go up and down. I'm guessing that your car's antenna doesn't do this. If you have no complaints with the how the antenna's working, then you don't need to do anything.

BTW, the empeg is the only car stereo I ever saw that did the right thing with the antenna. That is, raise it when the radio's on, otherwise keep it lowered. Every other car stereo I've ever had kept the antenna up even if I'd never moved the stereo's mode away from CD. This is no longer an issue for me, as I no longer have an antenna that goes up and down, but I really appreciated it doing the right thing. Good job guys.

the empeg is the only car stereo I ever saw that did the right thing with the antenna

Many newer aftermarket HUs come with 2 wires (which is what the empeg w/ tuner has): one that is remote turn on and is "active" all the time the HU is on and one that is power antenna and is "active" only while the HU is in "tuner mode", suitable for a motor antenna.
Lots of questions on car audio boards about why the amp only turns on while they listen to the radio but not while listening to CDs...

Now with RDS you might still want to run up the aerial (or give juice to an antenna amplifier - integrated into the antenna mount both on my VW Polo and new Pug 206) all the time, in order to get better reception for the tuner as it scans for, for instance, traffic announcements...

I can see that about RDS, but consider that it's effectively useless in the US and base my comments on that. But it's cool that new ones are doing the right thing.