# What are your favourite VST Plugins for your CARPUTER?? Crossover, Delay, Eq etc?



## frankmehta (Jan 20, 2009)

After weeks of asking for a Car PC section, and months waiting for one, I now give up hope of a separate section to ask questions and sadly, will add to the clutter of the already confusing SQ Technical and Advanced subforum.

I am now running quite a fast, stable and decently capable car PC in my Ford Fiesta since a few weeks and my equipment is in my signature.
The PC setup runs a Core i3 (nehalem) based PC and an Asus Xonar D2X card running the latest low latency UniXonar drivers (yes, official Asus drivers SUCK.)
My car has never sounded better, particularly the bass section. The preout voltage from the soundcard is really really good and better (unbelievably) than the Eclipse CD7200MKII I was running over the last few months.

Coming to the crux of the matter, I now need good plugins to do some quality EQíng and Time alignment. I also need a good 3/4 Way crossover that works well and doesn't add too much to the latency. 
Virtual Audio Cable, ASIO4ALL, Audiomulch and Centrafuse are doing the duty of playing hosts to the gamut of music I play daily, and I wish to incorporate these VST plugins in the equation.

Please do post your favourite plugins here, regardless of whether they are paid or free. After spending so much time and money on this project, I feel it's worth the while and the additional polishing it requires will add to the already stellar sound quality it offers.

Thank you all, in advance!!


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## frankmehta (Jan 20, 2009)

Anyone?


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## pwnt by pat (Mar 13, 2006)

Voxengo has plug ins for just about everything you need to use. Most are free. Waves has some cool room effect plug ins.


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## flipnap (Feb 14, 2011)

only thing i use for engineering that might be helpful for a carputer would be multiband compressors. i mean unless your talking effects, then id go for impulse based reverbs. bluecat has some interesting rta stuff.


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## frankmehta (Jan 20, 2009)

I use my Android phone for RTA. Works well for 30 band eq'ing. 
Also, I use this plugin from Voxengo called Voxengo Time Delay.
For x'overing, I use a 3 way crossover, but not very happy with it.
For eq'ing, I am still waiting for a good suggestion


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## teenkertoy (Jan 11, 2011)

Electri-Q is a great plugin for Winamp, I'm not sure if they have a version you can use, but it's great.


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## pauln (May 5, 2011)

A friend of mine is in a similar situation, except he replaced his headunit with an Android tablet. Surely with that video card, you're going to have a much better "source" than he, but you both are left with little to no EQ-ability or crossovers beyond what is on your amps.

I know you wanted plugins for your PC, and while they might exist, I'm hesitant to think it would be as ideal as something like a JBL MS-8 DSP. It isn't free or downloadable  nor is it cheap! $800msrp! But I actually found it on fleabay for pretty darn cheap... Almost half the msrp, new in box from a reputable seller.

http://www.diymobileaudio.com/forum/bikinpunks-product-review-forum/83066-jbls-ms-8-a.html (kudos; excellent review)

JBL MS-8 DIGITAL SOUND PROCESSOR LOGIC 7 AUTO EQ DSP | eBay

So cheap that I'm thinking about picking it up to squeeze more out of my system. I already have a Pioneer headunit (MVH-8200bt) that I use AutoEQ with but I'm not entirely fond of what it does (too much midrange; everything else is OK), and when aEQ is on, it pretty much locks out all manual EQ features to tweak the aEQ curve.

Another big reason why I recommend this for both your's and my friend's situation is that you will gain a nice LCD display and easy to use interface, RF remote with easy access to adjust total system volume in your hand, vs futzing with the touch screen or whatever.


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## pwnt by pat (Mar 13, 2006)

Pauln, you have no idea what you're talking about. carpcs are infinitely more adjustable than any dsp currently on the market. And "futzing" with the volume is as easy as hitting the vol+ or vol- button.....


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## frankmehta (Jan 20, 2009)

I was just getting to that. Ms8 and it's brethren can't hold a candle to the thousands of softwares available for Windows PCs. The amount one can tweak sound in a Car PC, just cannot be rivalled by an MS8 or a PXE-H650 etc. 
It's easier to stick in an MS8 to an Android tablet, yeah, but imagine owning a car PC and allowing the MS8 to do the processing. That would be sacrilege, mate.
But let's leave this conversation for another thread.
Let's get back to the various VST plugins that can help process sound for Car PC's.

I found a Java based one called SH Equalizer, but I am yet to try it out. Here's a link
VST Parametric Equalizer

this looks like it does quite a bit of stuff.


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## sqnut (Dec 24, 2009)

Frank,

Why not look at a unit like the p-99 or a hu with a processor? 

Arun


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## 2167 (Dec 5, 2007)

What abou mini dsp?


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## pauln (May 5, 2011)

cajunner said:


> the MS-8 incorporates time delay, phase shift, equalization, gating, and crossover duties along with amplification, gain matching and line driver, everything runs together using a master clock that covers 8 A/D stages and 8 D/A stages, it's not a dog compared to a computer imho, especially when that sound card and the 'hundreds' of programs were designed for all environments that do not include a steering wheel..


This is more what I was thinking. I didn't mean to dismiss the tuning options available on a PC... I just figured why re-invent the wheel and try to piecemeal together what the MS-80 does so elegantly, specifically designed for an automotive environment. 

You would have to be a god... or an acoustical engineer with much equipment to truly test and tune everything and optimize thru plugins or software DSPs what a good mobile audio DSP will get you in 5 minutes. I don't think that your nice clean source would be degraded running it through a quality DSP like the MS-8 or the like. 

Just my 2c. I am curious what you come up with though and have subscribed to the thread. Good luck!


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## hdrugs (Sep 7, 2009)

i've given on on tuning via pc
but anyway

i used ls filter as my crossovers
eq i used the d2x 11 band from control centre


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## ashman5 (Aug 30, 2009)

I've been using EasyQ with good results. It's free
rs-met.com


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## miztahsparklez (Jan 11, 2006)

I used a combination of:

KarmaFX EQ
PhaseBug
Voxengo Audio Delay
Rubber Filter

This went

Audio Out
Main EQ to separate Left and Right EQs
From each of the left and right EQs, I had it split to Tweet, Midrange, MB, Mono Sub, mono rear fill
For each of those channels, i had T/A, Phase, and Xover adjustment.

A lot of controls, but seemed to work well enough. This was all going out of an Maudio FW410, which is a firewire based 8 channel sound card. The input source was the optical out of a mac mini.


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## 14642 (May 19, 2008)

crossover 3-way
crossover (rs_met.com)
EQ31
Electri_Q_posihfopit (this one is great)
EasyQv10
Voxengo SPAN
Engineersfilter (rs_met.com)

And a bunch of proprietary stuff we write at Harman


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## rain27 (Jan 15, 2009)

Is most of the software limited to a pc or would a Mac be fine for this?

Is there an all in one software program or will there be one for eq, one for ta, one for crossovers, etc.?


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## miztahsparklez (Jan 11, 2006)

for me, i found that PC had more options for VST hosts and ASIO supported sound cards. I'm sure you could find what you needed on mac.

I ended up running windows xp on my mac mini since the UI and everything just went better together in windows.


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## 14642 (May 19, 2008)

miztahsparklez said:


> for me, i found that PC had more options for VST hosts and ASIO supported sound cards. I'm sure you could find what you needed on mac.
> 
> I ended up running windows xp on my mac mini since the UI and everything just went better together in windows.


Me too.


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