Thanks. It's a big relief that I'm not the only weirdo here.
HU : Pioneer p-80rsII DSP Bit Ten Mid Bass : Polk SR 6500 Tweets : Scan-Speak Illuminator Sub : MM 2124 4 Ch Genesis Profile Four Ultra Mono : Genesis DM
All our senses are processed at our brain. Which in turn has two halves. Each half controls the opposite side of the body. Multiple studies suggest that about 80+% of folks are left brain and right hand dominant. Three interesting facts.
1. Most people are either left or right half dominant.
2. Each half of the brain uses different ways for analyzing the inputs from our senses. The left half is rational, constructs the whole from bit up and is logical in its analysis. The right half is intuitive, build down from the whole and has the ability to process raw data into information based on patterns and other subjective attributes.
3. The processing of each sense, sight, sound, taste etc is divided between the two halves. Hence to get a full appreciation of any given sense, you have to use both halves together. You just have to know which half is better at what.
The problem on almost all forums is that members are either dominantly left or right brained. Neither half on its own will get you where you want to go. So yes measurements and proving what ever can be proved, is great. Better numbers will always sound better. But you can make average numbers sound good.
The left brain will give you measured distances to each driver to set your TA. The right brain will tell you that the most important number is the PLD between the drivers. Stay in that bvall park but feel free to add 2-3 ms delay on all drivers from measured distance as that raises stage height. Too much delay on your sub and your mid bass is mud. TA is about getting the two halves of your stage to merge seamlessly into one whole. This is typically what your right brain would tell you. Listen to it.
You can't have a stage starting half way up your windscreen and vocals that are smeared from the rear view mirror to the dash top. The scale is out. That's what your left brain is telling you. Again listen to it.
Of course integral to all this is the acceptance that sound has an intuitive / subjective / right brained side. The vast majority of the 80+% would struggle with this concept. That is why most car audio forums remain one dimensional.
Which side of the brain was most heavily used in arriving at the three "facts" above? If someone were to disagree with these "facts" and challenge them: would it be better to:
A: Break out in a fit of rage, curse and spit at the undersigner.
B: Repeat the underlying research keeping other variables fixed.
It's interesting information, most probably rooted in some heavy employment of the scientific method. Nonetheless, that does not prevent misuse.
Let's start with this one: "You just have to know which half is better at what."
The most compelling arguments to me are that either sound reproduction is a complete science or uses science in it's majority. If this is true you are in fact using the wrong side of the brain in your post or in car audio in general. We have devout learners that have put in decades of work into formalizing the ideas that seem to work. Audio reproduction is in "fact" a hard science. That means we formalized the major aspects of the field.
Case in point, you claim "Stay in that bvall park but feel free to add 2-3 ms delay on all drivers from measured distance as that raises stage height."
I do agree this is mostly your right brain side at work. Disproving this with my left side of the brain will hopefully put a lot of these arguments to rest.
Scientific method 101. From Wiki: 1. Use your experience: Consider the problem and try to make sense of it. Look for previous explanations. If this is a new problem to you, then move to step 2.
This is in fact where most car audio myths come to be I think. We have poor tools (ears) and little formal training. We are in fact bringing a knife to a gun fight in this hobby when we make theories. Hint: most of your questions have been answered already by professionals. Crack open a book.
2. Form a conjecture: When nothing else is yet known, try to state an explanation, to someone else, or to your notebook.
Adding 2-3ms of delay to all drivers will do nothing to your soundstage.
3. Deduce a prediction from that explanation: If you assume 2 is true, what consequences follow?
To me it seems that adding delay unanimously will simply delay the signal.
4. Test: Look for the opposite of each consequence in order to disprove 2. It is a logical error to seek 3 directly as proof of 2. This error is called affirming the consequent.[13]
Adding more delay, like seconds, to all speakers should be an easy modification that will allow testing. One way to add 5 seconds of delay to all speakers is to press play 5 seconds later on a track. Play track 1 on any CD. Play track 1 on the same CD again waiting 5 seconds before pressing play. Has the soundstage changed at all? Nope, soundstage has not changed. Using deduction, changing the delay to all speakers to finer counts like ms will lead to the same results. Is there any test like this that does not result in a delayed signal, but a changed soundstage? I think not.
What happened when you formulated your theory here is that wishful thinking turned into a false belief on you behalf. Maybe you got a bj in the morning and you were feeling good so your right half of the brain lead you to all sorts of positive conclusions. Your hypothesis is however completely false. You can see for yourself if you use the left half and follow the steps above. Notice that you haven't actually came upon a "fact". You can't really support anything unless you go through the formal process.
"Facts" are only facts until they are disproved. This was my next point. In science we generally don't have enough evidence to reject the null. A theory only stands as fact until a better one comes along.
I do believe there is some room for using your creative side in car audio. There is minor room for subjectivity, like making choices between linear distortion, nonlinear distortion, and staging. However, you must conquer the mountain of knowledge that scientists collected first. Even then the majority of preferences between linear and nonlinear distortion for example may have been covered, I just may not know about it. Every black art eventually becomes hard science. We formalize the ideas that tend to work into theories that can be later disproved.
If you really want to use your creative side I suggest being a musician. It may still help going through a school and learning what others have come to agree upon though time. Even then a lot has been formalized. There are lots of art schools too.
"Of course integral to all this is the acceptance that sound has an intuitive / subjective / right brained side."
Creating sounds yes, reproducing sounds not so much. Big difference.
Which side of the brain was most heavily used in arriving at the three "facts" above?
Both. Left for 1 and 3. Right for 2.
Quote:
Originally Posted by cvjoint
If someone were to disagree with these "facts" and challenge them: would it be better to:
A: Break out in a fit of rage, curse and spit at the undersigner.
B: Repeat the underlying research keeping other variables fixed.
It's interesting information, most probably rooted in some heavy employment of the scientific method. Nonetheless, that does not prevent misuse.
Neither. We can always agree to disagree . All I am saying is, if you use both halves of your brain to process incoming stimuli, overtime you will learn to identify which half to use more for most of them. This in turn can be used to enhance or mute the overall experience of said stimuli.
HU : Pioneer p-80rsII DSP Bit Ten Mid Bass : Polk SR 6500 Tweets : Scan-Speak Illuminator Sub : MM 2124 4 Ch Genesis Profile Four Ultra Mono : Genesis DM
Imo you should use zero EQ if you don't have the means to do it properly. I'm amazed when people claim they can do it by ear. Any decent install will need proper gear to get it analyzed. With that being said I've never used EQ before purchasing a test setup. I've tried screwing with it and I just felt stupid.
Given that you do have a test setup you should use it and it will do wonders. There is no way you can get a mechanical install to be flat even with a lenient +-2db parameter. If that were the case home audio would never ever need EQing.
People SHOULD do it by ear...car audio is about what sounds good to YOU,if you are competing then thats another story.If you dont compete though then the game changes.There is no test equipment available that is able to tell me what sounds good to ME.
I'm not a professional tuner by any stretch, but in my experience using zero eq when using something like a coaxial set up provided good sound.
More specifically, I liked the sound with no eq using the Boston SPZ's in coaxial mount with the passives. Removing the passives warranted some adjusting. Moving the tweeter from the mid required more and more eq the further away they were from each other.
I'm not a professional tuner by any stretch, but in my experience using zero eq when using something like a coaxial set up provided good sound.
More specifically, I liked the sound with no eq using the Boston SPZ's in coaxial mount with the passives. Removing the passives warranted some adjusting. Moving the tweeter from the mid required more and more eq the further away they were from each other.
People SHOULD do it by ear...car audio is about what sounds good to YOU,if you are competing then thats another story.If you dont compete though then the game changes.There is no test equipment available that is able to tell me what sounds good to ME.
This reminds me of those battery testers at Autozone that simply says "Good Battery" or "Bad Battery". It's true that no such tool exists for audio tunning. It doesn't mean YOU can't use a measurement system to make the setup sound better for YOU. Even if YOU haven't figured out how this works it doesn't mean OTHERS haven't.
Everyone in car audio uses an EQ, whether they like it or not. The car's interior is an extremely complex EQ.
Plus, the idea of "pure" and "natural" makes no sense in this context. There's nothing natural about shoving an orchestra though a 6" speaker. There might be some satisfaction in trying to solve the problem without electronic EQ, but if the goal is authentic fidelity then why limit your toolset.
"Music is Art. Audio is Engineering."
May you be touched by His Noodly Appendage.
Everyone in car audio uses an EQ, whether they like it or not. The car's interior is an extremely complex EQ.
Plus, the idea of "pure" and "natural" makes no sense in this context. There's nothing natural about shoving an orchestra though a 6" speaker. There might be some satisfaction in trying to solve the problem without electronic EQ, but if the goal is authentic fidelity then why limit your toolset.
What about shoving the orchestra through a 3" speaker? What then?
Everyone in car audio uses an EQ, whether they like it or not. The car's interior is an extremely complex EQ.
Plus, the idea of "pure" and "natural" makes no sense in this context. There's nothing natural about shoving an orchestra though a 6" speaker. There might be some satisfaction in trying to solve the problem without electronic EQ, but if the goal is authentic fidelity then why limit your toolset.
Completely agree. Too many obstacles in a car to rule out using EQ. In home audio, passive crossovers essentially equalize the signal between the amp and speaker. That's also the same thing those car crossovers with tweeter attenuation options do - broad EQ on the tweeter passband.
Let me ask you a question - if Eric Clapton hopped in the back seat of your car with his guitar and started sing a song, would you feel the need to hookup an equalizer and tweak the sound?!
Let me ask you a question - if Eric Clapton hopped in the back seat of your car with his guitar and started sing a song, would you feel the need to hookup an equalizer and tweak the sound?!
if Eric Clapton hopped in the back seat of your car with his guitar and started sing a song, would you feel the need to hookup an equalizer and tweak the sound?!
Yes, because vehicle acoustics suck regardless if it's clapton or tiny tim playing within them.
Let me ask you a question - if Eric Clapton hopped in the back seat of your car with his guitar and started sing a song, would you feel the need to hookup an equalizer and tweak the sound?!
If you need EQ, your system is not set up well.
Sorry, but that's just flat out wrong. In a car, you need to eq not for what's coming out the speakers, but that which is hitting your ears. You need to check out Andy's graphs for speaker level and ear level FR in a car. Placement goes a long way yes, but placement plus dsp goes much further. It's also a fact that most people don't know how to use an eq in a car.
I'd rather have Clapton standing on my dash than on the back seat.
HU : Pioneer p-80rsII DSP Bit Ten Mid Bass : Polk SR 6500 Tweets : Scan-Speak Illuminator Sub : MM 2124 4 Ch Genesis Profile Four Ultra Mono : Genesis DM
An RTA does not hear the way we do - our brains can separate direct sound from reflections - the RTA cannot (and reflections close to the speakers can be controlled with damping /absorbing materials). This what most of you are missing - and why it seems you are never happy with your systems and need to constantly tweak to no avail. An EQ won't fix most basic problems - such as poor speaker placement.
Good sound in a car means you have to do two things. Minimize the effect of your environment then tweak for a flat response based on your ears sensitivity. An RTA is a big help for the first and your ears, the eq and the FM graphs are a big help for the latter.
HU : Pioneer p-80rsII DSP Bit Ten Mid Bass : Polk SR 6500 Tweets : Scan-Speak Illuminator Sub : MM 2124 4 Ch Genesis Profile Four Ultra Mono : Genesis DM
Adjusting volume of speaker = cutting or boosting frequency
Alpine CDA-7949 + CHA S609, CDA-117E, Kenwood KEC-600, Focal 165KRX2, SS rubicon 502 for tweeter, SS rubicon 702 for woofer, SS rubicon 1002 for Alpine SWR-1243D
back in the 80's when I got my first Blaupunkt system the guy told me that the sign of a really high end system is one that you don't have to EQ at all...Just install and the tones would be "flat" (in the good way, not the dull way)
But there wasn't any eq's with mics that could "tune" themselves, either
I used to own one, but I was always adjusting it for every song and just got fed up with it and sold it. would like to give a newer self tuning one day, but I am not sure it would be worth the price.... could get better speakers for the back instead.
Re: Who uses ZERO Eq???
Linear Mode
