System Trouble Shooting

Made it back here again after old puter pooped. My old sound system is no more either-never even got to hear it.

New set-up in my 1988 BMW 528e is: a mint Alpine CDA 7941 head unit. Amp is a PPI pc650, 6 channel, 600 W/ rms. Front stage, Orion extreme 5 1/4 components 100W/ rms. Sub (1) 12" Orion NTense DVC, 500 W/ rms.

I installed everything last weekend except the sub. Basicly, I fell in love. Tweets too rich and mid's a little whimpy- murder install for a newbie. No one's cuting no holes in my Baby- yet... Anyway, after hooking up the sub today I lost 1/2 of my volume "WTF" Before I had scads of clean volume up to 27 outta 35. Now I've got something that sounds warm and ballanced but demands way more volume. 35 sounds like 20 now. Any old Schoolers remember the PPI pc650's?

Much appreciation for any insight

Thank you for the reply.

Here is what I did today, I bridged 3 channels into 4 ohm. I have 100 watts going to each side up front and 100 to each coil on the sub. According to the amp manual thats what I did anyway?

I also turned my gains up just a little. My volume is now back to causing ear pain but sounds clean all the way to max output.

One thing I wonder about though is when you bridge into 4 ohm's, does that double the power and THD? My amp is the old made in USA, clean, 0.02% THD and 110 DB signal to noise. The whole set up is a from the late 90's, even my headunit was made in Japan!

Beauty is in the ear of the beholder...