alpine hu problem?

ooh, shizz that's complicated.  And to top it off, you let your g/f drive your car!

I'll have to sober up or get some sleep for this one.  But, first impression, if the wires are long enough try bypassing the DCX unit altogether and eliminate that from the equation.  You have a diagram to fall back on, right?

Defeat doesn't have anything to do with the interanal amps (besides the EQ and x-over settings going to it). Try going into the menu, tap it once(like your going to clock set) and there is an option for turning the internal amps on/off. Make sure it's on.

Also, with my 9830 (same except color changing and power ratings), sometimes the internal amps don't work until I switch the EQ (the easy preset ones) from 'user' to 'flat' and back again. This turns the internal amp on somehow. I don't know what causes this but changing the quick eq from one setting to another (i.e. 'user' (where I have mine) to 'flat' then back again somehow does it.

Good Luck!

I found out what the problem was:

I have the control unit sitting in the little cubby thing in my back seat where the arm rest folds down in the center, mainly because it shines the light up against the center consol in the back and looks cool...

Anyway, turns out my g/f flipped the center armrest up in the back seat to get some of her doodie in there, and when she did it switched my DCX to another preset and changed the inputs for the sub to take a signal from the front RCA's- thus making the sub level control of the HU inoperative.

And I was SURE nothing got changed, kinda glad it did though, this could have been hard to diagnose.