I have a 2011 Street glide. It has a Soundstream reserve head unit, and I have four speakers from CT sounds. They're meso series, rated for 80 w RMS on the 6.5s and 120 watts RMS on the 6x9s. I got the CT sounds amp for these speakers, 80 w RMS 4 channel. I'm not good at wiring things so I had a reputable car audio place that also works on motorcycles wire the amp.

When I was just listening to the head unit and the speakers with no amp, I had the EQ on one of the presets settings. I think it was just rock. When I got the bike back from sound Warehouse he told me that those bass settings were way too high and the speakers couldn't handle it. He had the base turned all the way down in the negatives. It is able to get super loud now and I can hear it on the highway and everything but it has a lack of bass at low volumes.

I've messed with some of the settings myself, and it's true that when I turn the bass up a little I do start to hear some kind of distortion or something at super high volumes. I can't tell if it's just the plastic on the bike vibrating and things rattling or if it's actually the speaker not being able to handle it. I'm nowhere near the full 80 watt power that they're supposed to be able to handle. I reached out to CT sounds and their first piece of advice was to switch the high pass filter to full. So he must not be thinking that the speakers just can't handle the bass otherwise he wouldn't be advising to turn it on full right? I know I can't hear deep bass notes over the engine and wind anyways, but should I leave it on full as they advise? I tried it in the garage and couldn't really hear much difference between full and HPF. But that's in the garage.

What do you guys think, if I'm pumping a system loud enough to be heard crystal clear at 75 miles an hour, do you think it's just the bike making noise and I need those sound skins or something? Or do you think this is a common thing with speakers, like maybe it can handle 80 w but not with full bass? Shouldn't there be something in the system or the speakers that naturally rolls off the bass at higher volumes?

Thanks

 

Can't help you with "possibilities" - but what I can assure you is that a 6.5 speaker doesn't like to play 80hz or lower at high volume. In a car, sure down to 50hz, but on a sled, nope! The more you turn up the bass, the more you increase those lower freq. Putting it to full pass let's all those freq through, hence why you have to but the bass into the negatives. I would suggest setting the amp to high pass and set freq to 100hz, put your EQ to flat, start turning it up until you hear distortion, and then adjust from there. If you want a little more bass, then turn the freq a little higher, if you find the bass is good enough, then lower it a hair to maybe 90hz, and so on.

 

What exact speakers and amp?

Basically with motorcyle audio and running some 6.5 and 6x9, you get bass or you get volume, you can't get both with them. Also depends on speakers and amp.
If you are running the Meso 65 coax, they are going to sound great have bass at low volume, but they will not be able to handle bass and get loud when you crank it up. They have a low sensitivity and need a lot of power to get loud and 80w from amp is not a lot of power.

 

They are the coax speakers, with the ct-80.4d amp.

I totally understand that this level of bass gets lost at high speeds anyways, and so I'm ok with the bass being flat at super high volume. I just wish the bass could roll off automatically, or I could have a bass **** or something...I want to hear the bass at low speeds to some degree, and I don't want to mess with the whole eq every time I speed up and slow down.

CT sounds again heavily recommended leaving the pass on full with the meso coax, and just inching the gain down.

 

I'm not familiar with those speakers, but when I ran a set of speakers that could actually take 200w of power, I never had them crossed less than 80hz.

 

Yeah man, unfortunately there's no amps that fit in a motorcycle that'll do that. I think JL might have an amp or 2 that do that. Maybe their VXI models, but you're looking at $1000

 

For starters on your settings are you contoling the crossovers (front and rear individual) thru the headunit??

If so start with the following set the 6.5s at 120hz and the 6x9 at 100 in headunit with amp crossovers set at full pass.

If setting crossovers on amp do the following.

Without having a CC-1to set the crossovers you will have to do it the old school way as below.

If you are relaying on the amp for crossovers your make sure the ALL sound manipulation is flat and off (EQ FLAT AND BASS BOOST OFF) then crossovers on amp set to HPF and turn the frequency setting to where you THINK the target crossovers would be.(as they are not marked very clearly)

Play music at higher levels and listen to speakers IF they sound distorted or muddy turn the frequency up if not turn down until they start sounding bad and then up just a bit.

Do this process with 1 set of speakers at a time (fronts OR rear)

Setting the xover on the amps this way will get you in the ballpark and keep the speakers closer to their safe zones and not play lower frequencies they were not intended to play.

This may take multiple adjustment to get it fine tuned to your liking. Set the EQ for your preference. If you raise the EQ slider up on the lower frequencies and there is no change you are above the crossover settings set on the amp and leave at 0.

 

I don't think I can set crossovers through the head unit, unless I'm not aware of that setting. I'll look. So you do think I should have the filter set differently for the 6x9s? Not the same for each set?
Only the low and high end are marked on the freq *****.

I'll check the head unit settings and keep tweaking the amp.

After I messed with it a little yesterday I took it out for a test run and I parked on the side of a deserted road. With the engine running I turned the volume up to like 35, and the weird thing is when I walked away from the bike and I was about 30 or 40 ft away it sounded great. It sounded just fine and it had plenty of bass. But when I got close to the bike and behind the fairing the sound quality wasn't as great. I'm not sure it's actually bass distortion at all it might be something in the highs. It's hard to explain, like it's too tinny or some of the highs are getting a little garbled together. But it only does that when I'm really close to the speakers.

 

Head unit does have digital crossover settings. Looks like youd need a degree in something to be able to understand this.

 

Actually this one was really basic. Only a few frequencies to choose from, and either 12 or 24db curve. Can't even set different for front and rear. But at least it's there so I just set it to 80.