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Replacing Factory Speakers Fact and Fiction

antarctica24

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#1
So what we have here is the electrical representation of the curve that comes from Ford and Sony on the factory radio.

Curve.jpg

I had a guy send me a PM to ask me something and it sparked a moment that I thought I would share.

There are two ways to obtain a curve from your system. One is moderately more expensive than the other.
The electrical way and the microphone way.

The electrical way is picking up the signal from the signal line and taking a measurement. Using the microphone actually picks up what is being heard and taking into account the acoustics of the vehicle.

It has been said many times here that someone bought a replacement set of speakers installed them and suddenly they had better sound.

That is a perceptual problem. As I have said many times, sound is a very personal thing and more so an emotional thing and it affects each person differently and then some are more qualified to hear than others.

If you are one of those people who bought aftermarket speakers and installed in place of your factory speakers and turned it on and said, WOW, I have better sound. You got dooped.

In addition, after you listen to something for about 20 minutes your brain takes over and does a lot of correction for you internally. That is a much longer conversation.

As I said in my PM, I would take a factory tuned system with factory speakers over a factory tuned system with speakers added after the fact every day of the week and twice on Sunday. All you got by replacing your factory speakers without a retune was more volume and now a system more out of tune than the factory system. Period.

THE PROBLEM:
When speakers are made even though they are made in the same factory, under the same conditions did you realize that the electrical parameters of each driver is different from one to the next? I'm talking about the Thiele/Small Parameters.

Yep, that means the Focal speakers you paid 800-1000 for, 99% of the time, they are not a matched set out of the box. BELIEVE IT.

If you know someone, or are competing in sound quality events for the company, you can ask for a matched set and even then they are only getting it really close. You will never ever get a 100% matched set. The way more expensive sets like $1500-$3500 most of the time are matched sets. This is not the case with high end home audio. You will never get a 100% matched set, but with home audio it is more important because most people don't tune their home stuff.

Why do we care? its a thing called balancing (Left and Right) and imaging (Placement on the sound stage) and staging (Position of the sound stage) and spectral balance(How all of the frequencies are balanced independently and with each other).
The closer the speakers are to each other electrically the easier it is and less tuning required to get the car to sound right.

Now, take what you were given from Ford and Sony. The speakers as we know are crap, but the crap speakers had over a million dollars of equipment and time spent tuning them for your environment. That means, those tweeters in the doors, why if unblocked sound like they are playing from the dash and the vocals coming from the lower part of the door sound like they are coming from the top of the dash. (HELPFUL HINT), Play something with a lot of detail. Turn the volume down, lay the seat back to where the headrest is in alignment with the b pillar and listen. Keep your legs in the center not laying on the door and don't block the tweeter. Everything will appear to be coming from the dash. Everything I mentioned above balancing (Left and Right) and imaging (Placement on the sound stage) and staging (Position of the sound stage) and spectral balance plays a role in getting it to do that in addition to tuning the system.

TOO MUCH TUNING CAN BE BAD:
The more tuning you have to do, the more you move away from the best sound possible. You want the speakers to match electrically as close as possible. There is software and hardware out there to test it, you can buy it a Madisound.com.
If you over tune you could be adding information there that was not in the original recording, which is what were trying to do here. You want to reproduce the original recording as close as possible.

CAN VOLUME AFFECT TUNING:
Yes, as volume goes up and down the tuning changes. This is what Linear equality is. If tuned correctly and this part is more corrected by properly matching the amp and head unit signal wise, your system will stay with the same tune regardless of volume. For example have you ever noticed in some systems that the more volume you get the more bass you get out of proportion to everything else? Or more midrange or more highs? Remember balance is key. Everything needs to be balanced with everything else as the volume moves up and down.

The more the speakers electrically match each other the easier it is to get it to do that.

THE CURVE:
When you look at that curve in the above attachment, Ford and Sony said, we need lots of low end, (because it is those frequencies that excite us the most) and we need lots of midrange, and some upper end highs to improve the ambiance (Make the environment sound larger).

That curve represents the acoustical curve of the vehicle picked up through the signal not played through the factory speakers. The curve played through the factory speakers would look a little different.

The electrical parameters of the factory speakers are no where near what the aftermarket speakers are.

WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?

It means if you just replace the factory speakers and don't retune to compensate for the electrical values of the speakers and the acoustics of the environment you have made the sound worse not better. All you get with replacing the factory speakers on a factory tune is more volume and an unturned system. Your not listening to the music as it was recorded. There is nothing wrong with taking an original recording and playing it louder. But regardless if you are listening to a recording from an album (Which are making a comeback, go figure), or CD, or Cassette, or DAT, you can get to the original recording thought with the cassette you have to take into account the azimuth (probably a mute point at this time), but Nakamichi thought it was important enough to make all of their cassette decks with an azimuth adjustment, that allowed the user with a knob to change the alignment of the playback head to improve the quality. NOT A GIMMIC.

WHAT ABOUT THE SUBWOODER YOU ADDED?

You took the factory signal and made it much louder in a specific frequency range. THATS IT.

Yes you have more bass than the factory system, but you added it now to an untuned environment and just made a bad thing worse.

Your actually better off adding an amp to the front and back, and letting the amp get its signal from the head unit. Your still not right, but in theory all you did was add volume to the factory signal but the tune will be more correct for the speakers than if you add aftermarket speakers. You will have some linear drift because the amp doesn't really match the head unit but you can get it close.

TUNING:
When tuning, and thinking about speakers that don't match electrically, you need a left and right 31 band EQ. When you take a microphone (THE BEST WAY TO TUNE) because the mic takes into account the environment (reflections, sound absorbing materials, etc) fading to left and right and doing a pink noise test, your left curve and right curve will almost all the time be different because the electrical values of the drivers are different.

This is not an elitist snob attitude thing. This is scientific fact.

I said to the guy in my PM, most people don't know what good sound is. How can I say that? Well.....having had two successful audio shops and judged audio sound quality competitions for over 12 years, allowed me to meet and listen to a lot of stuff. Its like buying Palmer chocolate at Easter, and thinking this is the best chocolate ever, you have never had any other chocolate. Then one day, someone gives you Hersheys chocolate and you think man what have I been missing, then later someone gives you Godiva chocolate, and then later you get Ghirardelli, you eat that for a while and think there is nothing better, then comes along someone with Lindt and your world has been turned upside down. There can not possibly be anything better, you go out of your living area to another part of the world, and someone gives you Ferrero Rocher. You could go ahead and die.

Obviously everyone's taste buds are different, and so are your ears, but one thing I learned through judging audio competitions with other judges. When you are listen to the mediocre stuff, there is a wide range of opinions. So in my example somewhere between Hershey's and Godiva, lots of opinions, meaning multiple scores from multiple judges on the same vehicle would vary about 15-20% but when you listen to something exceptional, you could take the score sheets of all the judges that listened to the exceptional cars, and the scores were within 1% of each other. I have judged over 1000 sound systems in cars and of those 1000 or so, I can tell you there were 25 that I listed at one point that I considered to be great, and of those 25 there were 5 that I considered to be exceptional and 2 that I considered to be better than anything else available at the time. Those 25, 5, show up on everyone's list. which means the other 975 or so, needed help.

What that means is what is really good is really good to everyone who hears it whether your trained or not. Until you have been exposed to what sounds good, you really don't know. And I believe there is still yet stuff that is better than what I have heard to be found.

In conclusion, replacing the factory speakers without retuning the system makes your Fiesta ST sound better.....FICTION.

I just dropped 8K moving from Raleigh to Spokane WA. My install is on hold until November or middle of December. I am still doing the Morel thing and the Alpine thing and I will help anyone at no charge to tune their system and can do it without ever listening to the vehicle and get it to within 95% of where it needs to be.
 


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#4
That's a lot of words to say you should tune your audio system to match your speakers. Anyhow, I think your chocolate analogy is a good one, and the truth is that once you get to a sufficiently high level of quality, most people can't really tell the difference between pretty good and really good and excellent quality. "Audiophiles" can probably differentiate between pretty good and excellent, but it's probably only a very small group who will appreciate superior/excellent quality over just really good. What I'm getting at is anyone who cares enough about audio quality to invest as much as it takes to do all this probably already knows all this, and anyone who can't tell the difference is probably not going to invest in a completely bespoke sound system anyway, (unless they are just doing it to show off, in which case sound quality is probably not their primary concern).
 


OP
antarctica24

antarctica24

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Thread Starter #5
That's a lot of words to say you should tune your audio system to match your speakers. Anyhow, I think your chocolate analogy is a good one, and the truth is that once you get to a sufficiently high level of quality, most people can't really tell the difference between pretty good and really good and excellent quality. "Audiophiles" can probably differentiate between pretty good and excellent, but it's probably only a very small group who will appreciate superior/excellent quality over just really good. What I'm getting at is anyone who cares enough about audio quality to invest as much as it takes to do all this probably already knows all this, and anyone who can't tell the difference is probably not going to invest in a completely bespoke sound system anyway, (unless they are just doing it to show off, in which case sound quality is probably not their primary concern).
I agree with you somewhat, its like the whole car and power upgrade thing. You can get to 300 pretty easily, but getting to 500 is an exponential jump in effort and cost and to get from 500-600 is another exponential jump and then from 600-800 becomes cost prohibitive.

You don't have to spend a lot of money to get good sound, and you don't have to spend a lot of money to get great sound. You do need to spend upwards of 3-5K to get between great and exceptional and then above that as you are saying, you can tell the difference but then you start looking for stuff in the source material like listening to a classical piece of music and hear someone turn the page on their sheet music or someone tapping their foot. It gets really crazy sometimes. When you are dealing with home stuff and DA converters it becomes something on another planet level. Soundstages leaving the confines of the room and boundary of the speakers. You can get soundstages outside of the windshield and outside of the boundaries of the doors but it takes effort.
 


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#6
So what we have here is the electrical representation of the curve that comes from Ford and Sony on the factory radio.

View attachment 11599

...Lots of words and good information...

I just dropped 8K moving from Raleigh to Spokane WA. My install is on hold until November or middle of December. I am still doing the Morel thing and the Alpine thing and I will help anyone at no charge to tune their system and can do it without ever listening to the vehicle and get it to within 95% of where it needs to be.
Congrats on the move? I hate moving but, if it is for a good purposes I can get on board with the idea.

And, I'll bight, how can you tune my system without hearing it? Not trying to be an arse, just wanting to understand. And through understanding, make my system sound better.

Thank you!
 


OP
antarctica24

antarctica24

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Thread Starter #7
Congrats on the move? I hate moving but, if it is for a good purposes I can get on board with the idea.

And, I'll bight, how can you tune my system without hearing it? Not trying to be an arse, just wanting to understand. And through understanding, make my system sound better.

Thank you!
No Arse taken [twothumb]

As humans we are imperfect. I think everyone can agree on that. While our brains, eyes, and ears my lie to us on occasion computers do not. They are programed to give specific output based on specific input.

If I am helping someone tune their car, I need to know what speakers they are using, so I know the usable frequency range for the crossover points.
I need to know the amps they are using so we can set the input level.
Then we need an RTA. There are a couple available on the phone which will work, and we need a disc with pink noise.
Then I will send you a disk I made that has every frequency in the audible range on it for 60 seconds. That will help us find any unwanted resonances in the car.
Once we set the levels on the amp, and set the crossover points we look at the RTA.
What were looking for is frequencies and adjacent frequencies that are more than 3db deviation from the adjacent frequencies. We adjust the crossovers to move as many of the frequencies as close to each other as possible.
When we have adjusted as much as we can with the crossover points, then we work using the EQ only lowering frequencies, never raising.

Eventually we will see a frequency that peaks no matter what we change. That is the resonate frequency of the particular vehicle. Those who do the whole SPL thing will tell you that is you tune your ported subwoofer to that frequency you will get a free boost in SPL.
If that frequency too far out of place then and only then can we raise adjacent frequencies to bring it more in line. What we want is a smooth transition from 20htz to 20k htz. If you are using a Audio Control RTA you can set the step from 3db to 2db and then 1 db to really hone it in.

Listening to the car at that point will yield 95% of where you need to be. I never had to hear it.

Then, the real fine tuning requires ears, and trained ears. If your near me, I more than willing to spend the time and get dialed in. But at point you have to listen to a large variety of music and recordings to make small adjustments to find the right balance.

YOU SHOULD NEVER HAVE TO CHANGE YOUR SUB OR EQ SETTINGS BETWEEN SONGS. If you did, you didn't tune it right. If done correctly, it should be able to play loud and clear with every song regardless of how it was recorded.

I have tuned over 30 world class winning vehicles using the method above. All were done for free. For 75% of the work takes about an hour. The remaining 25% can take a day, in 20 minute increments. After 20 minutes your brain starts to make corrections for what your hearing, and you have to stop and get out of the car for about an hour.

Some people will tune for hours on end, and all their doing is spinning their wheels. Have you ever heard people at a show say I stayed up all night tuning only to lose and then they don't understand why? That's why.
 


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#8
Thanks for the write up. I'll testify to the fact that swapping speakers with no tuning made a negligible difference... Lesson learned.

Can you suggest a very budget friendly starting point for a tuner that is compatible with our cars? I know nothing on the subject but am interested in learning and improving SQ.

Sent from my SM-N920V using Tapatalk
 


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#9
No Arse taken [twothumb]

As humans we are imperfect. I think everyone can agree on that. While our brains, eyes, and ears my lie to us on occasion computers do not. They are programed to give specific output based on specific input.
I can tell you after years of not wearing hearing protection is various hearing protection required environments, my hearing is impeccable...J/K

If I am helping someone tune their car, I need to know what speakers they are using, so I know the usable frequency range for the crossover points.
I need to know the amps they are using so we can set the input level.
Then we need an RTA. There are a couple available on the phone which will work, and we need a disc with pink noise.
Then I will send you a disk I made that has every frequency in the audible range on it for 60 seconds. That will help us find any unwanted resonances in the car.
Once we set the levels on the amp, and set the crossover points we look at the RTA.
What were looking for is frequencies and adjacent frequencies that are more than 3db deviation from the adjacent frequencies. We adjust the crossovers to move as many of the frequencies as close to each other as possible.
When we have adjusted as much as we can with the crossover points, then we work using the EQ only lowering frequencies, never raising.

Eventually we will see a frequency that peaks no matter what we change. That is the resonate frequency of the particular vehicle. Those who do the whole SPL thing will tell you that is you tune your ported subwoofer to that frequency you will get a free boost in SPL.
If that frequency too far out of place then and only then can we raise adjacent frequencies to bring it more in line. What we want is a smooth transition from 20htz to 20k htz. If you are using a Audio Control RTA you can set the step from 3db to 2db and then 1 db to really hone it in.

Listening to the car at that point will yield 95% of where you need to be. I never had to hear it.

Then, the real fine tuning requires ears, and trained ears. If your near me, I more than willing to spend the time and get dialed in. But at point you have to listen to a large variety of music and recordings to make small adjustments to find the right balance.

YOU SHOULD NEVER HAVE TO CHANGE YOUR SUB OR EQ SETTINGS BETWEEN SONGS. If you did, you didn't tune it right. If done correctly, it should be able to play loud and clear with every song regardless of how it was recorded.

I have tuned over 30 world class winning vehicles using the method above. All were done for free. For 75% of the work takes about an hour. The remaining 25% can take a day, in 20 minute increments. After 20 minutes your brain starts to make corrections for what your hearing, and you have to stop and get out of the car for about an hour.

Some people will tune for hours on end, and all their doing is spinning their wheels. Have you ever heard people at a show say I stayed up all night tuning only to lose and then they don't understand why? That's why.
Okay, that makes sense. The downside is I have little clue as to what speakers are in my car. I know they are not stock, most likely Clarion from the 2013-ish product line. But without pulling doors off and taking apart the car I have no way of finding out for sure. Amps are easy because they are visible. And I don't know if they put in a passive crossover in the front doors.

I have seen some of the apps for an RTA on a smart phone. I would figure an external mic would be better at picking up the sound than the phone would.

Thank you for the info!
 


OP
antarctica24

antarctica24

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Thread Starter #10
Generally a good starting point and you should be able to figure out if they are using a passive crossover or not depending on how many speaker wires are coming out of the amp.

If your system is a 2-way with sub, this is a tweeter with 5.25 or 6.25 You generally want the sub to reinforce the midbass region, so you cross it over a little higher than normal if the midrange is a 5.25 than you need to come up a little higher or the sub somewhere between 85-130. it depends on the sub.

If the midrange is a 6.5 you can cross the sub from 60-80.
You will want the midrange to play from 2500 - infinity down.

If it is a 3 way, with a sub or what I would call a 4 way all active, the tweeters from 2500 up, midrange from 2500 down to 200 Midbass from 200 to say 50-60 and the sub from 50-60 down. You have to work on where they match up because at the crossover point you will get a 3db peak.

These are the starting points.

As for hearing protection, if you are listening to your system so loud for so long that you need hearing protection you need to turn it down, your bothering the neighbors. If you want to crank it up, the rule is crack the windows and do not play it longer than 10 minutes a extreme volumes.
 


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antarctica24

antarctica24

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Thread Starter #11
Thanks for the write up. I'll testify to the fact that swapping speakers with no tuning made a negligible difference... Lesson learned.

Can you suggest a very budget friendly starting point for a tuner that is compatible with our cars? I know nothing on the subject but am interested in learning and improving SQ.

Sent from my SM-N920V using Tapatalk
The best method I have seen so far and the direction I am going is an IPAD with outboard DA converter to a processor. There is type of one on ebay from Precision power, called the r-88 but JL audio has a new one also which looks very promising. If you use it in conjunction with the their new tuning device you could infact use the factory head unit. The FIX-82 will correct all of the bad stuff from Sony and put it back to flat. Then you can use the Twk-D8 and tune from scratch. I think the Twk-88 has both of these features built into one unit. You have heard me say, dual 31 band, but this piece has 8 10 selectable bands graphic or parametric. It would be hard to find something that could not be tuned by this thing. So instead of 62 bands you get 80.
 


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#12
I'll have to take another look at what all is going on with the amps. I have three. Presumably one for each sub and one for the remaining speakers. And I believe there are four pairs coming out of the amp for the speakers, which would imply a pair for each door. But, I need to double check.
 


M-Sport fan

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#13
Between my garbage hearing, about 45% GONE (and LOUD tinnitus), and the way that every/any car applicable audio source is so disgustingly compressed nowadays, I will totally give up on my previous idea of just installing Focals in place of the factory speakers, and LIVE WITH whatever sound the stock system presents to me, as I could not tell the difference anyway, "tuned" or not. [wink] [:(]
 


jmrtsus

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#14
I am not a calibrated microphone.......I am an individual with normal hearing for my age......meaning as TESTED I have a sharp dropoff of hearing above 8k. So any system "tuned " to a flat response will sound dead and lifeless to me. And like all people the hearing in each ear is different. I have built custom speaker systems and tube type audio amps for many, many years and understand the goal to produce a flat response in amps and speakers. However that is to insure we reproduce what the source provides. However to get that sound to our brains it will normally require adjustments from flat.

That said implying the "best" sound is from a system tuned flat is simply incorrect. The "best" sound is only achieved with a system adjusted to an individual's hearing response. As stated a "flat" system will sound absolutly terrible for an older individual like myself.......and my system will sound overly "bright" for younger listeners. This is why most opinions on sound must be taken with a grain of salt.

My only objection to our sound system is it needs a subwoofer and the adjustments steps are too large for fine tuning on the system controls. Also for me the tweeters need help, nice domes or AMT types would clear some of the harshness when boosted.

We all adjust our sound system to our tastes.......which is in reality determined by our individual hearing. In the mid 60's to mid 70's the hearing differences were addressed by the two main sounds in speaker systems. The flatliners loved the so called "east coast" sound epitomized by AR and their sealed systems and relatively flat frequency response, on the other hand you had the "West Coast" sound epitomized by JBL with a boosted low and high end. If you enjoyed more classical types of music the AR's were the ticket. On the other hand if you were a rock fan the JBL's was the way to go. It also seemed the younger audiophiles were for the "East coast" sound and did not like the ported sound of JBL's as too bassy and a hot top. Older folks went with the ported JBL's boom and horn tweeter sizzle. So which was better? What sounds good to YOU is the only real consideration unless you need confirmation you have spent a ton of money that impresses others.......

As to replacing your speakers will make the sound "worse" is true ONLY if you believe the myth of flat as good for everyone. If you want more bass you can get that with aftermarket speakers and what exactly is wrong with wanting more bass? Same with the mid and highs, you can shop speakers to suit what you want to hear according to your ears. Your sound system should make your ears happy not some electronic response curve happy! Unless you are going to compete in audio contests don't get conned by audio "gurus" at the auto audio store and the big box "audio guy" selling you a $1000 system for what a good pair of speakers at $120 could do.

BTW, about 30% of the custom amps I built were requested to have no tone controls. All of those were younger male customers. The older(over 40) wanted loudness, bass and treble controls with the occasional mid control. I say men because I have never had a custom amp or speaker job from a female. The point being that the older guys were like me suffering from age degenerate high frequency hearing losses and needed controls to compensate. That is also why many speaker systems have high frequency adjustments. So listen to music the way you like, and crank it up! Rock on!
 


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antarctica24

antarctica24

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Thread Starter #15
I am not a calibrated microphone.......I am an individual with normal hearing for my age......meaning as TESTED I have a sharp dropoff of hearing above 8k. So any system "tuned " to a flat response will sound dead and lifeless to me. And like all people the hearing in each ear is different. I have built custom speaker systems and tube type audio amps for many, many years and understand the goal to produce a flat response in amps and speakers. However that is to insure we reproduce what the source provides. However to get that sound to our brains it will normally require adjustments from flat.

That said implying the "best" sound is from a system tuned flat is simply incorrect. The "best" sound is only achieved with a system adjusted to an individual's hearing response. As stated a "flat" system will sound absolutly terrible for an older individual like myself.......and my system will sound overly "bright" for younger listeners. This is why most opinions on sound must be taken with a grain of salt.

My only objection to our sound system is it needs a subwoofer and the adjustments steps are too large for fine tuning on the system controls. Also for me the tweeters need help, nice domes or AMT types would clear some of the harshness when boosted.

We all adjust our sound system to our tastes.......which is in reality determined by our individual hearing. In the mid 60's to mid 70's the hearing differences were addressed by the two main sounds in speaker systems. The flatliners loved the so called "east coast" sound epitomized by AR and their sealed systems and relatively flat frequency response, on the other hand you had the "West Coast" sound epitomized by JBL with a boosted low and high end. If you enjoyed more classical types of music the AR's were the ticket. On the other hand if you were a rock fan the JBL's was the way to go. It also seemed the younger audiophiles were for the "East coast" sound and did not like the ported sound of JBL's as too bassy and a hot top. Older folks went with the ported JBL's boom and horn tweeter sizzle. So which was better? What sounds good to YOU is the only real consideration unless you need confirmation you have spent a ton of money that impresses others.......

As to replacing your speakers will make the sound "worse" is true ONLY if you believe the myth of flat as good for everyone. If you want more bass you can get that with aftermarket speakers and what exactly is wrong with wanting more bass? Same with the mid and highs, you can shop speakers to suit what you want to hear according to your ears. Your sound system should make your ears happy not some electronic response curve happy! Unless you are going to compete in audio contests don't get conned by audio "gurus" at the auto audio store and the big box "audio guy" selling you a $1000 system for what a good pair of speakers at $120 could do.

BTW, about 30% of the custom amps I built were requested to have no tone controls. All of those were younger male customers. The older(over 40) wanted loudness, bass and treble controls with the occasional mid control. I say men because I have never had a custom amp or speaker job from a female. The point being that the older guys were like me suffering from age degenerate high frequency hearing losses and needed controls to compensate. That is also why many speaker systems have high frequency adjustments. So listen to music the way you like, and crank it up! Rock on!
I am sure I understand what your talking about. There is no where in my article that I wrote that says anything about setting an system to flat. That would sound really bad because your not taking into account the acoustics of the environment. Sound is a very personal thing, and its not that everyone has different taste in the way they like to hear the sound, it is that everyone's hearing is different to some degree. Some people are just tone deaf. The tuning method I have laid out here, will properly and correctly tune any vehicle and any sound system on planet earth and the results will be award winning.

What your trying to accomplish is when you play pink noise in a system, and catch that information on an RTA, what that shows you is the acoustical response of the vehicle at that moment with a flat EQ curve. Then What you so is look at each band and using your crossover, you adjust level, slope and crossover point to reduce the variation between bans to 3db or less. You could have many frequencies that have some which are 1-9dp above zero and some that could 4-9 below zero(Though that would be odd). Your moving it to flat, you reducing adjacent freq so that there is no more than 3db variation between each frequency. Then you use the EQ to continue to lower bands to get the curve where (WHATEVER IT IS) has a smooth transition from 20hz to 20k. This will make the car very musical sounding and provided that you have not put the speakers in any weird locations, will setup your imaging and staging to 95%.

As for your JBL question, neither. A perfect system has everything balanced. No bass or no highs, no midrange nor midbass should overpower anything else that is outside of what was originally recorded. Yes there are people out there that adjust their sound to their taste, but that doesn't make it correct. It just means they wanted something in the sound that wasn't originally recorded. Like when you have 2 fifteen inch subs and the bass overpowers everything else. Why bother doing anything else. Just throw a couple of subs in the car and play tone tracks.

As for you not being a calibrated microphone, the fact that your hearing drops off at 8k means you should be tuning anything and probably shouldn't be judging how anyone else's systems sounds. Right? That's a serious drop off.
Those who are interested can go here and test their hearing, the room needs to be dead quiet and you need a good set of headphones. http://www.noiseaddicts.com/2009/03/can-you-hear-this-hearing-test/


As for normal hearing of your age, I am not sure what's going there. I have been tested out to 14k, and I am 48, soooo, don't know what to say about what your calling normal. Some people can hear better than others I guess.

As for your amp building, amps should not have any controls whatsoever except for signal input adjustment. An Amp is not supposed to do anything other than take the signal and raise the volume. I don't even know of an amp company anywhere that makes 12 volt car amps with tone controls, that's retarded and to honest crossover controls and bass controls are nonsense as well.

Exceptional amp design come from a good input stage, output state, good opamps in the middle, and good caps. That's it. Anything else in the signal path doesn't do anything but degrade the sound quality. Every amp I used when competing had all of that stuff taken out. Manufacturers add the bass feature because bass sells. They add the crossover feature because there are not a lot of customers that can afford to build elaborate systems and again bass sells. Amp manufacturers want to sell product like subs and amps, so when you can sell a amp to add to a factory system that has a built in crossover, then add a sub, you just made a $550 sell. If amps were sold without all the gimmicks then customers would be forced to buy external processors every time they wanted to upgrade.

Customer need to be educated because mosy just don't know the difference and until they hear the difference they just go on not knowing.

So in conclusion, I'm back to replacing your factory speakers without a retune makes your system worse - TRUE.
Replacing your factory speakers makes your sound system better without a tune - FANTASY.
I MADE THE COMMENT OF SETTING YOUR SYSTEM TO FLAT - I DONT KNOW WHERE YOU COME UP WITH THAT.
 


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antarctica24

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To be more fair, everyone is entitled to their opinion. Im simply sharing whats involved in making your system sound the best that it can. I would never tune a system flat and what others on this forum may not understand what were talking about, in your Fiesta, you have tone controls and I think the ones with the Nav actually have some EQ controls. Even when you set those controls flat, your system is not flat. There is EQ processing, time alignment and crossover adjustments being made within the factory amp on the Focust ST, and EQ and Time Alignment processing going on in the Fiesta ST that happens inside the factory amp that you have no control to adjust.

In order to properly tune your fiesta and remove the factory curve, you need either a FIX-82 from JL Audio or something like a Masocni 8, that has an input EQ as well as output EQ. You have to bring the factory curve back to flat before you can then make your own adjustments based on the equipment you purchased. If you don't, your just adding insult to injury.

Let me say a different way.

Imagine you just bought a 1980 Camaro. You remove the factory radio. Your not using any of the factory amps (I don't think they had one but you get the point).
When you install a new aftermarket radio. They are tuned to FLAT. Meaning, Kenwood, Alpine, Clarion, Rockford, none of these companies have added any processing behind the scenes. So you infact are starting FLAT. The speaker companies when they build their speakers, want to make sure they remove as much coloration from the speakers as possible. What is coloration? sound created artificially by they cone, basket, magnet, diaphragm. That's why all graphs on speakers show a response curve of flat. So when you install the speaker in your car, your only dealing with the acoustics when you tune, not the speakers, headunit or amp.

When you start tuning, now the adjustments your making revolve around correcting for the acoustics in the vehicle and the materials used on the dash, seats, floor, headliner, curvature of the roof, glass, etc.

The RTA never lies and neither does the calibrated mike. A completely def person could tune a car audio system to within 95% of where it needed to be to accurately reproduce any original recording using the methods I have described.

If your going to comment negatively on my post or challenge it, it is very important you are able to understand what your reading. While these methods are ones that are tried and true I do not own these methods. 99% of the successful IASCA cars competing today and yesterday use the exact same methodology.


I am not a calibrated microphone.......I am an individual with normal hearing for my age......meaning as TESTED I have a sharp dropoff of hearing above 8k. So any system "tuned " to a flat response will sound dead and lifeless to me. And like all people the hearing in each ear is different. I have built custom speaker systems and tube type audio amps for many, many years and understand the goal to produce a flat response in amps and speakers. However that is to insure we reproduce what the source provides. However to get that sound to our brains it will normally require adjustments from flat.

That said implying the "best" sound is from a system tuned flat is simply incorrect. The "best" sound is only achieved with a system adjusted to an individual's hearing response. As stated a "flat" system will sound absolutly terrible for an older individual like myself.......and my system will sound overly "bright" for younger listeners. This is why most opinions on sound must be taken with a grain of salt.

My only objection to our sound system is it needs a subwoofer and the adjustments steps are too large for fine tuning on the system controls. Also for me the tweeters need help, nice domes or AMT types would clear some of the harshness when boosted.

We all adjust our sound system to our tastes.......which is in reality determined by our individual hearing. In the mid 60's to mid 70's the hearing differences were addressed by the two main sounds in speaker systems. The flatliners loved the so called "east coast" sound epitomized by AR and their sealed systems and relatively flat frequency response, on the other hand you had the "West Coast" sound epitomized by JBL with a boosted low and high end. If you enjoyed more classical types of music the AR's were the ticket. On the other hand if you were a rock fan the JBL's was the way to go. It also seemed the younger audiophiles were for the "East coast" sound and did not like the ported sound of JBL's as too bassy and a hot top. Older folks went with the ported JBL's boom and horn tweeter sizzle. So which was better? What sounds good to YOU is the only real consideration unless you need confirmation you have spent a ton of money that impresses others.......

As to replacing your speakers will make the sound "worse" is true ONLY if you believe the myth of flat as good for everyone. If you want more bass you can get that with aftermarket speakers and what exactly is wrong with wanting more bass? Same with the mid and highs, you can shop speakers to suit what you want to hear according to your ears. Your sound system should make your ears happy not some electronic response curve happy! Unless you are going to compete in audio contests don't get conned by audio "gurus" at the auto audio store and the big box "audio guy" selling you a $1000 system for what a good pair of speakers at $120 could do.

BTW, about 30% of the custom amps I built were requested to have no tone controls. All of those were younger male customers. The older(over 40) wanted loudness, bass and treble controls with the occasional mid control. I say men because I have never had a custom amp or speaker job from a female. The point being that the older guys were like me suffering from age degenerate high frequency hearing losses and needed controls to compensate. That is also why many speaker systems have high frequency adjustments. So listen to music the way you like, and crank it up! Rock on!
 


jmrtsus

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I understand your position and have made considerable money removing tone controls from older Dynaco and Hafler equipment for owners that feel as you do. You have your needs and goals. My need is to provide the best response for ME, not someone else. Over 50 years of doing this (not "auto sound") has shown that the majority of customer willing to pay for a high quality amp and have choices choose to have adjustments. There is no way to "tune" a system without altering frequency response so your opinion that amps should not have tone controls whether they are integrated amp or preamps in a minority opinion. All I am trying to do is get people to realize that people like you have a hobby and think everyone should spend tons of money to get a pleasing audio sound. And I will repeat making it "worse" in your opinion is deviating from your opinion of what sounds good. And having people take a hearing test on a computer with some "good" headphones is a joke......define "good"! My hearing loss is fairly typical your search button will tell you that, and mine was NOT a do it yourself test. It was described as "typical" loss by professionals. As nobody knows what my hearing was prior to the test that is all I have to go on. A blanket statement that replacing factory speakers is bogus.....how can you say that when you have no clue as to what the response is of the replacement drivers....again bogus based on an opinion not fact. I doubt you will get any engineers at any of the major brand auto speaker development labs or audio reviewers to agree that all of their years of development has been a failure. You do use speakers other than factory don't you?

Stop taking this personal....I have the opinion that the sound in our cars can be improved without thousands of dollars of changes and you don't .....that's all. I understand you may be a professional at competition auto audio and I have NO problem with your hobby or pursuit of quality of sound for anyone. But I will say I doubt many people on this forum will spend thousands on audio equipment for their Fiesta and trying to convince them that they cannot improve their sound because it does not meet your personal standards is unfair to them. And the statement that people don't know what sounds good until they are taught! How did Beethoven and Mozart get along without you?

I made a decent living from electronics all my life by selling a good product not an opinion. Years ago I would take my new car straight to the Audio shop from the dealer and throw tons of money at them. I was a serious Alpine addict for years and probably still have 5-6 units in the attic so don't think I am against spending money on audio. Keep in mind many people are completely happy with the factory unit. Peace bro' it is not a question of who is right or wrong.....there is no right or wrong in anything as subjective as what a person thinks sounds good!
 


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antarctica24

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Thread Starter #18
Generally a good starting point and you should be able to figure out if they are using a passive crossover or not depending on how many speaker wires are coming out of the amp.

If your system is a 2-way with sub, this is a tweeter with 5.25 or 6.25 You generally want the sub to reinforce the midbass region, so you cross it over a little higher than normal if the midrange is a 5.25 than you need to come up a little higher or the sub somewhere between 85-130. it depends on the sub.

If the midrange is a 6.5 you can cross the sub from 60-80.
You will want the midrange to play from 2500 - infinity down.

If it is a 3 way, with a sub or what I would call a 4 way all active, the tweeters from 2500 up, midrange from 2500 down to 200 Midbass from 200 to say 50-60 and the sub from 50-60 down. You have to work on where they match up because at the crossover point you will get a 3db peak.

These are the starting points.

As for hearing protection, if you are listening to your system so loud for so long that you need hearing protection you need to turn it down, your bothering the neighbors. If you want to crank it up, the rule is crack the windows and do not play it longer than 10 minutes a extreme volumes.

Perhaps you should continue your focus on what you know which sound like home audio. If your having to tune your home speakers you bought the wrong stuff. Leave the car audio to the car audio experts.

Good luck in your home audio endeavors
 


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antarctica24

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I understand your position and have made considerable money removing tone controls from older Dynaco and Hafler equipment for owners that feel as you do. You have your needs and goals. My need is to provide the best response for ME, not someone else. Over 50 years of doing this (not "auto sound") has shown that the majority of customer willing to pay for a high quality amp and have choices choose to have adjustments. There is no way to "tune" a system without altering frequency response so your opinion that amps should not have tone controls whether they are integrated amp or preamps in a minority opinion. All I am trying to do is get people to realize that people like you have a hobby and think everyone should spend tons of money to get a pleasing audio sound. And I will repeat making it "worse" in your opinion is deviating from your opinion of what sounds good. And having people take a hearing test on a computer with some "good" headphones is a joke......define "good"! My hearing loss is fairly typical your search button will tell you that, and mine was NOT a do it yourself test. It was described as "typical" loss by professionals. As nobody knows what my hearing was prior to the test that is all I have to go on. A blanket statement that replacing factory speakers is bogus.....how can you say that when you have no clue as to what the response is of the replacement drivers....again bogus based on an opinion not fact. I doubt you will get any engineers at any of the major brand auto speaker development labs or audio reviewers to agree that all of their years of development has been a failure. You do use speakers other than factory don't you?

Stop taking this personal....I have the opinion that the sound in our cars can be improved without thousands of dollars of changes and you don't .....that's all. I understand you may be a professional at competition auto audio and I have NO problem with your hobby or pursuit of quality of sound for anyone. But I will say I doubt many people on this forum will spend thousands on audio equipment for their Fiesta and trying to convince them that they cannot improve their sound because it does not meet your personal standards is unfair to them. And the statement that people don't know what sounds good until they are taught! How did Beethoven and Mozart get along without you?

I made a decent living from electronics all my life by selling a good product not an opinion. Years ago I would take my new car straight to the Audio shop from the dealer and throw tons of money at them. I was a serious Alpine addict for years and probably still have 5-6 units in the attic so don't think I am against spending money on audio. Keep in mind many people are completely happy with the factory unit. Peace bro' it is not a question of who is right or wrong.....there is no right or wrong in anything as subjective as what a person thinks sounds good!
Not a hobby 3 successful car and home theater stores, full sponsorships by pioneer and a/d/s and had my car written up to two domestic and 2 international mags, and had my vehicle used in a international advertising campaign. Competed expert 601 plus and jusdge auto sound competitions for over 12 years. What experience is it you feel I'm missing? Making custom home amps tells you nothing about the sound environment in a car.

Home systems do not require tuning. And if you were you certainly wouldn't do it with tone controls. You use a speak management system with an eq.

And GOD bless you for being one of those people who like to tinker with and sell amps, but I'm good with my precious denon monos and now krell monos. No modification required.

Amps should not have a personality. You being the supposed audiophile it sounds like your trying to claim amps should be transparent no colorization and not be able to distinguish between one and another and if you can something is there that shouldn't be. They should.do nothing but increase the amplitutde of the incoming signal. Anything that you want to use to change the sound needs to happen well before it gets to the amp. Anything going on in the amp is just messing up thwith signal.

I posted the website for the frequencies in case anyone who didn't know what a hearing test was curious. Obviously you need to go to a real testing center to get your testing done on your ears.

Stick to what you I will yield on your ability to build and modify a home amp but you do not know what your talking about regarding the car and in the case the fiesta st. This is car forum and the post is about how to tune your car audio system in your fiesta.

Let it go
 


jmrtsus

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I guess I missed the part about tuning speakers.......all I stated was that many nome speakers have tweeter adjustments on the back. I guess you think the manufacturers are all wrong? Let's see...I have AR's, KLH's, JBL's and Altec Lansing speakers that all have factory controls for the tweeters and some for the midrange. Should I remove those? I guess millions of audiophiles forgot ask you before they bought them? Come on don't you see that your opinion is not the same as all others? It does not make it wrong and I know of others that agree with yours but to make blanket statements that people that do not share your opinion are wrong is silly. Can all these companies be wrong? Chill dude you can't rail against the entire audio industry because they don't share your opinion that nobody should be allowed to have a tone control! I know for a fact that all laws of acoustics are the same on the planet, a car is no different just harder to deal with. We have both stated our opinions. Let's be done with this. Peace out...
 




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