# Auto tune with MS-8



## mmiller (Mar 7, 2008)

Would the Auto tune work with horns? I've always wondered if it would do a decent job?


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## subterFUSE (Sep 21, 2009)

*Re: Auto tune with PS-8*

I own a PS8 but have not yet hooked it up to try it.

But from reports I have read in these forums, the PS8 works really well with the Auto EQ filters in Room EQ Wizard. You simply copy the Auto EQ filter numbers into the PS8.

I'm really looking forward to trying it out.


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## thehatedguy (May 4, 2007)

*Re: Auto tune with PS-8*

PS8 or MS8?

I don't think the PS8 has auto tune.


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## mmiller (Mar 7, 2008)

*Re: Auto tune with PS-8*

Sorry guys I meant MS-8.. PS-8 doesn't have auto tune... Can You change the thread topic to MS-8 Jason?


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## estione (Jul 24, 2009)

*Re: Auto tune with PS-8*

I have often heard that the ms-8 is not really good for horn tuning, You might wanna do a bit of research on it.


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## subterFUSE (Sep 21, 2009)

*Re: Auto tune with PS-8*

The PS8 does not have auto-tune built into it.... but you can still use auto-tune with a program like Room EQ Wizard.


How?


Simple. First you use REW to take some measurements inside the car. Then you can use the Auto EQ setup in REW to create the filters needed to match your car's response to the House Curve you desire. Then you simply copy the EQ filter settings into the PS8.

So it's fully automatic in the way it tells you what you need to do.... but you just have to copy the filter settings manually.

The PS8 is one of the few processors out there with enough parametric EQ flexibility to actually do this.

Like I said, I recently purchased a PS8 which I plan to integrate into my setup soon. I have not tested this out yet, but I have spoken to people in these forums who have done this.


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## mmiller (Mar 7, 2008)

*Re: Auto tune with PS-8*

I am trying to have an open discussion... that's why I'm looking for people like thehatedguy, mic, Patrick Bateman or Eric Stevens... Or anyone that has a lot of experience with using and competing with horns.. Or in Eric's case designing and building them.

I don't have any horns, or a MS-8... I know years ago Horns needed a lot of tuning to get them dialled in... Even with the likes of people like Ralph Benedetti.

I've heard mention of Eric saying his horn designs have improved over the last 10 years.. I had a pair of CD 1E's I believe they were the original version, as they'd be around 15 years old if I still had them.

Truth be told, I hated them... Tuning issues was likely the main culprit... That's why I went to the chameleon components, the were way easier to get sound awesome. Not a lot of work at all.


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## thehatedguy (May 4, 2007)

*Re: Auto tune with PS-8*

IMO, just my opinion...

The MS8 on the horns I had made the horns sound really good tonality wise.

However it took all the life and impact out of the system, which is one of the main reasons I like horns.

I think Mic had a similar experience too.

Andy said the MS8 probably would have problems EQing/tuning the horns because it wasn't going to be really familiar on how handle the dispersion of the horns.


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## subterFUSE (Sep 21, 2009)

I really think you had it correct with the original title.

PS8



PS8 should be one of the best DSP products out there for tuning horns. The flexibility of the parametric EQs allows really precise control.

And, like I said, you can measure with REW and then manuall copy the Auto-EQ filter settings right into the PS8 software.


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## mmiller (Mar 7, 2008)

subterFUSE said:


> I really think you had it correct with the original title.
> 
> PS8
> 
> ...



Let me know how it works out once you're finished.


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## mmiller (Mar 7, 2008)

*Re: Auto tune with PS-8*



thehatedguy said:


> IMO, just my opinion...
> 
> The MS8 on the horns I had made the horns sound really good tonality wise.
> 
> ...


I wish I had someone relatively close to me so I could hear a set of horns dialled in, it's been many years since I have heard them... Ralph Beneditti, or maybe Luke Kitchens IROC Z was the last car I heard... Even that was like 12 years ago, if not longer...


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## eugene (Nov 17, 2008)

So I've had the ms-8 with mini-horns in my car for about 2 years now. Only just recently have I started to discover how good they can sound. I went nearly all that time thinking that the ms-8 doesn't have enough processing capabilities to get the horns dialed in. When i came to a point where I started seriously contemplating taking the ms8 out of the car, i jumped back on diyma and read through the hundreds of pages of threads regarding how to properly set up the ms-8 and the little i could find on how to get it to work with horns. So far I've run the autotune about 20 times. Here's the biggest things that have helped me so far. 

The EQ'ing has to be performed at an extremely low volume. Currently I'm using -40 but wonder if -45 would work better. Otherwise it doesn't do a good job getting the left and right evenly equalized. For the longest time I thought I really needed the ability to separately control left and right on the 31 band graphic EQ. When Matt first EQ'd the car I remember being able to hear the sweeps from outside of the car and that was definitely too loud. 

I'm still having some issues with time alignment. If I autotune with my head in the normal sitting position I end up with my center image skewed far to the right especially with female vocalists. Almost sounds like the right horn is playing a lot louder. The fix so far has been to sit far back away from the horns with my head far to the right near the center of the car. This has helped get the center pretty close but it's still sounding kind of large and diffuse. I'm thinking I have some pretty bad reflections going on especially since the car is a hyundai sonata and the interior is all hard plastic surfaces. So far it has helped to not try to have the horns play too low. They seem to do better crossed at 1200 than they do at 1000.

Also, adjusting the top end of the target curve to be upward sloping starting from 1k and up as Andy has suggested has helped.

After these changes, the system sounds like a completely different car than it did before. Overall I'm happy with it because I don't think I would have the time and skill to make it sound as good with a manual processor. The ms-8 does a fast and effective job at smoothing out the horns.


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## Patrick Bateman (Sep 11, 2006)

*Re: Auto tune with PS-8*




mmiller said:


> I am trying to have an open discussion... that's why I'm looking for people like thehatedguy, mic, Patrick Bateman or Eric Stevens... Or anyone that has a lot of experience with using and competing with horns.. Or in Eric's case designing and building them.
> 
> I don't have any horns, or a MS-8... I know years ago Horns needed a lot of tuning to get them dialled in... Even with the likes of people like Ralph Benedetti.
> 
> ...


Back around '09 and '10 I did a lot of measurements in the car. (

*I stopped doing that.* Here's why:









Even a small waveguide, like the $14 Pyle PH612 will control the wavefront down to 1.1khz. This is due to it's size; it's 12" wide so it controls directivity down to 1125hz. (speed of sound / 12")

Because it can do that, *We can simply measure the waveguide outside.*

Does that make sense? For about five octaves - half of the audible bandwidth - the frequency response, phase, distortion, etc is all dictated by the waveguide. *That's why it's so important to use a good one.*

But that's also the reason I don't bother with extensive measurements in the car anymore. If it measures good anechoically, it's going to sound good in the car. And vice versa.

And the thing is, it's completely maddening trying to get a good clean measurement in the car.

So as I see it, we have a couple of options:

1) Get a good clean measurement outside, and use a waveguide that will control response down to the xover point

or

2) Do your measurement in the car, and accept the fact that the measurement may be crap



That doesn't mean that I don't do ANY measurements in the car. But it does mean that 90% of my measurements are done outside of the car. I basically use that last 10% to tweak a response curve that's already been established. Nothing major, maybe 3dB here or there. And no narrow band adjustments.


I think the main reason that people are unhappy with the MS-8 is that it's hard to get a reliable measurement in-car. So the MS-8 dials in adjustments based on bad data.











Nearly everything I said here only applies to me, unfortunately. Because my mids are within a fraction of a wavelength, I have the luxury of measuring outside. If you have mids in a door and horns somewhere else, you can't really do this. Well, I guess you *could*, but only if you had a very large waveguide, one that's big enough to control directivity to below the xover point. We're talking like 500hz, or 27". One idea I've considered is putting the waveguides in the corner of the dash and building a mockup of that dash for measurement purposes.


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## sqnut (Dec 24, 2009)

The response of any driver outside the car and in the car at ear level are two different things, right? It's a mess in the car. But that's what one has to work with. If one can accept an offset and hence compromised listening position, then why shun the messed up response? 

I just think it would be tough to correlate what one is measuring outside the car with what you're hearing the driver do in it. Messed up as the in car measurement is, one can still do a lot with it, I'm sure you'll agree.


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## Patrick Bateman (Sep 11, 2006)

sqnut said:


> The response of any driver outside the car and in the car at ear level are two different things, right? It's a mess in the car. But that's what one has to work with. If one can accept an offset and hence compromised listening position, then why shun the messed up response?
> 
> I just think it would be tough to correlate what one is measuring outside the car with what you're hearing the driver do in it. Messed up as the in car measurement is, one can still do a lot with it, I'm sure you'll agree.


With a waveguide or horn, the frequency response of the waveguide IN the car varies little from the frequency response OUT of the car.*
It's one of the primary advantages of a waveguide or horn. Constant directivity horns like the PH612 have an additional advantage that the response curve varies little with angle.

With a direct radiator on a flat baffle the sound is constrained to an angle of 180 degrees**. Due to that, *the sound is going to reflect off of anything within that angle.*

With a 60 x 90 waveguide the sound is constrained to a small fraction of that. Due to that, *the sound will reflect off of much less.*

To put this in perspective, the sound from the 60x90 waveguide is more than 4x as "concentrated" as the sound from the speaker on a flat baffle.

The main downside with a waveguide is that there IS a point where the sound is going to widen. With a 12" waveguide like the Pyle PH612, *that point is 1125hz.* IE, it's pretty close to the xover point. Ideally it would be about one octave lower, but 1125hz is quite good really.

If you want to hear a really dramatic example of this, use the entire corner of the dash for a waveguide. When I did that with my Accord, it really sounded as if the windshield wasn't there; the waveguide and the windshield were one. Gary Summers' Mercedes has a similar effect.



* This statement assumes that you're not crossing over below the frequency at which the directivity widens. In the case of the PH612, that's 1125hz. This statement also assumes that there's nothing between the mouth of the horn and the listener. If there is, that reflection will cause issues. The length of your measurement gate will have a dramatic effect on the frequency response, in OR out of the car. I use a gate that's only about 5-10 cycles long. At 1125hz that works out to 5-10ft, but at 112.5hz that works out to 50-100ft. Which is why you have to measure subs far away from *everything*, even buildings.

** I would argue that a flat baffle can be considered a 180 degree waveguide.


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## eugene (Nov 17, 2008)

I just finished auto-tuning my ms-8 for the last time. I'm thoroughly impressed. I may not have the most discerning ears as some of you but I've heard very well tuned horn systems before. Interestingly, I got consistently better results in 'front' and not 'driver' mode. Driver kept messing up the time alignment on the horns while front gave me a nice center image for both male and female vocals. I also moved my head forward and towards the middle of the car for the driver and passenger seat positions, which seems to have helped with depth as well as performed the measurements with two thick towels wrapped around my center console. It took me about 25 or 30 autotunes to get it right, but I don't think I'll be performing them anymore because it's as good as I could imagine it getting and am pretty satisfied with the end result. What a process to get through... Hope this helps somebody else trying horns with the ms8.


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