Found a weird hidden preset in my new amp's menu

Same thing happened to me when I swapped in an older 5-channel last spring. I'd spent two evenings setting gains and EQ by ear with my phone's RTA app, then stumbled across a hidden DSP menu the manual never mentioned. The factory curve was tuned for a sub box way smaller than mine, so it sounded boomy in my sedan, but the crossover points and time alignment were honestly pretty close to what I'd dialed in myself. What I ended up doing was running the factory preset for a couple weeks first, then switching back to mine and comparing the same few tracks. Three songs I know cold, same volume level, back to back. That made the differences obvious instead of me guessing from memory. One thing I'd suggest is saving your own settings before you even test the preset, if the amp lets you store profiles. Mine had two user slots and I nearly wiped my tune by fat-fingering the menu while the preset was loaded. Losing two evenings of gain setting to a mis-pressed button is not fun.

In my case my own tune won in the end, mostly because of the sub level, but the factory crossover points were good enough that I kept those and only tweaked the EQ on top. Could go either way depending on how they matched the preset to your speakers.

Funny timing on this thread, I actually did the opposite last month with my Focal setup in the wagon. Found a buried 'Jazz Club' and 'Stadium' profile in my amp's app and figured I'd let the factory tune do the work instead of starting from scratch. Ran the Stadium preset for about a week and honestly the imaging was weirdly good, but the sub level was way too hot for my taste and it made everythign from the 90s sound thin in the verses and bloated in the choruses.

What worked for me was treating the preset as a starting point instead of a finished product. I left the crossover points and slope settings alone, then just pulled the sub gain down a few clicks and nudged the midrange back up. Took maybe 20 minutes with a couple of familiar tracks rather than the full weekend I'd budgeted. One thing I'd add, screenshot everything before you change it. I fat-fingered a setting on my old amp once and spent an hour trying to remember what it was, since there was no reset-to-factory option buried where I expected it. Now I snap a photo of every menu page before touching anything, saved me twice allready.

Curious whether your mystery preset was tuned for a specific sub box or just a generic curve, that seems to make all the difference in whether it's usable.

Kinda wild how many amps hide stuff like that. My buddy's head unit had a whole tuning wizard tucked behind a wierd button combo and he only found it by accident while resetting his bluetooth. Ended up doing most of the work for him. Curious if the fish preset was actually tuned for anything specific or if it's just some generic curve the engineer slapped in. Worth checking if there's a firmware update for your amp too, sometimes those menus get unlocked or documented after an update.

Been burned by this before, so now I keep a cheap spiral notebook in the glovebox and write down every setting before I touch anything in an amp menu. Sounds dumb but it saved me last winter when I poked around a hidden EQ on my 4-channel and lost my whole tune with no way back. Rebuilding it from memory took way longer than the original setup.

Also curious how a fish preset even gets designed. Fish tank acoustics are nothing like a car cabin so I'd bet it's just a name some engineer picked. Let us know how the week goes.

Update: decided to just run the fish preset for a few days like the guy with the Stadium profile did. Honestly it's closer than I expected, mostly the low end feels a bit thin. Also liked the glovebox notebook idea, my memory is terrible, so starting that tonight. One thing though, does anyone know if these factory presets adjust with the source, like radio vs bluetooth, or is it one fixed curve?