hey thanks that helped a lot. Im not sure it was clipping or what not. the speakers were bottoming out i guess? any ways i set the headunit to pass through and let the amp do the filtering and it fixed the whole problem. then i set the gain and now the speakers play amazingly. im not sure what i was doing, but i guess i was trying to set the frequency range on the headunit and i had it set to 100 on the amp and maybe they were fighting each other? i have no idea. i just took the head unit out of the equation and let the amp do the work and now its awesome. and yes, the headunit is confusing as all hell. thx for the responses though.