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a bit disappointed with stereo system


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refinery 
Member - Posts: 4
Member spacespace
Joined: September 22, 2008
Location: Canada
Posted: September 22, 2008 at 7:59 PM / IP Logged  

Hello all

I have been following this forum and a couple of others for the last few weeks and I would like to thank you all for broadening my knowledge of car audio, which was essentially non-existent prior to that. I have finally decided to stop listening to music on my stock system which sounds like it is being played from the bottom of a well and start enjoying it the way it was meant to. However, the final result is slightly disappointing and I hope that you can help me with it.

With the assistance of a friend who owned a car audio installation shop for years, I upgraded the entire sound system on my 2004 Buick Century. We placed Polk db5251 on the front doors (stock location with tweeters just above the woofers), Alpine SPS-600C in the back (stock location with tweeters right next to the woofers), Panasonic CQ-C700U as head unit, Infinity Kappa 122.7w as subwoofer (in 12" single ported box which was slightly below recommended volume so polyfill was added), Exile X300.2 as sub amp (running at 300W X 1 at 4 ohm bridged) and MTX X704 as speaker amp (running at 70W X 4 at 4 ohm). Now my main priority was sound quality. Of course, the sound is better then the stock system but not very much. The bass is more apparent and everything is more crisp, but difference does not seem $1500 better. I know it's subjective and what sounds good to one person may not sound good to another (my wife seems happy with it) but I can't help but wonder if the equipment I bought was not that great or if I did not set it correctly.

Does anyone have any experience with the above mentioned products? Are they very substandard? I realize that $1500 is probably not very much in car audio world, but can a person expect good results within that type of a budget?

Perhaps my setting are to blame. I tried adjusting the gains myself using the information from these forums but theory and practice can be very different. I tried the listening method but I really could not distinguish the sound of the sub clipping. From what I've read, it is supposed to be muddy. What does muddy sound like? Can anyone help me understand this a bit better? I used tones ranging from 40-80Hz. Is there a more preferable frequency for setting gains on a sub? I ended up using a meter and adjusting the gain to 34.6 V. However, I noticed that increasing LP crossover on the amp would also increase the voltage and this stopped me from touching any other crossover settings on both amps. Should amp crossovers be set before or after the gains? Also, I realize that crossovers should be adjusted to the users preference but are there any general guidelines? I've read that the sub should be set at around 80Hz and that any subsequent increase would potentially reveal the position of the sub. Are there any other similar rules and guidelines? What would you suggest that I should use for my general gain settings? Any special methods of testing and adjusting gains using tones?

I was slightly more fortunate with my speakers. While setting the gains using 1200Hz frequency, I could hear when the tone clearly distorted and split off into two seperate ones. However, upon turning the gain back down, I thought that I could still hear a very faint second tone in the background and I kept turning it down until it dissapeared and the pure test tone remained. My gains are set fairly low and I sometimes have to turn the volume up to 60-70% just to listen to the radio. Should I re-adjust my speaker gains and turn them down just past the point of the clear, loud distortion? Or was that very faint second tone another sign of clipping and my gains are fine they way they are?

Sorry for the long winded post but I would really like to start enjoying my new system more and I am hoping that better understanding of mentioned issues will help me achieve that. I greatly appreciate any help offered.

refinery 
Member - Posts: 4
Member spacespace
Joined: September 22, 2008
Location: Canada
Posted: September 22, 2008 at 8:03 PM / IP Logged  

I could not find the edit button so a correction:

Perhaps my setting are to blame. I tried adjusting the gains myself using the information from these forums but theory and practice can be very different. I tried the listening method but I really could not distinguish the sound of the sub clipping. From what I've read, it is supposed to be muddy. What does muddy sound like? Can anyone help me understand this a bit better? I used tones ranging from 40-80Hz. Is there a more preferable frequency for setting gains on a sub? I ended up using a meter and adjusting the gain to 34.6 V. However, I noticed that increasing LP crossover on the amp would also increase the voltage and this stopped me from touching any other crossover settings on both amps. Should amp crossovers be set before or after the gains? Also, I realize that crossovers should be adjusted to the users preference but are there any general guidelines? I've read that the sub should be set at around 80Hz and that any subsequent increase would potentially reveal the position of the sub. Are there any other similar rules and guidelines? What would you suggest that I should use for my general crossover settings? Any special methods of testing and adjusting crossovers using tones?

forbidden 
Platinum - Posts: 5,352
Platinum spaceThis member has made a donation to the12volt.com. Click here for more info.spaceThis member has been recognized as an authority in Mobile Audio and Video. Click here for more info.spacespace
Joined: November 01, 2003
Location: Alberta, Canada
Posted: September 22, 2008 at 10:05 PM / IP Logged  

Well, by the sounds of it you worked with what you had available. If you are not happy now, then no amount of tweaking is going to fix this. I would start with replacing all of the speakers with something different. I would also say bye bye to the cd player. The sub and amps can be used and with proper settings, the system will be able to be used properly.

Most gm vehicles you should be able to fit a 6.75" component set in the front doors. I would probably move the tweeters from low in the door as well as in most vehicles the output from them is gone the second you sit in the seat and your pantleg is in the way. Is this a option for you?

Top Secret, I can tell you but then my wife will kill me.
stevdart 
Platinum - Posts: 5,816
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Joined: January 24, 2004
Location: Pennsylvania, United States
Posted: September 22, 2008 at 10:08 PM / IP Logged  

There are likely several factors that could be reworked or just tweaked to get the sound up to par.  It's not clear, in reading your post, what exactly disappoints you about the sound so I'll make a recommendation about the sub enclosure to start you off.

That Kappa sub has an Fs of 20.6 and a Qes of .49.  EBP calculates at 42 which is entirely into sealed box category.  Although the published in-car response charts don't show much of a difference between sealed and vented, you'll probably find that with the proper sized sealed box the sound will be much more SQ.

Along with that, don't rule out reorienting the position of the sub enclosure or experimenting with a change in polarity at the sub amp terminals.  But there are some other important basics to go over first:

Stick with 80 Hz as the crossover point.  Use test tones that are recorded every 2 to 5 Hz increments ( I use increments of 1 or 2).  You can listen by ear for the change in db or you can use a sound level meter...I have always just listened.  The response of the sub at 80 Hz should be about -3 db and the response from the mids at that same freq should also be about -3 db.  Since a person can definitely hear the difference in loudness of -/+ 3 db, it's a matter of adjusting the crossovers until you hear a difference.

Finding clipping level with tones isn't hard.  What you hear is a tonal change, not anything to do with muddiness.  The tone will seem to go a little flat and there's a slight staccato sound to it as well.  Turning the gain several times in both directions (very slightly!) when you hear that tonal change will reinforce the proper gain setting as you will hear the tone change each time.  Check voltage only if you are curious...don't use it in itself for setting gains.  Leave that type of operation to those installers who are intimately familiar with the gear they are working with.

Be sure to find highest clean output of the deck, first, before setting amp gains.  You will use the tones in a broad but listenable range to find this.  You may find that the distortion is much more pronounced through a clipping head unit than it seems to be at the amplifier level, but the change in tone will occur with each.

Another consideration for sound quality is the use of adequate damping on the sheet metal panels of the doors.  And using a sub, many other panels have to be damped as well.  Extraneous noise from the metal will ruin any effort at decent sound. 

Xover settings won't affect gain setting.  Set the gains before setting crossovers, as the former is a basic operation and the latter is a tweak.

Do those basics first.  Second phase of tweaking is perhaps some adjustment to tweeter angle / location, change of head unit, etc.

Build the box so that it performs well in the worst case scenario and, in return, it will reward you at all times.
haemphyst 
Platinum - Posts: 5,054
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Joined: January 19, 2003
Location: Michigan, Bouvet Island
Posted: September 22, 2008 at 10:20 PM / IP Logged  
It's the car! LOL
Just kidding.
You'll get an "edit" button once you reach "standard" level - I think it's 100 posts.
It sounds as though you've done a fair bit of experimenting, as well as troubleshooting, and I am sorry that you haven't come up with any concrete answers to your questions.
Where did you get your tones? Were they MP3 downloads or were they WAV files, professionally recorded to a CD? MP3s can be difficult to hear distortions, as they are already distorted from pure tones. (Some may disagree, but they are...)
I would have started with a different deck - but that's just me. The Panasonic stuff will be marginal gear, at best. I would have also used component sets from the same manufacturer - at least that way they will be far better "timbre matched" - and I'm not really a fan of anything Jolk Audio related. ...and most especially in the front doors! That's where nearly ALL of your sound should come from. In EVERY sound quality competition car, there is very little to NO back stage.
The "sound" you mentioned when adjusting your fronts was either: a) the amp clipping, or b) the speakers reaching non-linearity. Both = bad. Amplifier clipping will run you into an over-power situation QUICKLY, and non-linearity can cause physical damage to the suspension. If you heard two distinct changes, it was very likely both happening.
Maybe someone else can add a little bit to this from here, I'll pay attention, too.
It all reminds me of something that Molière once said to Guy de Maupassant at a café in Vienna: "That's nice. You should write it down."
megaman 
Copper - Posts: 385
Copper spacespace
Joined: June 24, 2008
Location: Montana, United States
Posted: September 23, 2008 at 9:07 AM / IP Logged  

Haemphyst hit it on the head.  Ditch the Panasonic Head-unit.  I sell Panasonic and Eclipse and let me tell you that the sound quality between the two are night and day.  Don't get me wrong I love Panasonic and have always loved Panasonic, but since I have the opportunity to compare these units with others on the market, to me, they sound terrible.  Please don't tell my customers I said that. lol.

For the Polk db's I'm not that fond of thier sound either.  They are unforgiving as to tweeter placement relative to the woofer cone.  Too far away or positioned incorrectly and you lose the cohesiveness between the two and you get that "hey there's a tweeter and a seperate woofer" effect.

The back Alpine Type S's have a very strong midrange which makes them stand out like a sore thumb.  My personal feeling is that they do not match the sound of the Polks at all.  You can mix and match brands front and rear, but the voiceing of the speakers will either work together or against each other.  For me the rule of thumb is stick with the same brand and model level (type S, type R, TR series, XR series, etc. etc. ) for front and rear for most of my listeners.  When I set up a nice sounding system for my clients who are a little more picky about thier sound, I will step the rear speakers down a grade, keeping within the brand, and focus thier attention to the front. 

Usually you can use the back speakers to bring up the soundstage from the floor or lower doors.  However, if you have speakers in the back that work against the fronts, then the only effect you get is "gee, those are rear speakers back there." and your focus is lost. 

For staging, it comes down to tweeter placement, and adjusting the amplifier, and in some cases, the crossover network that come with the front components.  Some crossovers have some adjustablility to them, allowing to increase or decrease the tweeter level relative to the woofer.  Don't be afraid to experiment with your placement.  When I'm setting up a system I can spend an hour or two just messing with placement and sound staging.  And when it comes to this stage in the install, ditch the test tones!  Use your tones to set your gains to a GENERAL level, but then use some actual music to do your final adjustments.  Music that you are playing will also be a major factor. 

For me, ditch the iPod for testing.  Go "old School" and grab a CD.  You'd be amazed at how many people don't realize that when they download thier music, the fidelity of the files are crap.  Now I'm not saying this is the case, or that you can't get good sound from an iPod, but it's just another variable in the equation that I can completely eliminate.  Get a CD that has been "remastered" or has been produced in the last five or so years.  Older CD's from the 90's and even 80's have unusually low recording levels to give the music more dynamic range.  Also, grab four or five different recording artists with different genre's.  But mainly, be true to your listening style.  One question I NEVER ask a customer is "what music do you listen to?" why? because they always say the same thing "everything."  Well no you don't.  You may listen to Tim McGraw as you're scanning through the radio stations, but your CD case is loaded with nothing but R Kelly, TuPac, Yukmouth, and Too Short.

All in all, it comes down to your ears.  I can set up a $5000 system for SQ, and half of my customers love it and the other half hate it.  We all hear differently.  One last thing.  No matter how hard you try, how much money you spend, or how good of an installer you are, you will never, never, get a system in a car to sound great with every type of music.  You can get close, but face the facts that some of your music will suck compared to others unless you tweak your system every time you switch CD's.  It's not a "set and forget" kind of hobby.

basketthis69 
Member - Posts: 48
Member spacespace
Joined: June 16, 2008
Posted: September 23, 2008 at 11:32 AM / IP Logged  
Okay. The big question is, are you still using the factory wiring? I suggest replacing all the speaker wires when going all aftermarket. Some might not suggest this but I always do. Your system is only as good as it's weakest link. It also has a lot to do with tuning it. You have to have your fronts match your rears or the fronts higher than the rears. It all depends on how you like the sound. Have someone who knows what they're doing tune it to get you the sound that you're looking for.
And, I also agree with changing the HU from Panasonic to ANYTHING else. GL!
Installer for life.
refinery 
Member - Posts: 4
Member spacespace
Joined: September 22, 2008
Location: Canada
Posted: September 23, 2008 at 9:38 PM / IP Logged  

Thank you for all your replies so far. They have been very helpful.

I guess that I should have mentioned that complete or even partial equipment change is really not an option at this point, except perhaps for the head unit as it seems that most of the people here agree that Panasonic is substandard and that a change could improve sound quality. Any recommendations on reasonably priced head units?

As for gains, I gather from the responses that my speakers gains are probably fine even though I sometimes have to turn the volume up quite a bit to hear quiet programming. Do gains have a direct (positive) effect on sound quality or do they influence the volume alone? Would I be at any disadvantage in terms of sound quality if they are set too low? As for the sub, I will try setting the gain on it again using Stevdart's instructions. I created the test tones myself in .wav format at 0dB amplitude using NCH Tone Generator which I then burned to a CD. Is this acceptable? Perhaps I could not hear the change in tone because I was too close to the sub. The sub and the amp are right next to each other and my head was a foot away from the sub while adjusting the gain and even with the earplugs it was a bit overpowering. When I repeat the process, I will try doing it with another person so I can stand at a bit of a distance.

Setting the sub crossover to 80Hz should not be too difficult as the amp has frequency specific controls. However, the speaker amp does not. So if I understand this correctly, I should engage the LP crossover on the sub amp and set the controls to 80Hz. This will insure that anything at and below that frequency will be played by the subwoofer to within its lowest frequency response level. I am guessing that speakers should not be allowed to play within those frequencies as they do not reproduce those tones as well as a subwoofer and that they should be set to take over at 80Hz. Do I achieve this by setting the HP crossover to 80Hz on the speaker amp?

And yes, I replaced all of my factory wiring with 14 AWG speaker wire. I do realize that I could simply get a professional to tune the system for me, but I was actively engaged in the installation and I would prefer to be just as involved in the tuning process in order to preserve that sense of pride and accomplishment of doing it with your own two hands.

stevdart 
Platinum - Posts: 5,816
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Joined: January 24, 2004
Location: Pennsylvania, United States
Posted: September 23, 2008 at 10:22 PM / IP Logged  

Your sense of pride and accomplishment is well respected on this forum, and is one main reason most of us participate.

Set the high pass filter of the mids amp to the same freq as the sub amp...in this case 80 Hz.  Just to clarify how crossovers work:  the crossover is a region, not a specific point.  The sub WILL play much higher than 80 Hz but at decreasing amplitude.  And the mids WILL play below 80 Hz, with decreasing amplitude as the frequency gets lower.  Knowing that, you will want to pay close attention to the quality of sound that the front mids produce in the region of ~50 to 80 Hz.  It is more difficult to get clean response from a 5.25" mid at 50 Hz than it is for a 6.5" driver.  Meaning, the front mids may not perform properly with the crossover set to 80 Hz.  This is found out through several listening tests with, as megaman informed, a variety of source material.

If this is the case, set the sub amp crossover to the next highest setting (prob. 100 Hz).  Then reset the mids amp crossover to match that frequency.  Amplifier gains are not tampered with during changes in crossover settings.

Gain setting is the process of  matching the output of the source unit to the amplifier in order to achieve the best possible signal-to-noise ratio.  The more signal, the less noise.  The higher the gain setting on the amp, the more inherent noise.  The ideal setup will allow you some adjustability in turning the amp gain to find the proper setting, but not too much turning.  This keeps the amp gain low and keeps out additional  noise.  Sometimes a proper gain setting sees the final result with the amp gain hovering about midpoint or a little higher on the dial...there's nothing wrong with that if that is where the tests prove it should be.  Rarely, I think, is it a situation where the components are so mismatched that the amp gain has to be turned clockwise nearly the full rotation.  That is usually only seen when the user is adjusting gain without basic knowledge of how it works.

Also rare is the situation where the components are so mismatched that you can''t turn the gain up at all.  But it can happen, in which case one or the other component are switched out so that matching can be accomplished.  You have to find that point of clipping onset to know anything.  Listen for it using just the deck, with the amp gains set full minimum.  Once you hear the change in sound using the sine wave tones you recorded (yes they are acceptable), you'll try to hear it again (but at a much louder volume) when you again attempt the amp gain settings.

And BTW, the tones you will use for setting the mids amp should be in the mid driver's range, not sub range.

Build the box so that it performs well in the worst case scenario and, in return, it will reward you at all times.
forbidden 
Platinum - Posts: 5,352
Platinum spaceThis member has made a donation to the12volt.com. Click here for more info.spaceThis member has been recognized as an authority in Mobile Audio and Video. Click here for more info.spacespace
Joined: November 01, 2003
Location: Alberta, Canada
Posted: September 24, 2008 at 1:34 PM / IP Logged  

To start cleaning up the system, look to the Eclipse CD3200 or CD7200ii. This is the road to better sound. If you still are not happy with the results after this and all efforts to tweak the system have failed, then invest in a good front speaker set as I mentioned previously.

Top Secret, I can tell you but then my wife will kill me.
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