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Most useful test tone frequencies?

Printed From: the12volt.com
Forum Name: Car Audio
Forum Discription: Car Stereos, Amplifiers, Crossovers, Processors, Speakers, Subwoofers, etc.
URL: https://www.the12volt.com/installbay/forum_posts.asp?tid=77076
Printed Date: July 03, 2025 at 2:13 PM


Topic: Most useful test tone frequencies?

Posted By: luckydevil
Subject: Most useful test tone frequencies?
Date Posted: April 30, 2006 at 9:31 PM

I'm making a cd of test tones and I was just curious what you guys reccomend.

I'm thinking 50Hz, 200Hz, and 1kHz is all I will probably need for the most part. Any reccomendations?



Replies:

Posted By: stevdart
Date Posted: April 30, 2006 at 9:51 PM

Ninety-nine frequencies.  That's what I recommend.

A CD has room for 99 tracks.  You'll want frequencies for setting the crossovers, too, and you might want to put some sweeps on there as well.  A CD holds a ton of information, and even if you record every frequency that could be of any use at all there will still be room left on the CD.

For gains, two or three tones for each of the sub and the midbass.  You can make a few that are especially long in length to give you time to listen for clipping while you adjust the gains.  For crossover setting, you could record tones that are close to each other in frequency, sort of like a sweep but with separate tones, so that you can tell where your setting is at.

With all that room on the CD, end it all up with a few recorded songs that sound good for demo use.  Deep rumbling bass, hard hitting drums, silky vocals, whatever you want to hear that would demonstate a good sound system.  Then your CD will be the whole package.



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Build the box so that it performs well in the worst case scenario and, in return, it will reward you at all times.




Posted By: luckydevil
Date Posted: April 30, 2006 at 10:19 PM
Thanks Stevdart.

One more question, I know it is very application specific, but what frequencies do you find yourself using the most?




Posted By: stevdart
Date Posted: May 01, 2006 at 12:01 AM
I'll mostly use 400 Hz for the high pass and 50 Hz for low pass because they're both easy on the ears.  But I also like to double-check with a couple of other frequencies in each of the passband ranges, like 2 kHz, 800 Hz, 80 Hz, etc.  For setting crossover points, I have successive freqs recorded centering at 80 Hz.

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Build the box so that it performs well in the worst case scenario and, in return, it will reward you at all times.





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