# Hollow sounding stage, ta, phase etc



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

Been irritated by an echoey/hollow sounding stage.. Plan was to putz with TA then maybe bring midrange lowpass down out of beaming if need be, currently 7500hz..

First thing i found was to delay my tweets another 4 or so inches, made a big difference. Is somewhat close to the physical offset, but probably more..

I've run my midranges with phase inverted for the longest time to fix summing issues with the midbass. All filters are 24LR so i thought that was weird. 

To keep experimenting with the hollow sound i put their phase back, and I had to bring the midbass forward 10 inches in TA (used rta). They are recessed in the doors.. but I've now got them delayed at least 8" less than I measure.

Sounds less echoey.. a bit less dynamic.


Honestly, people become so infatuated with eq that they spend 90% of their time on it.. I'm guilty too..

Wouldn't be entertaining if it was easy...........


----------



## SkizeR (Apr 19, 2011)

slow down. back up your tune, and start fresh. TA by distance. all crossovers LR24. eq each pair of drivers to match. mono eq. level match drivers. one step at a time.


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

SkizeR said:


> slow down. back up your tune, and start fresh. TA by distance. all crossovers LR24. eq each pair of drivers to match. mono eq. level match drivers. one step at a time.


Pretty much where I'm at .

Just find it odd that anticipated TA/summing is so far off..


----------



## Jscoyne2 (Oct 29, 2014)

I eq L/R and slopes to as close as i can then I set T/a by biggest dip with a mic on the right side drivers Then i isolate each driver pair. Ill play a song with a strong middle vocal.

Say the right midbass has 3ms of delay. Well the left driver is always gonna have more delay so i start at 3ms and delay and keep adding till the vocal is in the middle of the stage. turn off the midbass, then do it with the midrange. and tweeter after that.

Look at your L vs R FR and see if there are any big gaps. for instance i have giant dips in my right side driver but not the left ones. So when im playing with my midranges T/a, i also play with that 800hz range on the EQ. This may or may not help but helps rule out side bias due to FR differences


----------



## SkizeR (Apr 19, 2011)

Jscoyne2 said:


> Say the right midbass has 3ms of delay. Well the left driver is always gonna have more delay so i start at 3ms and delay and keep adding till the vocal is in the middle of the stage. turn off the midbass, then do it with the midrange. and tweeter after that.


do you not align subs to midbass, midbass to mids, etc etc..?


----------



## Jscoyne2 (Oct 29, 2014)

SkizeR said:


> do you not align subs to midbass, midbass to mids, etc etc..?


I align Right MB to sub. Right midrange to RMB, and RT to RMR. 

All delay to left side drivers are focused listening for center stage and impact.


----------



## oabeieo (Feb 22, 2015)

Sounds like maybe you have some panel resonance maybe... 
Hollow sounding could mean a wide bandwidth. 
Hollow to me is usually 100-1khz problem but focused at around 300-400hz 
Crank up 400hz and anything will sound hollow. Or a hollow midbass that's out of phase with sub. 

Can you elaborate just a bit. 

Skizr was right I didn't read anything else after that (sorry) once FR is symmetrical on both sides and flat you will be able to hear a phase problem , resonance or a comb filter. 

Phase is obvious to point out and could be the problem especially when fighting a null. a resonance will be noticeable and measurable at all angles and show up on all axis responces, And a comb filter will largely vanish when you turnoff one side or balance to one side completely and can't do jack to fix it unless move the speakers .


----------



## Justin Zazzi (May 28, 2012)

The reason most people's high-pass and low-pass speakers do not sum correctly is because they insist on using identical crossover and/or EQ filters on the left and right sides. You mention you're using all LR4 filters. This is a very common mistake because it is not an easy concept to explain. You want to get all LR4 acoustic frequency responses, but the filters you use will be completely unique to every single speaker in a one-seat car audio setup.

Try setting putting all of your speakers in positive polarity and set time alignment with a tape measure. Then set the acoustic frequency response of each individual speaker to match the targets generated by my excel spreadsheet. That will take all the guesswork out of the process and get you a solid base to tweak to your tastes.


----------



## Jscoyne2 (Oct 29, 2014)

Jazzi said:


> The reason most people's high-pass and low-pass speakers do not sum correctly is because they insist on using identical crossover and/or EQ filters on the left and right sides. You mention you're using all LR4 filters. This is a very common mistake because it is not an easy concept to explain. You want to get all LR4 acoustic frequency responses, but the filters you use will be completely unique to every single speaker in a one-seat car audio setup.
> 
> Try setting putting all of your speakers in positive polarity and set time alignment with a tape measure. Then set the acoustic frequency response of each individual speaker to match the targets generated by my excel spreadsheet. That will take all the guesswork out of the process and get you a solid base to tweak to your tastes.


Identical electrically. Not acoustically. Just fyi for the Op

Also identical eq is the exact opposite of what eq is supposed to be used for 

Sent from my SGH-T999 using Tapatalk


----------



## gijoe (Mar 25, 2008)

Jscoyne2 said:


> Identical electrically. Not acoustically. Just fyi for the Op
> 
> Also identical eq is the exact opposite of what eq is supposed to be used for
> 
> Sent from my SGH-T999 using Tapatalk


I think he meant to say "identical response." Each side will need very different EQ to get the response to match. 

The L/R response is what I think is the biggest problem. If you get these to match well, then TA is very easy. TA should be very, very close from using a measuring tap, as long as balance and EQ are optimized.


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

Balance and eq are in good shape driver to driver, center image is dead solid. 

LR TA isn't so much of an issue, it's the alignment between set's that seems wonky.

Like i said, what works and what is measured doesn't quite match up.


----------



## gijoe (Mar 25, 2008)

bnae38 said:


> Balance and eq are in good shape driver to driver, center image is dead solid.
> 
> LR TA isn't so much of an issue, it's the alignment between set's that seems wonky.
> 
> Like i said, what works and what is measured doesn't quite match up.


They should measure up very closely. TA is simply a delay to compensate for the difference in difference, it's that simple. Also, TA does almost nothing in the high frequencies, so if you're having trouble up high you likely need to adjust the tweeter amplitude. Remember, phase (TA) dominates the location down low, and amplitude dominates up high. If you find your TA off by more than the equivalent of a couple of inches, then the problem is not with TA.


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

I still need to do overall measurements and see where I'm at tonally with new ta.


In the end its just a learning exercise, I'm gonna start over again this weekend. Think I'll use parametric for base driver/driver eq instead of 1/3rd octave. Should need less, and most will be less than 4.32q..


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

gijoe said:


> If you find your TA off by more than the equivalent of a couple of inches, then the problem is not with TA.


My midrange fire up into the glass, midbass are in the doors. I suppose that is a big part of this..


----------



## Jscoyne2 (Oct 29, 2014)

bnae38 said:


> My midrange fire up into the glass, midbass are in the doors. I suppose that is a big part of this..


I downloaded the ps8 software to see what you have to work with. Jesus this crap is not user friendly. Im confused how it works. 

Couple questions. 
Do you have 31 bands per driver(channel)?
wtf is a group?

You want to use parametric for L/R equalization and for house curve shaping. 

You want to use 31 graphic for tonality.


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

Group in TA? You can group them temporarily or permanently and slide them synced one way or the other. Pretty handy actually.


31 per channel if desired yes, can then link them and they stay synced if you want to adjust overall tonality of a band up and down.

Agreed on where to use parametric.

thanks


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

@Jazzi. Here is my fr from last weekend. Note that some levels are down because i adjusted "overall" levels down some to match the overall curve. Drivers all match your curves from your tool, but i still needed to invert the polarity of the midrange (also did tweets) to sum better with midbass. Almost sums too well, needed to hack some off as you can see. TA was set to measured amounts when doing all this.

Disregard sub that's a pre-tune response..


----------



## Jscoyne2 (Oct 29, 2014)

Weird sealed response

Sent from my SGH-T999 using Tapatalk


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

It's not in that pic, XO is 90 lr24.


----------



## Jscoyne2 (Oct 29, 2014)

bnae38 said:


> It's not in that pic, XO is 90 lr24.


I meant ported tune but your i saw your sealed

Sent from my SGH-T999 using Tapatalk


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

Lol that would be some house curve... but yeah, stock response for sub in that pic..


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

Ya 1.4cubes x2.


----------



## Jscoyne2 (Oct 29, 2014)

Why the big dip below 38hz?

Sent from my SGH-T999 using Tapatalk


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

Jscoyne2 said:


> Why the big dip below 38hz?
> 
> Sent from my SGH-T999 using Tapatalk


Dunno just the response i get, a lot gets hacked off around it anyway.


----------



## sqnut (Dec 24, 2009)

Try cutting a bit in the 600-800 range and then again at 1.6khz. By 'hollow sounding' do you mean as if you were listening to a small 3" speaker? Kinda like hearing music over a telephone? If you're hearing your tweeters before the midbass, that will also give you a thin reedy sound.


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

sqnut said:


> Try cutting a bit in the 600-800 range and then again at 1.6khz. By 'hollow sounding' do you mean as if you were listening to a small 3" speaker? Kinda like hearing music over a telephone? If you're hearing your tweeters before the midbass, that will also give you a thin reedy sound.


Hard to describe but yeah i do think the tweets are arriving early. Going to try to lp the midrange lower and see if that helps. Have a feeling most of the problem is midrange location though, firing up at windshield.. listened to just them earlier full range and didnt particularly like what i heard.


----------



## sqnut (Dec 24, 2009)

Pretty sure your issue is down to TA and or response. Mids firing into the windshield is not the issue, the issue is the tune. Set the TA to measured distances and try the suggested cuts, you should notice an improvement.


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

will do thx


----------



## Justin Zazzi (May 28, 2012)

bnae38 said:


> @Jazzi. Here is my fr from last weekend. Note that some levels are down because i adjusted "overall" levels down some to match the overall curve. Drivers all match your curves from your tool, but i still needed to invert the polarity of the midrange (also did tweets) to sum better with midbass. Almost sums too well, needed to hack some off as you can see. TA was set to measured amounts when doing all this.
> 
> Disregard sub that's a pre-tune response..


Thank you for sharing your graphs. Are you sure the midbass low-pass and the midrange high-pass are following the curves that my tool generated? They look very different from what I am used to seeing my tool produce. I am not surprised to hear that your midbass/midrange transition has problems summing together because they do not look like a textbook LR4 crossover shape.

I would like to see the "REW_Curve.....Overall.txt" file looks like that you generated. Can you post it here or PM me the content? It should look like this:


```
20 10.5
25 9
31 7.25
40 5.75
50 4.5
63 3.25
80 3
...... and so on
```


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

20 14
25 14.5
31 12.6
40 9
50 5.5
63 2.5
80 -0.5
100 -3.5
125 -6.2
160 -8
200 -8.5
250 -9
315 -9.5
400 -10
500 -10
630 -10.5
800 -11
1000 -12
1200 -13
1600 -14
2000 -14
2500 -16
3100 -15
4000 -15.5
5000 -16
6300 -16.75
8000 -17.5
10000 -18.5
12000 -19.5
16000 -20
20000 -22.5

thx

Edit: keep in mind overall 1/3rd octave (linked) has some bands attenuated to compensate for too much summing midrange/midbass.

Also, like i said earlier, polarity is reversed on the midrange to get better summing otherwise there is a null (which is odd..)

Sry, I'd keep things simple but... it's not!


----------



## Justin Zazzi (May 28, 2012)

Ok, wow. A 30dB swing from bass to treble? That seems like a lot to me, but then again people tell me I don't like a lot of bass relative to everyone else. If it makes you happy though, I will not tell you otherwise! 

I'm guessing your crossover points are about 80, 400, and 8k. Is that close?

You say you attenuated some frequencies because they sum together too much. How exactly did you do that? Did you lower some 1/3 octave EQ bands on both the midbass and the midrange drivers by exactly the same amounts? I mean, do the cut amount, center frequency, and Q value match for all of the adjustments you made? Or, did you use a global EQ like on your head unit, or an "input EQ" on your processor so make those changes? Also, which frequency range did you attenuate and by how much? I'm guessing between 200-400hz is down by -4dB or so?

I ask these very specific questions to see if you are retaining the relationship between the drivers, or if you are adjusting them independently of eachother. If it is the former, then the phase relationships should remain intact and they should still sum together well. If it is the latter, then the phase relationships between the drivers will be different than what you want, and you will have summing problems exactly like you describe.


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

House curve loosely based off of hanatsu house curve, but hacked less bass off the middle sub frequencies. 

XO's at 90 350 7500.

To attenuate i left channels linked in 1/3rd octave eq and brought them down 3-4db where you describe. So in doing this it will cut all drivers in those spots by the same amounts, but leave individual driver eq in sync.


----------



## Justin Zazzi (May 28, 2012)

Hmm, it seems like you're doing all the right things. I must be missing something.

Is the cancellation you describe worse on the left channels, or the right channels? Whichever is worse, can you post a screenshot of it like this:

Can you plot the individual midbass and midrange driver traces on the same graph, and also the sum of the two with matching polarity and also with the midrange polarity reversed? That is a total of four traces on the same plot. I would like to see the problem you are describing, if you have these particular measurements available to view. Also, the traces where the drivers are playing together ... I assume the time delays were set with a tape measure. If they are different from that, please describe how different?

Or, if it is any easier, could you upload your REW measurement file somewhere so I can download it and poke around? If you do that, can you please label the individual measurements so I can understand which is which? I can give you a link to throw it into my dropbox, if that helps any.


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

Will do, battery charger let the magic smoke out the other night sigh.. New one should be here tomorrow. Taking the day as we're pretty light at work..

Current tune is going to get scrapped either way, I'm going to bring tweets down to around 4-5k and driver eq with parametric instead. I ran them at 3k today (as a trial instead of 7.5k) and like that better, but i'm pushing it on the low end of spectrum..

I'm guessing I'll run into the same summing problems @Mb/Mr, I'll post those results up tomorrow.

thanks

edit, I realize I should take one thing at a time.. but don't think there's any way I'm going to continue with current tune so not much sense in analyzing it.


----------



## Elgrosso (Jun 15, 2013)

I was wondering why so high for the tweeters. Also about your big slope but that's not new.
That's a lot missed for the midrange there, are they recessed in the dash?


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

I changed them to 7500 a few months ago with the idea that all vocal info would come from one set of drivers, but meh. 

Ran them at 3000 today, and at moderate volume there were some notes i was uncomfortable with, not that it was serious distortion... Thinking 4k will be my new xo point after doing some more listening tonight with limited battery time .

Are you asking about the slope overall? It fits my house curve more or less. 

Yes, recessed a bit in dash corners.


----------



## Elgrosso (Jun 15, 2013)

Just because I had midranges in dash like that, not fully recessed but firing up, reflected to my head directly with the windshield angle, almost like a phantom vertical midrange outside the windshield. It was ok but never really worked for me, wasn't able to get great results, too many reflections.
But tweeters worked much better there, over 3k it wasn't bad at all.

Anyway, that's a different problem since here they're recessed, and you are asking a lot into beaming etc, maybe it explains the "hollow" effect.
do you have pics of the install? Might help a bit

For you slope yes I'm always amazed by the 40db difference, when I have barely 10db myself 
But it's all personal preference


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

Factory location for mids. similar to what you had?

I find it hard to believe my bass is that much louder when i think about it... Measurements are with avgs of sweeps, not rta. Spectrum blah blah, not sure of technical terms..


----------



## Elgrosso (Jun 15, 2013)

Similar yes, but my windshield is more curved, so the driver "image" appeared firing to me. (I could literally see the driver reflection outside pointing to me)

Maybe just try the lowest point your tweeters and your ears could accept for few days? The power response should be much better.
And then if you still don't like it, maybe reverse mid & tweet position?
Or midrange just near the tweeter, corner of the glass door, might be a sweet spot there.

For the slope, if they're sweeps too that should be a good representation to compare to.
But still, even averaged, it's still a representation of what's around your head only, not the power response, and not really what you hear (hey might be wrong I'm learning too here).
The curves are clean, just surprising. Don't know about others but, in my car, I like flatter. +2db at the sub jump at me, and would make everything else hollow... I like my highs!


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

Elgrosso said:


> And then if you still don't like it, maybe reverse mid & tweet position?


Nooooo  Took some time to fab them..

I have a set of gs40's so my options are open, but would rather not get carried away.

Charger should be here soon, then i'll dig in.


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

I should probably take a closer look at my house curve too, but when i look at equal loudness contours; mine is much closer. 

I might experiment with Andy's too..

Derail.....


----------



## strohw (Jan 27, 2016)

Disregarding that bump at 700hz, your 200-20k curve is very much inline with what you see a lot. It's your sub and midbass transition that's heavier than normal. Rock out anyway you want.

I see some people on here with some pretty flat curves down low and I wonder if they present the same curve that they drive around with. The curve I would use to critically listen is not the same one I'd use to drive to work 5 hours a week at 80mph.


----------



## Justin Zazzi (May 28, 2012)

I think the best thing anyone can do is try many different curves and see what they like. However, I don't think the equal loudness curves are good targets for a house curve.

The equal loudness curves show our relative ability to hear certain frequencies. This is useful to know when trying to measure how "loud" something seems with a microphone (for example A and C weighting in SPL meters).

But when we are listening to music, our ear's ability to hear an instrument is built in to the process already, even if we are just standing in a room listening to something live. An instrument sounds like it does partly because of the noise it creates, and also partly because of how our ears are sensitive to different frequencies of that noise. The loudness curve is part of how we hear everything, it is already built-in to our ear/brain system.

So to try and apply the equal loudness curve on top of a recording doesn't seem to serve any purpose to me. It would be like compensating for something twice, since our brain/ear system already does that.

House curves then (in my opinion) are the artistic filters we use as individuals to enjoy music that makes each one of us happy since sound is such a subjective thing. The SPL guys have a house curve that is crazy different from the SQ guys because they each enjoy listening to music through a different "lens" if you will.

This is why the house curves of many manufacturers (like JBL/Andy's curve) don't look like an equal loudness curve but instead more like a tweak to the ubiquitous bass and treble eq knobs on any given piece of equipment. There are curves like Whitledge's that seem to follow the equal loudness curves though (when in reality that is just the curve that makes him happy), and I think this is maybe why people think a house curve should be based on the equal loudness curves.

Anyhow. Maybe you'll find this useful. Maybe not.
It all comes down to whatever makes you happy though.


----------



## gijoe (Mar 25, 2008)

Correct, using an equal loudness curve is not going to give a great listening experience.


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

gijoe said:


> Correct, using an equal loudness curve is not going to give a great listening experience.


Music isn't recorded dead flat.. 

I get tunnel vision so often..... lol


Good news is it's sounding way better already, finishing up driver matching atm.

Ps thanks to all!


----------



## gijoe (Mar 25, 2008)

No, music is not recorded flat. A flat (RTA) system isn't really enjoyable to listen to.


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

I need a ram upgrade for my head. 

Anyway progress is progress.. pics coming. Hopefully sooner than later.


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

Getting there .











One more round of eq should have it, midbass and subs are responding well. Mr and tweets are kind of being a pita.. same thing i encountered with the 360.3, Rew "generic" filter defs must be slightly different than Arc's.. trial and error.

Seems like it's the left side that has more of an issue with the dip at xo with measured ta (the excessive parts on the right midrange have been fixed btw..).

Played with driver pair TA and music tonight, having some luck just listening and tweaking.

More to come..


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

Speaking of which.. i cross-checked predicted/actual results and the 360 filters work much better than "generic" for ps8. Just had to manually re-enter q values....

I'll do the midrange and tweets again tomorrow.. Weeee.


----------



## gregerst22 (Dec 18, 2012)

From an install stand point I think you've got a challenging setup to tune. Upfiring mids off the windshield and tweets that are crossfiring across the dash. All sound is reflected and not coherent. I've tuned pillar, door, kicks, sails and dash mounted. The hardest has been dash by far and that's with tweets next to the mids on the same axis. You might want to dial in a basic curve and then forget the mic. Start tuning by ear. For me it has been a tedious and time consuming process. But I got it sounding pretty good. You can probably save yourself a lot of tuning work by mounting the mids and tweets more on axis with your ears and keep them close the the same plane. The less reflected energy the easier it is to tune and sound good.


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

I got my drivers matched very well in 2 rounds with usm810 filters (much better matching deffs)..

Since they are now matched I've played some with the 31 band in linked mode (damn handy actually).

Brought 6-800 down and 1600 down per sqnut (thank you) and boosted a bit in 3-5k range since summing wasn't perfect (but not bad) at the tweet too.

Messed with ta a bit manually since i can link drivers and just listened to f'ing music instead of measuring.

It sounds wayy better, and since I'm matched up L/R I'm taking a long hiatus from measuring (as long as i can resist...), f making it perfect on paper 

Finding myself too analytical for my own good every now and then... 

thx guys


----------



## Insidiousaudio (Oct 9, 2016)

Sounds like a phasing issue in the low-midrange. Between 150 and 500hz area.
I recommend you plot FR for each driver individually. Futon right tweeter front left tweeter and the plot both to see if you have and cancellation etc.. Then ta the tweeters.. 
Do the next next same logic. Then at low volume start with the crossovers on full or high as it can go. I find a 24 or higher slope works well with tweeters and a 1st order works well with midst 2nd order does too..


----------



## oabeieo (Feb 22, 2015)

The only thing I dislike about alignment using acoustical slopes by manipulating crossovers is that crossover distortion is more unmasked and revealing, at least under 1k. 

I wouldn't separate crossovers and have a gap between crossovers just because the acoustical slopes line up. The preferred way is to have the crossovers on top of each other like it should be and use PEQ or EQ and cut the stop band interference.

Doing that will ensure your not listening to group delayed segments. Of course in some situations it could sound better because a car is a **** show of minimum phase. But generally speaking it works better usually ime. Unless you have FIR but that even isn't always perfect. Even a fir filter must have acoustical slopes that match the crossovers otherwise the modified IR is inaccurate and changes in phase that are made would not happen where they are supposed to be.


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

Yeah, not taking measurements lasted a whole 12 hrs lol...

F'in frustrated...

When in alignment by measurement, both sides do the same thing when playing just the left or right side. There is cancellation in that area when they are in phase.

Flip phase on midrange or midbass and it comes up, but doesn't sound right to me. I can push ta way out and get it to sum ok.


I'm considering moving the midrange again. Had them in pods hanging down awhile back, before I started with advanced measurements.. so I can't really comment on summing. 

Moved them to the oem location just because it was easier and cleaner, not to mention didn't advertise as much that I had expensive gear in the car.

Considering my options..... sigh.


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

Maybe I'll sell some stuff and pick up gb25's, i have more options where to put them.

Plus I've always drooled over em..


----------



## Justin Zazzi (May 28, 2012)

How sure are you that the speakers are wired in correct polarity? It would be a shame if you're chasing your tail so much over a small wiring mistake.


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

Jazzi said:


> How sure are you that the speakers are wired in correct polarity? It would be a shame if you're chasing your tail so much over a small wiring mistake.


Hehe, you know that's occurred to me numerous times. I've checked it, but since i thought about it again today (and you bring it up), I'll go check again...


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

Nah, they're wired right. Damn Knu wiring is easy to mess up though..


----------



## oabeieo (Feb 22, 2015)

bnae38 said:


> Yeah, not taking measurements lasted a whole 12 hrs lol...
> 
> F'in frustrated...
> 
> ...


Being out of phase in one narrow band though a passband of a driver...
Yes frustrating but there is a fix for it but it will have some negative effects but would work if had to stick w that location.

If passband is 80-2.5k let's say and you need a polarity reversal only between 630-1k for example.

Put a high q AFP in around 630 area to move it to -180 Than another APF at 1k to move it another -180 to move it 360• (which is back in phase but 1cycle backwards so time align for the offset.) of course it's not that easy you have to use several APF to find where/which really works the best. 

Or (which is better) make an FIR filter that moves the phase on one driver that matches the other side. Done. 

It sucks when you flip the polarity and fixes midrange but midbass goes to ****. The trade off isn't worth it .

It's better if you have another speaker to take over right above where the APF is needed to avoid using the 2nd APF by just letting it roll off . That usually isn't the case tho unless your tweeter can dig down to 1k


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

oabeieo said:


> Being out of phase in one narrow band though a passband of a driver...
> Yes frustrating but there is a fix for it but it will have some negative effects but would work if had to stick w that location.
> 
> If passband is 80-2.5k let's say and you need a polarity reversal only between 630-1k for example.
> ...


Thx for the thoughts, i wish i had access to Apf's with the ps8. I inquired to Fred at arc about the possibility of it in the future, but knew there would have to be demand for the feature... He agreed, and I'm not holding my breath .

Could surely use them for the midbass issue I've talked about at length in my other thread...

Anyways, I'm looking at my options again. No mystery why i eventually stuck them back in the stock locations. It looks clean for one thing .

There is a spot on the doors that would have them pointed pretty much across from each other, I would have to fab something to make them fit correctly.

Not really looking at tearing the tweets out again, but it's a possibility i guess... Spent a lot of time on them and they do look pretty good.

I'm guessing ideally I'd get the tweet and midrange on the same axis? Which would involve what i mentioned above


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

Looks like tweets in sails MR on pillars is the new golden standard eh?


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

Sails would be some work


----------



## oabeieo (Feb 22, 2015)

bnae38 said:


> Thx for the thoughts, i wish i had access to Apf's with the ps8. I inquired to Fred at arc about the possibility of it in the future, but knew there would have to be demand for the feature... He agreed, and I'm not holding my breath .
> 
> Could surely use them for the midbass issue I've talked about at length in my other thread...
> 
> ...


Yeah, for sure. Even with all the fancy tools there's still trade offs. 
Have you thought about an array? A second driver with some trickery DSP on it could make things nice too


----------



## Elgrosso (Jun 15, 2013)

(Or just forget about all this dash mess and put some horns )

Cool to see you got some improvements!


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

Mind's already (mostly) made up on re-doing pillars.

Once again I'll throw em in the freezer for an hour or two then quick rip the pods off . It's just moldable epoxy covered by bed-liner and then paint.

Envisioning putting the mids in pods essentially where tweets are now, angled up and in a bit more. Then tweets on the outsides or above mids, same axis..


Too many headache's where they are now. Frankly, they just sound "off" even when they're playing by themselves full range with a good tune on them... Too many reflections, I should have known better.


Pic again for ref.. mids are under grilles in stock location.


----------



## Elgrosso (Jun 15, 2013)

Haha the virus is growing fast!
You could try the pods near the window at first, your tweeters seems good there, and look clean.
Just behind the tweeters, closest as possible, looks like there's enough room for Eton or GB no?


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

i had the mids hanging there months ago, think it kinda looks like crap.. would rather do it over. Built in, smooth curves.


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

Well after sleeping on it.. I don't really want to redo my pillars. Blah.

Realized I still haven't tried a different friggin house curve yet, tunnel vision strikes again..

Slapped together an Andy curve tune and I'll give that a go. Initial listen was pretty good, much flatter, even the bass. Which means I have cut way way less out of the subbass and need to turn the knob way down. 

Not necessarily a bad thing I suppose.

I need a different hobby... Have a hard time letting go (or giving up) when things aren't going the way they should lol.


----------



## oabeieo (Feb 22, 2015)

Elgrosso said:


> (Or just forget about all this dash mess and put some horns )
> 
> Cool to see you got some improvements!



Yes so true .


----------



## Justin Zazzi (May 28, 2012)

bnae38 said:


> Realized I still haven't tried a different friggin house curve yet, tunnel vision strikes again..
> 
> Slapped together an Andy curve tune and I'll give that a go. Initial listen was pretty good, much flatter, even the bass. Which means I have cut way way less out of the subbass and need to turn the knob way down.


:idea:

yay!


----------



## Elgrosso (Jun 15, 2013)

bnae38 said:


> Well after sleeping on it.. I don't really want to redo my pillars. Blah.
> 
> Realized I still haven't tried a different friggin house curve yet, tunnel vision strikes again..
> 
> ...


Yeah Andy's curve is great, I used to keep one in preset for high speed.
By the way did you try in 2 way? Your midrange seem to play very high, maybe in this spot it could work nicely, like crossed from 1.5/2khz.
With or without the tweeters, but crossed much higher for little sparkles.




oabeieo said:


> Yes so true .


But butcher path...


----------



## Jscoyne2 (Oct 29, 2014)

Im not a fan of the andy curve in my car. Everything from 800hz up needs to be about 3-5db down or its too bright for me. Possibly a bump at 12-20k.

Sent from my SGH-T999 using Tapatalk


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

Jscoyne2 said:


> Im not a fan of the andy curve in my car. Everything from 800hz up needs to be about 3-5db down or its too bright for me. Possibly a bump at 12-20k.
> 
> Sent from my SGH-T999 using Tapatalk


Yeah, that's almost exactly what I found on the drive in this morning.. I'll have to tweak to somewhere in between the Andy/Hanatsu curves....

I play with the prs eq here and there on the road 

thx


----------



## Jscoyne2 (Oct 29, 2014)

bnae38 said:


> Yeah, that's almost exactly what I found on the drive in this morning.. I'll have to tweak to somewhere in between the Andy/Hanatsu curves....
> 
> I play with the prs eq here and there on the road
> 
> thx


Right? Can not leave the 16 band alone...

Idk if its the curve or my car acoustics but male voices seem significantly quieter than females. Im curious if you experience that issue at all. I have huge dips in 800 and 500hz ranges so that could definitely be the issue.

Sent from my SGH-T999 using Tapatalk


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

Jscoyne2 said:


> Right? Can not leave the 16 band alone...
> 
> Idk if its the curve or my car acoustics but male voices seem significantly quieter than females. Im curious if you experience that issue at all. I have huge dips in 800 and 500hz ranges so that could definitely be the issue.
> 
> Sent from my SGH-T999 using Tapatalk


Suppose that's a big part of it, I do as well if my drivers are in phase (3-500hz). If i flip the midrange, no longer though. 

But i still think it sounds goofy flipped.. Aint nothin easy


----------



## Elgrosso (Jun 15, 2013)

Jscoyne2 said:


> Im not a fan of the andy curve in my car. Everything from 800hz up needs to be about 3-5db down or its too bright for me. Possibly a bump at 12-20k.
> 
> Sent from my SGH-T999 using Tapatalk


I liked it very much when I used it, now I have a flatter one with a little dip around 3k and flat up to 20k (when possible).
But I also realized that it really depends of the drive I take, like someone pointed out earlier I think.
My usual are side streets, very low speed and no traffic so I can enjoy flatter and subtile.
But highways or noisy environments Definitely need some low boost.
(But honestly I have already hard time to get one perfect target so 2 or more... )


----------



## strohw (Jan 27, 2016)

I think Hanatsu's curve is one of the best generic curves. It sounds pretty good overall and it allows you to listen to music loud as well as has a built in boost for road noise. It's something you can tune an average individuals vehicle too and they'd be very happy.

Like mentioned above, I also need at least a 4-5db cut at 2-4k when compared 200-800hz. I also need 5-10k at least 3-5db down compared to the same region. If I don't do the 2-4k cut certain music like hard rock/heavy guitars/distortion/blah is terrible. If I don't roll off the 5-10k a bit then sibilance/female vocals/eletronic effects/loud and compressed cymbals are too much.

I usually take Hanatsu's curve which has around 6-8db of total roll off between 1k to 16k. Then I just move it to about 5db of total roll off at 16k and cut back 2-4k a little bit. This will generally brighten it up a bit and keep the worse region under control. He usually had about 2-3db of drop from 200hz to 1khz and moving that back to 1-2db helps a little. I keep his 20-160hz the same because I listen to music so much at high speeds. If I'm just listening with the car off then the sub region needs 2-3db worth of cut or it's too loud.


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

strohw said:


> I think Hanatsu's curve is one of the best generic curves. It sounds pretty good overall and it allows you to listen to music loud as well as has a built in boost for road noise. It's something you can tune an average individuals vehicle too and they'd be very happy.
> 
> Like mentioned above, I also need at least a 4-5db cut at 2-4k when compared 200-800hz. I also need 5-10k at least 3-5db down compared to the same region. If I don't do the 2-4k cut certain music like hard rock/heavy guitars/distortion/blah is terrible. If I don't roll off the 5-10k a bit then sibilance/female vocals/eletronic effects/loud and compressed cymbals are too much.
> 
> I usually take Hanatsu's curve which has around 6-8db of total roll off between 1k to 16k. Then I just move it to about 5db of total roll off at 16k and cut back 2-4k a little bit. This will generally brighten it up a bit and keep the worse region under control. He usually had about 2-3db of drop from 200hz to 1khz and moving that back to 1-2db helps a little. I keep his 20-160hz the same because I listen to music so much at high speeds. If I'm just listening with the car off then the sub region needs 2-3db worth of cut or it's too loud.


Agreed for the most part. The sub portion of his curve is very bottom heavy, sorta the opposite of bloated. I end up hacking so much off from 40-80hz it's not even funny. I'm envisioning a balance between to two curves on this portion too.


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

Here we have it.. guaranteed to maybe work.

Btw, I am on the highway most of the time, hence going back to a steeper attempt..

3-400hz seem to irritate me so i flattened it out there... I'll give it a shot tomorrow, hopefully a step forward


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

Feedback on curve welcome


----------



## strohw (Jan 27, 2016)

You're suppose to tell us how it sounds.


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

strohw said:


> You're suppose to tell us how it sounds.


Ya, put it together later last night.. will do tonight.


----------



## Elgrosso (Jun 15, 2013)

bnae38 said:


> Feedback on curve welcome


Looks smooth, almost like mine, how do you like this little dip at 3k? It took me some time to get used to but now if flat here I find it almost agressive.
But you have +20db below 100hz 
Do you listen at moderate volume? Loud it must seriously shake!


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

I have the bass knob down slightly from the tune curve most of the time .

I'm finding 3-4k and 3-400hz are the areas usually irritating me.

I don't think a dip at 3-400hz would be "normal", so not going there at this point. In the end, that might be what works best though.

More trial and error to go..


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

She's a winner, liking it so far.

I'll go with cautiously optimistic this time, instead of errr my gerrdd it's a miracle... but yeah road test will reveal true character.

Still had to invert midrange and hack to get down, but f it for now. 


Curve:
20 14
25 14
31 13.25
40 11
50 8
63 4.5
80 0
100 -3.5
125 -6.2
160 -8
200 -9
250 -9.5
315 -10
400 -10
500 -10
630 -10.25
800 -10.5
1000 -10.5
1200 -11
1600 -12
2000 -13
2500 -14
3100 -15
4000 -14.5
5000 -14
6300 -14.5
8000 -15
10000 -15.5
12000 -16
16000 -16.5
20000 -16.75


----------



## Justin Zazzi (May 28, 2012)

So these are the curves that sound good to you. Are you still using the horns? I assume you have no tweeters, just the horns running all the way up right?


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

Jazzi said:


> So these are the curves that sound good to you. Are you still using the horns? I assume you have no tweeters, just the horns running all the way up right?




Somewhat else mentioned horns, never had them.. still using gear in sig.


----------



## Justin Zazzi (May 28, 2012)

Yep, you're right, that was totally someone else. Whoops.


----------



## oabeieo (Feb 22, 2015)

It was elgroso and I that said get horns and be done with it . Lol


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

Horns could work i guess, but I'm kinda thinking sledgehammer.

Ever think it sounded better stock lol.....

I'm putting phase back and leaving it alone for awhile. Parametric isn't working on ps8 tweets, dunno if it's a known bug or not. Other drives eq fine.

Distortion was up on left side. Pretty sure i had sweeps going to the right only, they must have "summed" in the deck but got shat out poopily. Technical terms.

pft...


----------



## Elgrosso (Jun 15, 2013)

bnae38 said:


> Ever think it sounded better stock lol...


Why not? I mean you could try it has some benefits.
It means restarting from scratch, because you won't handle it long.
I did it few times when I felt lost, or just back to simple 2 way no sub for example.


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

Elgrosso said:


> Why not? I mean you could try it has some benefits.
> It means restarting from scratch, because you won't handle it long.
> I did it few times when I felt lost, or just back to simple 2 way no sub for example.


In phase on the midrange again sounds... in phase lol. Much more coherent, that's the way she stays... Not sure why I'm 180 off at xo point (350hz) still but, flipping phase isn't going to be the remedy anymore.

In the end it's what sounds good that counts, and it sounds listenable again this way.

I'll try bumping midbass xo up at some point, maybe 2nd order XO's so they'll sum out of phase too. Although that didn't sound very pleasing when i tried it either.


----------



## Elgrosso (Jun 15, 2013)

Maybe a combo of 12 & 24db, or 12/18, 18/18?


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

Yeah, I'll experiment with different combinations.

Bottom line is out of phase sounds out of phase, so screw using that to get better summing.


----------



## strohw (Jan 27, 2016)

What side of the crossover did it sum better? Are both sides out of phase or just one side? Listening to pink noise for midb/midr on a single side and flipping the midr, which way sounds more solid?


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

Midbass response in the area was about where it should be, midrange not there. Let me see if i can find pix on my pb..


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

Here's an older pic of L and R sides with everything in phase. 160-190hz is a different issue btw..... L and R midbass sum with a null there.


----------



## Jscoyne2 (Oct 29, 2014)

Yikes

Sent from my SGH-T999 using Tapatalk


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

Lol indeed.

Old pic, but same fun stuffs.


----------



## Jscoyne2 (Oct 29, 2014)

Try this as an experiment. 

Sit in your car. Put all time alignment to zero. Set all phase to normal.Put the mic to your right ear. Take a measurement of just the sub. Then take a measurement of just t right midbass. Then flip the right midbass phase and slowly add time delay. Now start doing measurements with different delays. The initial right midbass should be pretty far out. I think mine is like 3.2ms. You'll actually find two kinds of gaps. Large wide ones and deep narrow ones. You're aiming for narrow. 

Youll start to see bigger and bigger gaps, eventually a huge one thatll be very narrow thatll be something like 30db down. Then when you add more delay, that gap will start to get smaller (louder). When your at the biggest deepest null. Your at the most out of phase. Now flip the phase and bam, your at the most in phase. 

At this point your sub and right midbass are aligned. Do a measurement of your right midrange. Then flip its phase. 

At this point you should have your sub, right midbass(normal phase) and right midrange (reverse phase) on. Do the same process for the midrange as you did for the midbass. 

My right midrange is farther than my right midbass so I have less delay on it. If your right midbass is at 3ms, you should start at 3ms and go down. Vice versa if your midrange is closer than the right midbass. 

When all your right side drivers are aligned. I turn on Just my midbass drivers (left and right) and delay the left one till I hear the vocals go center.

Then I do the same for midranges. Just have the midranges on and delay the left midrange till you get center stage.

Do the same for tweets because their lower harmonics play a roll in center stage.


Doing it all this way allows me to align my right drivers and then by ear, aligning my left drivers. This works really well for me and I dont have to **** with measurements on the left side.

When doing it this way. Try playing around. For example, you might find a big null at 2.56ms, keep going to around 4ms and see if you find a deeper one. 

Sent from my SGH-T999 using Tapatalk


----------



## strohw (Jan 27, 2016)

How close are you inputs vs taped measured results vs something like HOLM when you do it that way?

You're basically using time alignment to correct phase issues at a crossover point instead of it's intended purpose.


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

Will give that a shot tonight, thank you sir.


----------



## Jscoyne2 (Oct 29, 2014)

strohw said:


> How close are you inputs vs taped measured results vs something like HOLM when you do it that way?
> 
> You're basically using time alignment to correct phase issues at a crossover point instead of it's intended purpose.


Never had any luck with Holm and I havnt checked taped. With the same XO slope on both sides , they should always sum well. There should never be dips, so doing it this way assures your settings are close to correct. 

Or atleast its worked for me

Sent from my SGH-T999 using Tapatalk


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

Thinking more about it, that'll likely lead me back near where i am with phase inverted on midrange (to get things to sum).

At that point it feels like the majority of things are out of whack (phase)... but they sum at xo.........


Are 12db LR crossovers technically only out of phase near the xo point? That was my understanding.. 

Guess that would make the most sense potentially..


----------



## Jscoyne2 (Oct 29, 2014)

bnae38 said:


> Thinking more about it, that'll likely lead me back near where i am with phase inverted on midrange (to get things to sum).
> 
> At that point it feels like the majority of things are out of whack (phase)... but they sum at xo.........
> 
> ...


Just try it. See what happens. You may be a ms or two too far or too early. 

Sent from my SGH-T999 using Tapatalk


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

Meh, more i think about it, I've already tried that in effect....

Stage is up front and solid when ta is set by measurement and phase is in phase.. I'm not willing to sacrifice coherence for easier eq etc..


I will experiment with crossovers in a bit here though, that's worth a shot.

As it sits, there is some slight feeling of frequencies missing but no longer a sense of "ummm something is really ****ed up with this..."


----------



## Justin Zazzi (May 28, 2012)

A 2nd order crossover is 180 degrees out of phase at all frequencies relative to the speaker you are crossing over to. So one of them must be connected in reverse polarity for the two to sum together correctly. Notice this is the acoustic response I'm talking about, not just using an LR2 electronic filter, which doesn't tell you anything by itself.


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

10-4 thanks Jazzi


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

At the point where it's somewhere in between listenable and "good". At the end of the day, I'll take it... 

I have the midbass hp at 12db instead of 24 and the blend is slightly better. Still coherent which is what matters most to me at this point!

Currently looking for a set of Illusion c3cx as I've fallen out of love with the gb25 and in with these. Sigh.. 

I'll be able to fab them into the pillars mostly on axis and, in theory (and if i can find a set), would have a chance to improve on this f'ing reflective nightmare...


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

Same ol ****e with the c3cx in pillars.

Install quirky response aside, they sound fantastic..



















Been doing some serious reading on phase/TA etc, but haven't taken a whole lot away except that FR should remain numero uno. Phase is a relative mess regardless....


As for the not sounding "right", continue to kind of think i just don't really like the 300hz area for whatever reason. I've got a few presets I'll continue to listen too, one with the midbass out of phase to get better summing (MB lp is 12db/oct and ditto for sub, so it works). 

Analytical side of me still cant get over that I need to invert (or delay the midrange another 30") to get good summing with LR 24.

Fwiw i redid my crossovers to get me as close as i could to Jazzi curves for my curve before eq. Which was the proper way to do it lol.. Acoustic/electrical, amazed at some of the simple things that has alluded me......

Sub [email protected]
Lmb [email protected] and [email protected]
Rmb [email protected] and [email protected]
Lmr [email protected] and [email protected]
Rmr [email protected] and [email protected]
Lt [email protected]
Rt [email protected]

Eq'd driver response below.











Yupper.. still tweaking, someday maybe I'll be content lol.


----------



## Babs (Jul 6, 2007)

Looks like you've got good balance and nice smooth individual plots there. Should tune up really nice. 


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

Hehe you'd think.


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

Been sifting over info in this one a lot in particular.. need to do it again.

http://www.diymobileaudio.com/forum...5-change-plans-2-dedicated-wideband-dash.html

Sqnut says to keep polarity in polarity and TA should be close to by distance.

Wonder if it is a modal thing in the car around 300hz that has me flipping polarity to get better summing there.


----------



## SkizeR (Apr 19, 2011)

i would also steepen the crossover between midbass and sub.


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

12db/Oct got me closer to 24 acoustic (which they should be). Sub level likely not correct too.

Yeah, looks like sub was about 4db hot on that graph. Don't pay as much attention as i should to sub level for measurements, since i've sometimes got it turned down in the garage (need it up on the road). Everything else is in sync though.


----------



## Ziggyrama (Jan 17, 2016)

Great thread. I am battling bad imaging and sound pulling to the right. Based on the info here, I think I need to go back and start over with getting xovers sorted out to achieve desired acoustic response. I do have a major problem in 600hz area which is killing my FR on the left channel and I suspect that is creating the pull to the right effect. Anyways, question on the T/A, tape measure vs. impulse response, my TA is way off based on IR when compared to measured distance. At the xover point for the sub and midbass drivers, the LP "lags" the signal for the sub while the HP for the midbass creates a "lead". At low frequencies where the wavelength is long, wouldn't that create a major disparity between distance based TA vs. IR based TA? Since the sub is typically the driver that we use as reference for TA, wouldn't you have to slow down the midbass further, roughly full 360 cycle for LR24 since they are that far apart at the crossover point?

Clear as mud? ?


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

Seems like that 200-800hz area is the toughest part here too.

Fwiw, I'm still struggling to get a good feel on TA for summing vs TA for ... appropriate delay between drivers on the whole - good arrival times etc. The two don't seem to always coincide (unfortunately).


----------



## Babs (Jul 6, 2007)

Looking at your installation with how those coaxials are placed.. I suggest throwing some towels up there in position as if it were a dash cover and evaluate.. Man that's a lot of driver over a nice reflective flat dash.


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

Babs said:


> Looking at your installation with how those coaxials are placed.. I suggest throwing some towels up there in position as if it were a dash cover and evaluate.. Man that's a lot of driver over a nice reflective flat dash.


What can I say, it's a car... 


Thinking I should have angled them inwards more?


----------



## gijoe (Mar 25, 2008)

bnae38 said:


> What can I say, it's a car...
> 
> 
> Thinking I should have angled them inwards more?


It is a car. 

You won't get a perfect response anywhere, especially not in a car. I wouldn't get too hung up on narrow peaks and dips, you won't be able to fix them all, even with all the processing in the world. Some of those are simply response issues related to the physical characteristics of the car, and no amount of EQ will fix them. 

Regarding TA, if what you've entered into the DSP is not very close to the physical distance, then something is wrong. A tape measure will get you very, very close to perfect. You're adding delay to closer speakers to match arrival times, so accounting for that distance is pretty simple. People love to make TA much more difficult than it really is. 

It looks like you've got some pretty good response from your speakers, at this point I would almost recommend to put away the microphone and finish by ear. You're getting pretty hung up on things that you may not be able to fix, and may not be audible anyway.


----------



## Ziggyrama (Jan 17, 2016)

So, follow up to my question in post #116, take a look at this article, which explains the behavior of LR crossover, going through various orders of it. Specifically, look at figure 16 and 17, which shows the phase shift of the signal and group delay with respect to the frequency, arbitrary crossover point being 1KHz:

Linkwitz-Riley Crossovers: A Primer

Phase:










Group delay:










NOTE: these are for LR2, so for LR4, add additional 180d.

Notice how the low passed signal starts changing phase as it approaches the crossover and continues to shift phase as it moves past the crossover. That is the sub. The high passed signal does the same thing, but it is phase shifted throughout. For LR4, that would be 360d shifted which would put the signal back in phase but shifted by a full cycle. In figure 17, you can see the group delay plot which shows the time delay.

If you do things by tape measure, you're not really in phase since you're off by 360d, because distance itself does not account for crossover network signal delays.

Next question, if I were to change phase on my DSP, which direction does it take me? It probably delays signal by the specified phase shift?

Thoughts?


----------



## sqnut (Dec 24, 2009)

bnae38 said:


> Been sifting over info in this one a lot in particular.. need to do it again.
> 
> http://www.diymobileaudio.com/forum...5-change-plans-2-dedicated-wideband-dash.html
> 
> ...


That thread brings back a lot of memories. I agree with Nick, put your sub on like a 6th order slope and everything else on fourth order. Don't under lap or overlap and don't use asymmetric L&R crossover points. Don't use xover points to eq L&R response, that's what you have your eq for. 

When you read that thread keep the following in mind:

Keep it simple and don't overthink things.

Whatever you do while tuning, you're only changing the timing, response or both.

Get the timing right and then just focus on using the eq to fix the response.


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

sqnut said:


> That thread brings back a lot of memories. I agree with Nick, put your sub on like a 6th order slope and everything else on fourth order. Don't under lap or overlap and don't use asymmetric L&R crossover points. Don't use xover points to eq L&R response, that's what you have your eq for.
> 
> When you read that thread keep the following in mind:
> 
> ...


I've spent the last year or so getting pretty good at doing individual driver eq... and that's about all I'll say I'm happy with so far as my tuning abilities lol. I suppose a small part of me thought everything else would fall into place (HA).


As I try to hone in on the best curve to fit my vehicle, I run into these phase problems. Got a couple questions.

So your advice is to more or less set and forget TA (by distance), which I get but don't necessarily like the results. I assume the premise behind that is overall time alignment will then be correct, TA isn't to be used to get the best summing. 

So if I get crap (or almost 180degrees off) summing while going this route, what is the best plan of action?

I read that inverting polarity isn't ideal, soooo should I try to XO the drivers closer together? I guess despite all the reading, I don't really follow.

#2: Regarding using electrical XO to get ideal acoustic response. I read somewhere this was the best way to do it. Why do you disagree? I'm guessing phase coherence, but in the end it's kind of a ****-show anyway lol. Guess I'm looking for more info on this front too.

Ok one more, why the 36db/oct xo on the sub/mb? I got near 24db/oct acoustic Xo while using 12db octave (added some eq). The midbass in particular couldn't be rolled off hard on the low side to get a more gradual slope.


Thanks


----------



## lizardking (Nov 8, 2008)

In my opinion, I would keep your crossover points on the right and left side the same. No need to overlap or underlap crossover points. Use your EQ. I would also use 4th order on everything, maybe 6th on the sub. 

Level match your drivers left to right. Adjust the left and right sides to the JBL curve and then both sides together for final touches. I wouldn't use more than 1/3 measuring because you end up fixing stuff that doesn't really exist in terms of what you hear. I've adjusted using 1/6, 1/12 and 1/24 and wasn't impressed with the results. I think 1/6 to 1/12 at the very most for 200hz and below. 

Over the years, I've tuned so many different ways listening to this guy or that guy...etc..etc with everyone having a different flavor. I listen to my system with all speakers playing and that is how I tune it nowadays.


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

lizardking said:


> In my opinion, I would keep your crossover points on the right and left side the same. No need to overlap or underlap crossover points. Use your EQ. I would also use 4th order on everything, maybe 6th on the sub.
> 
> Level match your drivers left to right. Adjust the left and right sides to the JBL curve and then both sides together for final touches. I wouldn't use more than 1/3 measuring because you end up fixing stuff that doesn't really exist in terms of what you hear. I've adjusted using 1/6, 1/12 and 1/24 and wasn't impressed with the results. I think 1/6 to 1/12 at the very most for 200hz and below.
> 
> Over the years, I've tuned so many different ways listening to this guy or that guy...etc..etc with everyone having a different flavor. I listen to my system with all speakers playing and that is how I tune it nowadays.


I pretty much have been using the variable smoothing all along, not sure the formula that follows, but must be close to 1/24 at the 20hz end working its way to 1/3 on the top end. 

Food for thought, thx.


----------



## lizardking (Nov 8, 2008)

bnae38 said:


> I pretty much have been using the variable smoothing all along, not sure the formula that follows, but must be close to 1/24 at the 20hz end working its way to 1/3 on the top end.
> 
> Food for thought, thx.



It's crazy how much time you can spend trying to fix dips and peaks that you can't hear anyway when measuring. Listen to sqnut....the guy is right on when he talks about getting the tune right.


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

I'm not trying to fix little peaks and dips though, not sure how I led people to that conclusion. Other than my individual curves being a little ocd looking, ok I'll admit that... .

But not something I'm really concerned with atm.. 

More or less, individual drivers are eq'd (or i can do it again another way); I'm confuzzled why they don't play nice with each other (major and wide dip when in phase with TA by distance). 

Will admit I'm all for making it easier on myself, so I may go 1/3rd from here out on all but the sub. I pulled up some past results and looked at smoothing again.


----------



## oabeieo (Feb 22, 2015)

bnae38 said:


> I'm not trying to fix little peaks and dips though, not sure how I led people to that conclusion. Other than my individual curves being a little ocd looking, ok I'll admit that... .
> 
> But not something I'm really concerned with atm..
> 
> ...



Your problem is comb filtering 

Once you're able to hear the effects of comb filtering, you'll never forget it and you'll always be able to identify it every time you hear it ...

I've been preaching about it but nobody seems to listen maybe it's because these nobody witch is whoever , simply doesn't know what it sounds like or what to listen for here is a an audio clip that I found that maybe will help kind a give some of you guys an idea it will really help your tuning process and really help where to just stop the madness when it comes to EQ work and knowing when and when not to EQ certain things ...

Bottom line is: combfiltering is not going away, so either deal with it or move your speakers to a better position kick panels or away from reflective surfaces like glass .. but even in a kick panel there is comb-filtering. 







And here's some explanation 

https://youtu.be/Or6N_E-RhXU


----------



## sqnut (Dec 24, 2009)

You're going to have combing even in your living room, no matter where you place the speakers. A car is a much more reverberant room, and the benefits on combing, from moving speakers around is nominal at best. You're going to have combing no matter where you place the speakers. 

Combing is nothing more than a peaky FR at a high resolution. Just use your eq to alleviate these combing issues. How much combing do you see in a typical car at 1/3 oct? 1/6? 1/12?.... 1/48? Yes, the higher your resolution, the more combing you will see, but your ears and the eq on your dsp are aligned to 1/3 oct. I'm not saying you can't hear a resolution finer than 1/3 oct, when we hear a tone in isolation, depending on the frequency, we can hear a difference in cents. However when we're hearing 500 frequencies together and at different amplitudes, our ability to hear narrow dips is limited, peaks will still stand out, so flatten them. Generally what you measure at 1/6oct is good enough while correcting. Nutshell, don't over think things.

To think that moving the drivers to kicks will reduce combing, is to over think the issue. It's not combing you're hearing, just a poor response. Follow the keep it simple principle, just think in terms of timing and response.

*[edit]* Whatever is your current fascination in this hobby, if you can't break things down to how they affect your timing and response, you'll just keep going around in circles.*[edit]*


----------



## Ziggyrama (Jan 17, 2016)

sqnut said:


> You're going to have combing even in your living room, no matter where you place the speakers. With a car we're talking about a much more reverberant room, you're going to have combing no matter where you place the speakers.
> 
> Combing is nothing more than a peaky FR, use your eq to alleviate these combing issues. How much combing do you see in a typical car at 1/3 oct? 1/6? 1/12?.... 1/48? Yes, the higher your resolution, the more combing you will see, but your ears and the eq on your dsp is 1/3 oct. Don't over think things.
> 
> Thinking that moving the drivers to kicks will reduce combing, is to over think the issue. It's not combing you're hearing, just a poor response. Follow the keep it simple principle, just think in terms of timing and response.


1/3 oct may not be granular enough. I used to have a pretty bad sibilance problem around 8khz. The FR graphs at 1/3 oct showed nothing, my ears were saying something else. 1/6oct revealed a peak which I was able to correct. Simple is good but having a little more resolution isn't a bad thing as long as you don't end up obsessing over every little dip or peak.

Why are L-R asymmetrical crossover frequencies bad? Issues with phasing?

BTW, my previous post about phasing at crossover frequency is over thinking it. Once I really thought about it, additional delay to correct phase offset does not make sense.


----------



## sqnut (Dec 24, 2009)

Ziggyrama said:


> 1/3 oct may not be granular enough. I used to have a pretty bad sibilance problem around 8khz. The FR graphs at 1/3 oct showed nothing, my ears were saying something else. 1/6oct revealed a peak which I was able to correct. Simple is good but having a little more resolution isn't a bad thing as long as you don't end up obsessing over every little dip or peak.
> 
> Why are L-R asymmetrical crossover frequencies bad? Issues with phasing?
> 
> BTW, my previous post about phasing at crossover frequency is over thinking it. Once I really thought about it, additional delay to correct phase offset does not make sense.


I realized my earlier post was too general and corrected it. I feel measuring FR at 1/6 is more than enough. The peak at 8khz is pretty common in cars and this is a frequency one cuts a lot. You won't cut much at 5, you will cut some at 6 and a ton at 8, again this is with all cars I've tuned.

Do your home speakers have asymmetric L&R xovers? Yes it messes with phase. Folks who do this are using asymmetric points to balance L&R before eq, hence minimal eq......minimal eq in a car is an oxymoron. The only time I would use asymmetric L&R is if I had active xovers but only a 5 band eq.


----------



## sqnut (Dec 24, 2009)

bnae38 said:


> I've spent the last year or so getting pretty good at doing individual driver eq... and that's about all I'll say I'm happy with so far as my tuning abilities lol. I suppose a small part of me thought everything else would fall into place (HA).


Not questioning your eq capability, just trying to give you a more solid foundation. 




bnae38 said:


> As I try to hone in on the best curve to fit my vehicle, I run into these phase problems.


What do these phase issues sound like?




bnae38 said:


> Got a couple questions.
> 
> So your advice is to more or less set and forget TA (by distance), which I get but don't necessarily like the results. I assume the premise behind that is overall time alignment will then be correct, TA isn't to be used to get the best summing.


Measure the shortest distance from your ear to the drivers (left to left etc) and use this to set your TA. Stabilize the network as suggested, the good thing is that L&R is balanced really well, so yeah one year has been well spent. Now measure your setup again and see if you have the dip ~350. It should be much better, but if its still there then do the following. 

Play the left MB and left mid only, do you have the dip? Now do the other side. For each side that has the dip, add some delay to the mid till you lose the dip, if you have measured right, this shouldn't be more than a few clicks.

Assuming your mids and tweets were in phase, add the delay you added to the left mid to the left tweet and vice versa. Now take a listen.

Any issues you're still hearing are 99% down to response, just block out phase / TA issues for now. What you need to work on is the overall FR curve. 




bnae38 said:


> Ok one more, why the 36db/oct xo on the sub/mb? I got near 24db/oct acoustic Xo while using 12db octave (added some eq). The midbass in particular couldn't be rolled off hard on the low side to get a more gradual slope.
> 
> 
> Thanks


Because I want everything above ~80 from the mid bass upfront and I want to limit issues possible resonance and things that will pull the stage back. Also because I don't want the mono frequencies from the sub bleeding into the stereo ones from my mid bass, thereby muddying up the sound.


----------



## oabeieo (Feb 22, 2015)

sqnut said:


> You're going to have combing even in your living room, no matter where you place the speakers. A car is a much more reverberant room, and the benefits on combing, from moving speakers around is nominal at best. You're going to have combing no matter where you place the speakers.
> 
> Combing is nothing more than a peaky FR at a high resolution. Just use your eq to alleviate these combing issues. How much combing do you see in a typical car at 1/3 oct? 1/6? 1/12?.... 1/48? Yes, the higher your resolution, the more combing you will see, but your ears and the eq on your dsp are aligned to 1/3 oct. I'm not saying you can't hear a resolution finer than 1/3 oct, when we hear a tone in isolation, depending on the frequency, we can hear a difference in cents. However when we're hearing 500 frequencies together and at different amplitudes, our ability to hear narrow dips is limited, peaks will still stand out, so flatten them. Generally what you measure at 1/6oct is good enough while correcting. Nutshell, don't over think things.
> 
> ...


That's is a stretch sqnut. 
I wouldn't discount the effects of combfiltering just like that. 
And your flat wrong about this. 
I'm not going to get into it again with you. It's impossible to have a argument when one side isn't intellectually fair. 

Moving speakers to kicks or even in the doors will lessen the effects of combing and will make a smoother sounding system.
Sure you can eq the responce , but if the responce is riddled with delayed versions and the delayed versions are causing cancellations in between modes and reinforcement at nodes that would be some pretty wild swings in energy. 
So yeah you can eq the responce sure but it will sound hollow and phasey .

Hence the title of this thread. 

Moving speakers away from glass will absolutely alleviate a lot of combing in the HF. Why ? 
Speakers mounted in kicks have a lot less reflective materials around the speakers. I don't know about you sq but I think HF bouncing off glass sounds kinda ****ty. The first boundary is the console, seat, and door panel and firewall in kicks. All but maybe a few small areas are padded and the other areas are plastic paneling ...And usually in most installs you are to get the driver more on axis in a kick. 

Look reflective energy is bad and yes in a car it's unavoidable, but it can be minimized , by using ideal locations. And that minimizing can lend to a much smoother responce that isn't as riddled with problems. 

I know you'll disagree , but that why the folks that take knowledge and experience and use it are experts. Maybe one day you'll start to catch on, maybe . 


Chao


----------



## sqnut (Dec 24, 2009)

I am not going to sift through and dissect everything you said, but based on the this you're saying that tweeters in corners of dash, firing into the windshield would be horrible positions for comb filtering. Go listen to some amazing sounding cars that have tweets / mids here.



oabeieo said:


> Moving speakers away from glass will absolutely alleviate a lot of combing in the HF. Why ?





sqnut said:


> *[edit]* Whatever is your current fascination in this hobby, if you can't break things down to how they affect your timing and response, you'll just keep going around in circles.*[edit]*


----------



## oabeieo (Feb 22, 2015)

sqnut said:


> I am not going to sift through and dissect everything you said, but based on the this you're saying that tweeters in corners of dash, firing into the windshield would be horrible positions for comb filtering. Go listen to some amazing sounding cars that have tweets / mids here.


I have a amazing sounding car with mids in dash

But I am absolutely moving them to the kicks at some point because 100-630 is soggy and riddled with combfilters. 

I had my horns on the dash and moved them to under dash and it's night and day different. 

The big problem area is in the midrange and midbass .im not saying it can't sound good, I'm saying if someone is digging them self into a eq oblivion and they're having serious phase issues maybe they should consider moving the speaker to a less reflective area of the car . Of course we're assuming they're installed is correct or as correct as it can be but I would trust that most people on here do things at least 75% correct 75% of the time so I definitely don't under estimate Peoples ability to tune their car if you're using room eq wizard, have a calibrated microphone and have a third octave EQ minimum more than likely that kind of person has caught a clue.

It just drives me nuts when I see somebody having a obvious install related issue they've already tried their EQ antics to no avail and then have somebody tell them they're doing it wrong  

Yes you're right the EQ and timing needs to be correct but what about when it already is the best it can be and it still sounds hollow (soggy) don't you think that that means there's something else going on? Come on SQ stop kidding yourself read between the lines and trying to help people instead of make them spin their wheels even further ....


----------



## sqnut (Dec 24, 2009)

oabeieo said:


> Yes you're right the EQ and timing needs to be correct but what about when it already is the best it can be and it still sounds hollow (soggy) ....


If it sounds hollow and soggy (whatever that means) then it 100% is a timing or response issue, maybe both, but go ahead believe what you want to.


----------



## sqnut (Dec 24, 2009)

oabeieo said:


> I have a amazing sounding car with mids in dash
> 
> But I am absolutely moving them to the kicks at some point because 100-630 is soggy and riddled with combfilters.


How can a car sound amazing if 100-630 is soggy?


----------



## oabeieo (Feb 22, 2015)

sqnut said:


> If it sounds hollow and soggy (whatever that means) then it 100% is a timing or response issue, maybe both, but go ahead believe what you want to.


Lol. 
:shake head: 

Ok whatever floats your boat.


----------



## oabeieo (Feb 22, 2015)

sqnut said:


> How can a car sound amazing if 100-630 is soggy?


I never said it can't sound good , I implied it will be better when I make the move.

The system sounds great minus the fact that the dip at 315 and the peak at 630 cause serious problems. 

Yes I have eq it best it can be, and timing are perfect for what it is. 

But nevertheless there are still serious issues. Yeah it sounds amazing but I know it can be better. So I'll make it better. 

Like you when I went into this build I thought I could dsp my way to nirvana,
Mic even warned me and like you I didn't listen.

I was wrong, I now know the effects of combfiltering and its undeniable. 
Now that I know what it sounds like it can point it out every time . 
And having dash mounted midrange/midbass is a serious issue. 

Unless you completely on axis or have some way to direct the sound (like Gary's car) it won't work right. And I can put money on that even Gary's car has some combing . He uses a center channel so the effects will be minimized as far as getting a strong center and having combfiltering issues . 

There's ways to do it sure, but at some point you got to engineer that. You can't just eq your way to glory.


----------



## SSSnake (Mar 8, 2007)

> Moving speakers to kicks or even in the doors will lessen the effects of combing and will make a smoother sounding system.
> Sure you can eq the responce , but if the responce is riddled with delayed versions and the delayed versions are causing cancellations in between modes and reinforcement at nodes that would be some pretty wild swings in energy.
> So yeah you can eq the responce sure but it will sound hollow and phasey .


I WAS of this opinion as well. However, there are a multitude of issues with kick panel mounted mids/tweets as well. IMO, the first and foremost is driver and passenger legs. Different seating positions and even the clothes worn by passengers have differing effects. I can see people wanting to trade dealing with comb filtering, which you can't filter out, for addressing the issue created by our lower extremities BUT in practice I haven't been able to find a good CONSISTENT solution. Besides folks like Harman have done a ton of research and seem to think dash mounted drivers have advantages that over ride comb filtering issues if mounting locations are chosen carefully. This excerpt from their AES convention paper back in 2010 states:



> The conclusion from that portion of the experiments was that for instrument panel mounted loudspeakers, smaller windshield angles (< 55°) and a location closer
> to the windshield (forward) is preferred for the best overall results but the upper door was a very close second.


 - excerpt taken from "Considerations for the Optimal Location and Boundary Effects for Loudspeakers in an Automotive Interior"

They have done more work than I can hope to do on this subject and have arrived at this conclusion. So, IMO, unless you have some really unusual situation then dash/upper door is the way to go for mid and tweet. I still prefer and I think most endorse kick mounted midbasses.

To specifically address the 100-630 hz range, IMO this is the midbass range (maybe a little extended on the high end of that range). A lot of the dash mounted mids start getting ragged in the 350 - 500 hz range (dependent upon dash size and geometry) so going with a midbass that can play cleanly up to nearly 1khz has become one of my design constraints. I do not want to cross the midbass that high but I don't want to be within an octave of breakup if possible (so xover may be as high as 500hz or more). That is why I have become so enamored of drivers like the 7" illuminator, revelator, satori, excel, and etc. They give you very good midbass output and enough top end to cross over to a fairly small mid.


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

sqnut said:


> Not questioning your eq capability, just trying to give you a more solid foundation.


No worries, wasn't implying anyone was. Just stating what I feel I've become good at at this stage of the game (and what I havent lol).





sqnut said:


> What do these phase issues sound like?


Things sound coherent with everything in phase, but I'm missing the upper midbass. Midbass (or midrange) flipped and I have good summing but .. sounds off. It sounds upper midbass heavy even with cuts. Summing is almost too good in the XO region and i cut it back at that point. I know that doesn't make sense, but that's what i measure overall.






sqnut said:


> Measure the shortest distance from your ear to the drivers (left to left etc) and use this to set your TA. Stabilize the network as suggested, the good thing is that L&R is balanced really well, so yeah one year has been well spent. Now measure your setup again and see if you have the dip ~350. It should be much better, but if its still there then do the following.
> 
> Play the left MB and left mid only, do you have the dip? Now do the other side. For each side that has the dip, add some delay to the mid till you lose the dip, if you have measured right, this shouldn't be more than a few clicks.
> 
> ...


I know how to use a tape measure and set it up correctly at this point . What I've found (and tried at one point) was delaying the midrange another 20" or so gets me to good summing. I can't recall trying it the other way to a large extent (delaying midbass), but it didn't mesh within a reasonable distance. I will look at it again that way. Both the left and right side do the same things here when just looking at one side or the other. Am I sure my drivers aren't hooked up backwards? Yup, I've checked about 6 times lol. 







sqnut said:


> Because I want everything above ~80 from the mid bass upfront and I want to limit issues possible resonance and things that will pull the stage back. Also because I don't want the mono frequencies from the sub bleeding into the stereo ones from my mid bass, thereby muddying up the sound.


This makes sense, guess I'll see how it works in practice. Problem is the low end of my LMB rolls off sooner than the right (as is with all cars i guess), so may be interesting to tune.



Regarding XO use at various points to get the proper accousic xo; what affect would this have on phase (negatively) as opposed to doing them all aligned in the electrical XO (and then having to eq them more)?




For the record, I'm very much a fan of KISS. (keep it simple stupid). Lets just say I spend a lot of time under the microscope before going to the oscilloscope at work.  That said.. being able to quantify everything analytically is where my mind naturally goes. Take all the "feel" side out of things. I'm aware i'll need to get over that and do a lot more by ear after individual driver eq..

thanks


----------



## sqnut (Dec 24, 2009)

oabeieo said:


> I never said it can't sound good , I implied it will be better when I make the move.
> 
> The system sounds great minus the fact that the dip at 315 and the peak at 630 cause serious problems.
> 
> ...


Dude, in a car combing happens above ~500 hz, below that the wavelengths are too long to reflect. So if 100-630 is soggy, chances are it's down to timing and response issues and not combing per se.


----------



## oabeieo (Feb 22, 2015)

sqnut said:


> Dude, in a car combing happens above ~500 hz, below that the wavelengths are too long to reflect. So if 100-630 is soggy, chances are it's down to timing and response issues and not combing per se.


Sq . If you have a hard dip caused by a comb at 500, don't you think that hard dip caused by cancellations would affect 250-125 respectively? or even 1k-2k?
And what happens at the half nodes 312.5-750? 


Think about it , if the frequency is too low to combfilter from reflection than what happens? You think nothing? That's just silly.
The shape of the car will cause plain old cancellations all the way down to about 70hz. 
So sorry your 500hz number is just wrong. 

If you've never seen a dip at 80 you haven't been doing this long enough.lol

A combfilter is called a combfilter because it looks like a hair comb. reflected sound vs direct sound AND speaker interaction. If you think it through you'll get it . 

We badge names on a lot of different stuff sure and some of these name mean completely different things I'll give you that. 

But to say nothing happens under 500hz is just silly. Speaker placment doesn't matter as far as radiation patterns go but speaker placement absolutely matters as far as propagation and modulation goes. You don't want to place a speaker in a spot that will promote cancellations at a frequency your trying to reinforce. 

Anyway....on with your merry ways I guess this horse has been beaten before.


----------



## oabeieo (Feb 22, 2015)

SSSnake said:


> I WAS of this opinion as well. However, there are a multitude of issues with kick panel mounted mids/tweets as well. IMO, the first and foremost is driver and passenger legs. Different seating positions and even the clothes worn by passengers have differing effects. I can see people wanting to trade dealing with comb filtering, which you can't filter out, for addressing the issue created by our lower extremities BUT in practice I haven't been able to find a good CONSISTENT solution. Besides folks like Harman have done a ton of research and seem to think dash mounted drivers have advantages that over ride comb filtering issues if mounting locations are chosen carefully. This excerpt from their AES convention paper back in 2010 states:
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Agreed....

Personally , I think midbass belongs in doors or kicks unless pointed straight at you. The trade off isn't worth it for me I would rather hold my legs in one position. Lol  
I'm a glutton for punishment tho too


----------



## sqnut (Dec 24, 2009)

oabeieo said:


> Sq . If you have a hard dip caused by a comb at 500, don't you think that hard dip caused by cancellations would affect 250-125 respectively? or even 1k-2k?
> And what happens at the half nodes 312.5-750?
> 
> 
> ...


Nulls due to room modes ie width, length and height of your room are very different from comb filtering. The first gives you the sharp deep nulls in your low end and the second gives you the picket fence response in the mid and high frequencies. Educate yourself 100-600 is not comb filtering. 100 hz is 136 inches long. Look at the chart below. The null at 80 is a room mode and combing starts from?


----------



## Ziggyrama (Jan 17, 2016)

^^^ so that null around 500hz is due to general dimensions of the car? Anything that can be done about it?


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

Ziggyrama said:


> ^^^ so that null around 500hz is due to general dimensions of the car? Anything that can be done about it?



That looks like mine at 350 .

Sure, invert your midbass.. lol


----------



## oabeieo (Feb 22, 2015)

sqnut said:


> Nulls due to room modes ie width, length and height of your room are very different from comb filtering. The first gives you the sharp deep nulls in your low end and the second gives you the picket fence response in the mid and high frequencies. Educate yourself 100-600 is not comb filtering. 100 hz is 136 inches long. Look at the chart below. The null at 80 is a room mode and combing starts from?


Now your contradicting yourself and didn't read what I wrote. 
1st your writing in context that I said combfilter happens at LF I didn't say that that, I said we badge different names for things when we're talking about totally different thing and I'll give you that"

MEANING! Room modes are LF issues, sorry you didn't catch that I thought maybe you would have. So to reply to this post all I have have to say is ...Ya think?


----------



## sqnut (Dec 24, 2009)

oabeieo said:


> Now your contradicting yourself and didn't read what I wrote.
> 1st your writing in context that I said combfilter happens at LF I didn't say that that, I said we badge different names for things when we're talking about totally different thing and I'll give you that"
> 
> MEANING! Room modes are LF issues, sorry you didn't catch that I thought maybe you would have. So to reply to this post all I have have to say is ...Ya think?


Put the speakers in kicks so that you can get rid of the combing from 100-600, that is making your sound soggy. If that fails, you can always use a blow dryer to dry out the soggy frequencies. 

It's pointless talking to someone who is ill informed and won't accept it. Folks here are smart enough to figure out what to take in what to filter out. I'm just going to ignore anything else you post.


----------



## sqnut (Dec 24, 2009)

Ziggyrama said:


> ^^^ so that null around 500hz is due to general dimensions of the car? Anything that can be done about it?





bnae38 said:


> That looks like mine at 350 .
> 
> Sure, invert your midbass.. lol


Well, you can move speakers around and move that dip up or down a bit, but the key issue here is, that on such a narrow Q, is that dip even audible?re we worrying about something that's not really relevant? Now if that dip at 400 is on a wider Q, due to say midbass and mid out of phase then that would be audible.


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

Old pic, different drivers. Same stuffs.


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

Fwiw the 160hz issue is from the lmb and rmb playing together, that would be a wonderful spot for APF if i ever get my hands on something that can do it.....


----------



## sqnut (Dec 24, 2009)

bnae38 said:


> Old pic, different drivers. Same stuffs.


I'd say the dips between 100-200 are room modes and the one around 400 _could_ be a phase issue. What was the sub to mid bass xover in that graph?


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

Uhhuh.


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

This was the first real tune i had going awhile back... left and right individual response.

I realized i could flip midrange and get better summing there. I've replaced both the midbass and midrange since and am positive I'm wired correctly.

It's interesting.... and kind of the main reason for the thread.

thanks


----------



## sqnut (Dec 24, 2009)

bnae38 said:


> Fwiw the 160hz issue is from the lmb and rmb playing together, that would be a wonderful spot for APF if i ever get my hands on something that can do it.....


So the L&R mid bass are in phase at 100, fall out of phase at 125, come back in phase at 150 and again fall out of phase at 160.....ok.


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

Lol I don't know about all that, but the 170hz region is from them playing together. I had another thread on that one awhile back.


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

Ok pic was of all speakers on, both plots. Derp


----------



## sqnut (Dec 24, 2009)

Let's assume the internal dimensions of your car are Length - 8', Width - 5.25' and Height - 4'. I'm guessing a bit here, but you can measure and see how close you are to these numbers.

Now, 8' is about 89% of the wavelength of 125hz, 5.5' is 89% of 160hz and 5.25' is 89% of 190hz. Go back and look at your graphs, where do you have the nulls? Phase is not the issue.


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

bnae38 said:


> This was the first real tune i had going awhile back... left and right individual response.
> 
> I realized i could flip midrange and get better summing there. I've replaced both the midbass and midrange since and am positive I'm wired correctly.
> 
> ...


Meh, much more inerested in this.


----------



## sqnut (Dec 24, 2009)

Hate to flog a dead horse but, while reversing polarity can remove cancellations at the xover, it throws L&R out of phase throughout the pass band. Stuff you won't measure on a FR graph but something one hears instantly. The upshot of drivers out of phase imho is, that one keeps fiddling with eq & ta, gets close, but you're never there. Been there done that.


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

sqnut said:


> Hate to flog a dead horse but, while reversing polarity can remove cancellations at the xover, it throws L&R out of phase throughout the pass band. Stuff you won't measure on a FR graph but something one hears instantly. The upshot of drivers out of phase imho is, that one keeps fiddling with eq & ta, gets close, but you're never there. Been there done that.


It throws L/R out of phase, even with the same drivers inverted in polarity?

IE: all normal except both midbass inverted?

Sorry if it sounds like we're covering the same sht over and over, just still haven't figured out a good way to get summing without inverting.


----------



## thehatedguy (May 4, 2007)

Sounds like you need the use of an all pass filter.

I thought Arc was going to update the ps8 to do that...might be thinking of something ele though.


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

I'd love to try it


----------



## oabeieo (Feb 22, 2015)

thehatedguy said:


> Sounds like you need the use of an all pass filter.
> 
> I thought Arc was going to update the ps8 to do that...might be thinking of something ele though.


Big fat X2 ! 
An APF could very well make much smoother if not fix a big portion.


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

So i should get a helix pro2, lol.

I'm working on Arc trying to plant seeds, not holding my breath..


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

I realize i could add a mini 2x4 too, but blehhhh no morrreee equipppmentttt


----------



## oabeieo (Feb 22, 2015)

sqnut said:


> So the L&R mid bass are in phase at 100, fall out of phase at 125, come back in phase at 150 and again fall out of phase at 160.....ok.


No! The timing has to be right and frequency response has to be set. 

He he .....just pullin your chain sq


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

oabeieo said:


> No! The timing has to be right and frequency response has to be set.
> 
> He he .....just pullin your chain sq



Lol.. kids.... jk


At the end of the day, it's on me to try to implement fixes. More or less fishing for good ideas I suppose.

Dropping a ks900.6 in in place of the xdi just cus I want to try it (unrelated to all this of course). So that'll be occupying most of my time the next week or two.


----------



## Ziggyrama (Jan 17, 2016)

If you were to implement an all pass filter, how would that sound? I never heard the effect of such filter but I imagine it would be audible?


----------



## sqnut (Dec 24, 2009)

bnae38 said:


> It throws L/R out of phase, even with the same drivers inverted in polarity?
> 
> IE: all normal except both midbass inverted?


No, it doesn't throw the mid bass out of phase with each other, BUT it throws the mid bass and mid on each side out of phase with each other. All sounds are a combination of fundamentals and harmonics, right? So now, the fundamentals of a note played by the mid bass are out of phase with the harmonics played by the mid. 

Net result? You just killed the dynamics. Every single system I've heard with flipped polarity on one or more speakers, was lacking in dynamics. You can still tune for decent tonality, but that sense of high/low in each note, the sense of realism, that just gets killed.


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

sqnut said:


> No, it doesn't throw the mid bass out of phase with each other, BUT it throws the mid bass and mid on each side out of phase with each other. All sounds are a combination of fundamentals and harmonics, right? So now, the fundamentals of a note played by the mid bass are out of phase with the harmonics played by the mid.
> 
> Net result? You just killed the dynamics. Every single system I've heard with flipped polarity on one or more speakers, was lacking in dynamics. You can still tune for decent tonality, but that sense of high/low in each note, the sense of realism, that just gets killed.


10-4



bnae38 said:


> Regarding XO use at various points to get the proper accousic xo; what affect would this have on phase (negatively) as opposed to doing them all aligned in the electrical XO (and then having to eq them more)?


Still curious about this. Seems to be different opinions on this one around here


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

Ziggyrama said:


> If you were to implement an all pass filter, how would that sound? I never heard the effect of such filter but I imagine it would be audible?


I imagine it would sound the same if applied to one driver with that one driver playing, more or less. Other than phase at filter frequency would change..

Point would be to improve summing with other drivers at various frequencies, so would have a boost in output where needed if applied correctly?


----------



## sqnut (Dec 24, 2009)

bnae38 said:


> Still curious about this. Seems to be different opinions on this one around here


Let's say we have a mid bass and tweet playing on one side, in a 2 way crossed at 2khz. We measure and find that we have a dip around 2khz, so what are the possible causes and hence possible solutions.

*Option 1*: The timing is off between the drivers such that, the direct sound at 2khz from the tweet is 180 deg out of phase (0.25ms off) with the 2khz direct sound from the woofer. This will give you a cancellation and the solution is to use the TA to add/cut 0.25 ms to the delay on the tweet. Alternately if the arrival times are matched and due to physical distances the waves are out of phase, just play around with the xover points a bit. This situation is what typically gives you deep nulls around the Xover frequency and the solution is a simple TA/xover fix. If you have a null at the xover, then shallow slopes will only spread the dip over a wider bandwidth.

*Option 2*: The direct sounds are in phase but now the reflected sound from the tweet is 180 deg out of phase. This typically gives you shallower nulls and the simple solution here is to play around with with the xover points a bit, so we up the xover to 2.5 and now 2.5 is not 180 deg out of phase, problem solved. There would only be a marginal change in overall response by going from 2-2.5khz, just use the eq. Using an eq here is also much more effective here than in option 1.

In both cases the smaller the zone of interaction between the drivers, the lesser your chances of having a null, hence steep slopes work best in a car. In rooms where you have lesser reflected energy, you can get away with shallower slopes.

The only time I would consider inverting polarity is if I didn't have TA. Get a solid foundation and then build on that. What happens if you try and build a 10 story building on a shaky foundation? 

With a solid foundation using simple tools like timing and response, are all it takes to get a stunning sounding car.


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

sqnut said:


> Let's say we have a mid bass and tweet playing on one side, in a 2 way crossed at 2khz. We measure and find that we have a dip around 2khz, so what are the possible causes and hence possible solutions.
> 
> *Option 1*: The timing is off between the drivers such that, the direct sound at 2khz from the tweet is 180 deg out of phase (0.25ms off) with the 2khz direct sound from the woofer. This will give you a cancellation and the solution is to use the TA to add/cut 0.25 ms to the delay on the tweet. Alternately if the arrival times are matched and due to physical distances the waves are out of phase, just play around with the xover points a bit. This situation is what typically gives you deep nulls around the Xover frequency and the solution is a simple TA/xover fix. If you have a null at the xover, then shallow slopes will only spread the dip over a wider bandwidth.
> 
> ...


Ok, so were talking more about L side vs R side matching on the whole; instead of worry about getting each driver perfectly aligned to Jazzi tool (which i use).

Was thinking about this (train of thought) too the other day.. I wonder how important it really is getting each driver to match perfectly so much as getting each SIDE to match perfectly. Almost to the point where I considered treating each side as a whole and eq'ing L/R from the start and not so much each driver to match....

Understood driver matching should be close, but.....


----------



## sqnut (Dec 24, 2009)

bnae38 said:


> Ok, so were talking more about L side vs R side matching on the whole; instead of worry about getting each driver perfectly aligned to Jazzi tool (which i use).
> 
> Was thinking about this (train of thought) too the other day.. I wonder how important it really is getting each driver to match perfectly so much as getting each SIDE to match perfectly. Almost to the point where I considered treating each side as a whole and eq'ing L/R from the start and not so much each driver to match....
> 
> Understood driver matching should be close, but.....


Think of each side as one speaker and then you have to get the two speakers to work together. That means the left mid bass being timed right with both the right mid bass and the left tweeter and vice versa. 

It means getting the response from the left and right speaker to match and then eq L&R together to get the overall response you want. All this on a solid foundation, matching xover points, 4th order slopes all round etc etc.


----------



## lizardking (Nov 8, 2008)

I find that using 21 bands of my EQ to level match each set of drivers and the L/R matching to my house curve works great. Use the last few bands for overall response shaping. Seems to work for me.


----------



## sqnut (Dec 24, 2009)

lizardking said:


> I find that using 21 bands of my EQ to level match each set of drivers and the L/R matching to my house curve works great. Use the last few bands for overall response shaping. Seems to work for me.


Theoretically, once you have equalized each side to the same FR curve, when you play both sides together, the only frequencies you should need to correct are those where the summing from the the two sides is causing minor peaks and dips. That's the theory, but real world is slightly different. In any case this last bit is all by ear, which is a totally different kettle of fish.


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

bnae38 said:


> What I've found (and tried at one point) was delaying the midrange another 20" or so gets me to good summing. I can't recall trying it the other way to a large extent (delaying midbass), but it didn't mesh within a reasonable distance. I will look at it again that way.


Cooooool, worked that way. Not really what i'd call reasonably close to measured, but close enough that i don't notice anything else wonky (yet).

Delayed the midbass another 6 or 8" and mb/mr summing is good without flipping phase.

We'll see if my ear catches anything goofy this week.

Correct arrival times are probably pretty important...


----------



## oabeieo (Feb 22, 2015)

bnae38 said:


> Cooooool, worked that way. Not really what i'd call reasonably close to measured, but close enough that i don't notice anything else wonky (yet).
> 
> Delayed the midbass another 6 or 8" and mb/mr summing is good without flipping phase.
> 
> ...


This week.lol 

Don't worry you'll be pissed by tomorrow night


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

oabeieo said:


> This week.lol
> 
> Don't worry you'll be pissed by tomorrow night


Lol it's the small victories we have to savor.....

We'll see.


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

Ya f that.. back to measured delay again lol.

Speaking of measured delay... like a lot of things on here, conflicting information on it. Or should i say differences of opinion? 

Who measures distance on the left side speakers to left ear/right speakers to right ear; and who measures to a center point between the ears?


----------



## Elgrosso (Jun 15, 2013)

The tape is just a baseline so one inch more or less. Nose is easy, with head back.


----------



## oabeieo (Feb 22, 2015)

bnae38 said:


> Ya f that.. back to measured delay again lol.
> 
> Speaking of measured delay... like a lot of things on here, conflicting information on it. Or should i say differences of opinion?
> 
> Who measures distance on the left side speakers to left ear/right speakers to right ear; and who measures to a center point between the ears?


I Was in your predicament a while back and said **** it to TA all together. 

If I can't get it to sound good on both seats I don't care for it much anymore. 

If tape measure TA isn't working or sounding right there's other problems that TA probably won't fix, you can surly fix parts of the problems with different TA because of wavelength is inconsistent but it will just screw up others.

I hate TA but love it so much. I think I hate it more because it forces me to better set up things install wise.


----------



## sqnut (Dec 24, 2009)

bnae38 said:


> Ya f that.. back to measured delay again lol.
> 
> Speaking of measured delay... like a lot of things on here, conflicting information on it. Or should i say differences of opinion?
> 
> Who measures distance on the left side speakers to left ear/right speakers to right ear; and who measures to a center point between the ears?


One of the sweetest ironies in this hobby is, that we we use our ears to evaluate if it sounds right, but we use an rta to find why it doesn't. Measurements, if done correctly _and_ built on a solid foundation, gets one in the ball park, feeling the need to measure again and again is a strong indicator of a weak base. First one needs to arrive at this point, i.e. good base and measurements.

To make serious progress beyond this, one needs to get intuitive with the eq and don't just take my word for it. KP or Kirk Profitt is a multiple times world champion, check out his last build thread, in there he mentions how almost all his tuning is based around the eq (the base of timing, xovers, slopes, polarity etc is already solid). Now, subtle changes means +/- 0.1 db on the eq and more coarse and bigger changes means +/- 0.3db on the eq. The eq is _*way*_ more than just a tool to get the desired measurements.

You are timing the L&R drivers for simultaneous arrival of _direct_ sound. Measure from left ear to the _closest_ point on the left speaker and vice versa. Do this and set your base right, 4th order slopes, no under lap overlap, no asymmetric xover points, and no polarity flips. Now listen to the sound, chances are it still won't sound right, cause response is still an issue, but it will sound more cohesive.


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

sqnut said:


> One of the sweetest ironies in this hobby is, that we we use our ears to evaluate if it sounds right, but we use an rta to find why it doesn't. Measurements, if done correctly _and_ built on a solid foundation, gets one in the ball park, feeling the need to measure again and again is a strong indicator of a weak base. First one needs to arrive at this point, i.e. good base and measurements.
> 
> To make serious progress beyond this, one needs to get intuitive with the eq and don't just take my word for it. KP or Kirk Profitt is a multiple times world champion, check out his last build thread, in there he mentions how almost all his tuning is based around the eq (the base of timing, xovers, slopes, polarity etc is already solid). Now, subtle changes means +/- 0.1 db on the eq and more coarse and bigger changes means +/- 0.3db on the eq. The eq is _*way*_ more than just a tool to get the desired measurements.
> 
> You are timing the L&R drivers for simultaneous arrival of _direct_ sound. Measure from left ear to the _closest_ point on the left speaker and vice versa. Do this and set your base right, 4th order slopes, no under lap overlap, no asymmetric xover points, and no polarity flips. Now listen to the sound, chances are it still won't sound right, cause response is still an issue, but it will sound more cohesive.


I got to the point where i did just that. Summing is acceptable... Moving on.

As i mentioned awhile ago, I can play with the prs eq on the road to try things out so I'll continue with that and leave the rest alone.

Currently at 70/400/4000, 48db/24/24, all LR. 

Feels like tweets need to come down a db or two yet, and I'll take it from there. 

Thanks to all

Ps, yes there is still a huge hole there. Interesting huh? Look here...  
Pps, and no, I didn't and am not going to run a center..

http://www.diymobileaudio.com/forum...dbass-cancellation-options-angle-upwards.html


----------



## lizardking (Nov 8, 2008)

Very similar to Andy's curve.....


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

Yeah, a little steeper though. Based off hanatsu curve with more middle bass.


----------



## lizardking (Nov 8, 2008)

I've used Han's curve myself before. How do you like it - sound wise?


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

Bass was trimmed off to quickly on the upper bass for sure, other than that I like it.

Subaru, despite my best efforts, still has a lot of road noise... so the flatter curves are fairly bright.


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

Bass is fairly easy, tweets easy.

It's that middle stuff that's the problem lol.


----------



## Ziggyrama (Jan 17, 2016)

bnae38 said:


> I got to the point where i did just that. Summing is acceptable... Moving on.
> 
> As i mentioned awhile ago, I can play with the prs eq on the road to try things out so I'll continue with that and leave the rest alone.
> 
> ...


Center mid bass is a good idea. I have a null in the 145hz region too, for now not going to worry about it. But, curious, where are you going to fit another amp? I'm considering adding another one too but between 2 amps and DSP under the seats, putting another amp in is a problem. Thoughts?


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

I was going to do a center channel in the cubby, bought gs40's (used) and everything. I've since sold them and moved on.

No center channel for me, at least anytime in the near future.

I have my amps on the back of the rear seats with fans on the sub box. Though i wont really need them anymore after swapping out the xdi1200.6, hot little bastard lol.


----------



## Ziggyrama (Jan 17, 2016)

bnae38 said:


> Bass was trimmed off to quickly on the upper bass for sure, other than that I like it.
> 
> Subaru, despite my best efforts, still has a lot of road noise... so the flatter curves are fairly bright.


Agreed. The JBL curve is too bright in the upper mids and highs. The gradual taper works better in my Subaru too. I found the Whiteledge curve to sound good, which looks like Andy's curve but with bass rising further as you move towards 30hz. Jazzi's tuning spreadsheet has the curve in it if you are interested.


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

I have considered it, seemed fairly similar to the hanatsu curve.


----------



## sqnut (Dec 24, 2009)

bnae38 said:


> I got to the point where i did just that. Summing is acceptable... Moving on.
> 
> As i mentioned awhile ago, I can play with the prs eq on the road to try things out so I'll continue with that and leave the rest alone.
> 
> ...


Finally!!!

Ignore the dip at 160hz for the moment, its most likely a room mode and let's leave it for now. I can't make out at what resolution you measured, the print is too small, but if it is like 1/12 or higher, I would worry even less about it. 

Try these baby steps on the eq.

Raise 160hz +0.5 db, raise 3khz by 0.5 db and now if the sound is honking a bit cut 500 & 800 a touch. Listen to it for a day and tell me how it sounds, what's good and what's not.


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

sqnut said:


> Finally!!!
> 
> Ignore the dip at 160hz for the moment, its most likely a room mode and let's leave it for now. I can't make out at what resolution you measured, the print is too small, but if it is like 1/12 or higher, I would worry even less about it.
> 
> ...


Will do tomorrow, thx. Like i said, think 5k and up needs to come down a db or 2 too. Its a little bright.

Var smoothing, always var smoothing on my graphs.. 

Its a funny thing.. occasionally it sounds great atm.. but sometimes, seems a little off.

Ill try your fixes tomorrow and post more and better pics.

thx


----------



## sqnut (Dec 24, 2009)

bnae38 said:


> Will do tomorrow, thx. Like i said, think 5k and up needs to come down a db or 2 too. Its a little bright.


Typically the tweet levels should be cut 3-4 db from the mid in a 3 way and about 5-6 db from the mid bass in a two way. This is before we do any eq.



bnae38 said:


> Var smoothing, always var smoothing on my graphs..


:thumbsup:



bnae38 said:


> Its a funny thing.. occasionally it sounds great atm.. but sometimes, seems a little off.
> 
> Ill try your fixes tomorrow and post more and better pics.
> 
> thx


When you listen, try describing what doesn't sound right and let's see if we can translate that into eq frequencies for you to try and play with.


----------



## sqnut (Dec 24, 2009)

....also the next you measure, take one reading at 1/6 octave fixed resolution.


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

Okie dokie.

Implemented your changes after listening to them on the road via prs eq, since i liked them.

Also did a little tune up on LR matching..

I'm going to let it be for a day, but if i had to think of a word to describe it.. a bit lifeless? Hmm, it isn't missing top end so it's deff not that. The top end is coming on a touch strong still, a little sibilant.. but i havent cut that back yet. Attempted to cut at 125 a bit since it stuck out, but didn't notice a real change for the better so I left well enough alone (for now ).



Below: overall at the end of tuneup, overall 1/6th octave smoothing, and LR matching. As always, bass levels are going to vary a bit for me because i have the knob at up and down a bit at various points. 

Appreciate the feedback!

Edit: threw a preset together with tweets cut1 and a 4.3q boost of 2db at 7k on both tweets, wasnt a eureka moment listening to it.. but i'll give it some more time behind the wheel


----------



## lizardking (Nov 8, 2008)

You using Pink PN noise and the RTA window and not the spectrum?


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

Correct 1/48. I var smooth after.


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

Pink noise, not pn. Not sure the difference.. did at one time.


----------



## sqnut (Dec 24, 2009)

bnae38 said:


> but if i had to think of a word to describe it.. a bit lifeless? Hmm, it isn't missing top end so it's deff not that. The top end is coming on a touch strong still, a little sibilant.. but i havent cut that back yet. Attempted to cut at 125 a bit since it stuck out, but didn't notice a real change for the better so I left well enough alone (for now ).


Lifeless as in missing dynamics? Kinda flat sounding? Typically there are two ways this can happen, the sound is thin, reedy and flat or its too thick and woolly at the bottom, flat in the mid range, bright at the top top end and hence lacking dynamics. Which one is it? 

Are your sub levels boosted? Is it possible to get the screen shots of your eq on the dsp? The L/R is very well matched but I'm more interested in how you've set the overall eq to get your current measurements. 

Hang in there, we'll see daylight yet!!


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

sqnut said:


> its too thick and woolly at the bottom, flat in the mid range, bright at the top top end and hence lacking dynamics.
> Hang in there, we'll see daylight yet!!


I would say this one. 





sqnut said:


> Is it possible to get the screen shots of your eq on the dsp?


Will this work? Its the ps8 eq (in use) overlay.  Reading a screenshot of the arc eq will be rough.. I'm using parametric and 1/3 octave. Diregard levels at the left, that shows the level wherever my curser was.. 














sqnut said:


> Are your sub levels boosted?


No, just a bit at the dips. But shouldn't be anything over 3 or 4db net over 0.

You rock, thanks

Ben


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

As i look at that graph, it's clear each driver's output levels aren't integrated.. they're all based at 0. Eq and xo only.


----------



## sqnut (Dec 24, 2009)

I'm not familiar with the ps8 GUI, but I am looking for this kind of eq interface.








[/URL][/IMG]


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

The ps8 has all drivers selectable via check boxes, so you can link them, on one eq screen layout.

Of the 30 bands per driver you can select out of band frequencies and assign them to parametric (individual boxes on separate page). They still show up on 1/3 octave page and you can adjust levels there.

Think a screen shot won't really be easy to decipher.

Interface is cool, but it's only 90% there.... they have a little work to do yet imo.


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

I did boost over 3-500 to increase summing. Seems cutting back there on the deck helps quite a bit.

Will play more tonight. Those freq's give me fits!


----------



## sqnut (Dec 24, 2009)

bnae38 said:


>


Let's get a solid base response curve and basis this curve:

*20-60 hz:* You have a 10 db roll off over 1.5 octaves from 20 to 60. That's pretty steep, iirc you have a 48 db slope on the sub so back that up to 36 db.

*80-160 hz:* On the eq for the mid bass, raise 100 a db or so and cut 125 by an equal amount, then raise 160 by about a db. On your sub eq cut from 80-200.

*200-1khz:* Mark 200 hz and 1 khz at a point 3db above where they are currently and join those two points, that's where this range needs to be for a start. The reason your mid bass sounds thick and woolly is, because the fundamentals (60-100) are 10 db louder than the harmonics (400-1khz). That is why a kick drum is just a thud, and not a tight snappy hit. You need about a 2 db roll off in this range from 300-1khz. A quick, down and dirty way to get kinda in the ball park, is to play the 1/3 oct PN tracks from 300-1khz. You want to get these more or less at the same _perceived_ loudness. 

Cut a bit at 8khz to reduce some sibilance. If it sounds like a telephone / honking kind of sound after you do the above try lifting a bit at 3, 5, and 10. Let's hear how that sounds and see how it measures.


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

Will do. Thx


----------



## Babs (Jul 6, 2007)

sqnut said:


> I'm not familiar with the ps8 GUI, but I am looking for this kind of eq interface.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


You're going to like what AF has done to the V4 update. 
They did well not to throw out the baby with the bath water too.


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

Did your suggestion. Sounded full. Too much lower midrange. 

Had hanatsu's 1/3 octave pn tracks already on my ipod so gave those a listen and matched to the sound from there. Used the 1k, 200hz, 1k, 315 etc method... Ended up with 5db more gain centered on 8k and about 4db down at 2.5k. Sounded wonderful on first take.. but not so much after playing around some more.


Hacked off the 4k-15k (8K) hump down most of the way, left it up 1; and kept the cuts around 2.5k there. Set that as a preset to play with too.



Part of me prefers the high freq boost curve, but I couldn't find a happy medium (yet).

I do know 2-2.5k are loud to me compared to the rest.

Note that i ran out of headroom to bring the tweet levels up by ear so i brought the rest down (except sub). Hence it appearing i never really had a shelf up 3db at 200-1k. I essentially undid some of what i fixed lower midrange/bass leveling.

36db oct at sub/mb had to invert the subs obviously.

Green is initial, pink was by ear, and blue was the cut i made after.


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

To clarify, this is what i had after changes you requested SQ, then i tweaked by ear; ran out of headroom on tweets and brought other levels down 2db (except sub.. which is variable anyway )










Thanks!


----------



## sqnut (Dec 24, 2009)

How does it sound now? How about if you flatten the peaks at 7-900 as also the hump at 2.5?


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

sqnut said:


> How does it sound now?


Fairly good (need to give it more time), I like to play a playlist with various artists when i play with eq curves. Seems like if i stick to just one artist, i can get off track. Goal is a good compromise with various material I suppose.

When i put a song on that i really like Ie: Sateria by sublime or Like a stone by Audioslave, (fairly dynamic songs); almost seems like any eq sounds pretty damn good lol. Maybe goes to show I've got myself somewhat on the right track over the past couple weeks. 







sqnut said:


> How about if you flatten the peaks at 7-900 as also the hump at 2.5?



I've been thinking about that, was contemplating whether to do that after being happy with tonality or not.. 

Might as well see what effect it has this weekend.


----------



## sqnut (Dec 24, 2009)

bnae38 said:


> Fairly good (need to give it more time), I like to play a playlist with various artists when i play with eq curves. Seems like if i stick to just one artist, i can get off track. Goal is a good compromise with various material I suppose.
> 
> When i put a song on that i really like Ie: Sateria by sublime or Like a stone by Audioslave, (fairly dynamic songs); almost seems like any eq sounds pretty damn good lol. Maybe goes to show I've got myself somewhat on the right track over the past couple weeks.
> 
> ...


I'm guessing a bit here, but one of the _possible_ reasons why you felt there was too much mid range when you did 200/1khz, 300/1khz etc by ear, is because these peaks were also pushed up along with the rest of the midrange..... I would flatten the peaks a bit and then eq for tonality,


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

Actually those matched up by ear, and really never moved in relation to 1k. Was above that where it seemed out of whack, too bright around 2k and too soft above 3k.

But anyway yeah I'll clean things up a bit next.


----------



## nhtunes (Jul 31, 2016)

I think you are close enough where you should fix it with your ears, ultimately they are the judges. There are charts that I found helpful on frequency/mixing that give hints at how to correct various issues. Also when you know you are close, do not micromanage the adjustments. This keeps you from adjusting when your ears are tired. Listen to your music for a while-days, and the most annoying parts will eventually come to the top to fix. Listen to the individual instruments.


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

Ok, getting close .

Had some road time today to drop my boy off.. With the prs eq I can only cut boost by 1db at a time (no less), but struggled to improve on tonality.

Cutting at 200-500 helped somewhat, but seems like half a db less there would be better. I experimented with bringing 3k back up, since it's 2-2.5k that really irritate me, but again hard to do on the road. Also the top top end, I kind of question and have brought that up a couple times.

Trouble is all the area's i play with mesh in some way or another; hence the difficulty of all of this. ...And every car is different/has a different ideal house curve. Aint nothin' simple lol.

Open to suggestions on fine tweaks for tonality. Main concerns are: 

-Lower midrange is a bit strong like i said, though 1db down 200-500 seems too much. Large difference comparing side by side 1db down vs not (and i think a middle ground cut would be best).

-It's a touch bright on the high end, but I haven't found a winner with cuts in the 4k-16k range yet. Likely because the lower midrange sticks out at that point.

-2-2.5k needs to stay down IMO.. but......

thanks


----------



## Ziggyrama (Jan 17, 2016)

What are you listening for music? My observation has been that some bands get better production or just simply mix the content such that it is tonally balanced or it sounds terrible on everything other than a set of ear buds. Example: I found Dream Theater to have awesome production quality and detail. Not shocking that Berkeley guys do a good job of making it sound incredible. Opeth's Blackwater Park is another great example of a good reference album. For a bad example, anything from Disarmonia Mundi sounds so harsh at the top, I stopped listening to them in my car. The music is great, the production is garbage, except it sounds crisp on the ear buds. I guess what I am saying, keep in mind that some of the recordings are not mixed well and will sound bad when you play them on a system like yours. It can drive you mad.


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

KI


Ziggyrama said:


> What are you listening for music? My observation has been that some bands get better production or just simply mix the content such that it is tonally balanced or it sounds terrible on everything other than a set of ear buds. Example: I found Dream Theater to have awesome production quality and detail. Not shocking that Berkeley guys do a good job of making it sound incredible. Opeth's Blackwater Park is another great example of a good reference album. For a bad example, anything from Disarmonia Mundi sounds so harsh at the top, I stopped listening to them in my car. The music is great, the production is garbage, except it sounds crisp on the ear buds. I guess what I am saying, keep in mind that some of the recordings are not mixed well and will sound bad when you play them on a system like yours. It can drive you mad.


You bring up good points. Kind of listen to a variety on purpose to get a good feel for a broad range. Have a large playlist with many bands mixed up. Suppose that could be part of the problem... but at this point I'd like to find a happy medium as opposed to multiple presets.. meh. 

I listen to a lot of 90s alternative. Nirvana, bush, Stp, sublime, Alice in chains, candlebox, collective soul, wallflowers etc.. More recent stuff: Green Day, Rise Against, Chili Peppers, Incubus, Audioslave etc.

You get the picture... if it's similar to the above, odds are I have it.  


And yeah, having a good system surely brings out the flaws in the music. Ie: Chile peppers pisses me off to no end... harsh is the word..........


----------



## nhtunes (Jul 31, 2016)

bnae38 said:


> KI
> 
> You bring up good points. Kind of listen to a variety on purpose to get a good feel for a broad range. Have a large playlist with many bands mixed up. Suppose that could be part of the problem... but at this point I'd like to find a happy medium as opposed to multiple presets.. meh.
> 
> ...


 I agree you need very good recordings. There are plenty of groups out there that do a crappy job with sound. 
How you set your base line is a compromise for your music collection unless you are going to fine tune your eq for every song or album. Most of my music is live soundboard recordings so when I get to a studio produced tune it is never quite right, damn close but not quite the sparkle as the live. I could change it to go the other way if I choose, the changes are not dramatic.


----------



## sqnut (Dec 24, 2009)

Ok, for a start lets divide the audio spectrum into four ranges, sub bass~ 20-70, mid bass 80-300, midrange 400-2.5kh, and highs above 2.5. For good sound, one needs a good balance _within and across_ each range, i.e. nothing should stand out. Next, keep in mind the effect of masking, that means you may feel 2.5 is too hot, so you tame that and now its honking, cause 500-800 is too hot. 2.5 was masking out the issue at 500-800 cause we are more sensitive around 2.5 and that sticks out above the rest. 

Same case when you tone down the mid range and suddenly discover the low end is very hot, because tons of it was being masked out by the hot mid range. So cut the mid range and then go and cut the low end and so on.

This tool by Harmon is *excellent* to get intuitive with your eq. Play around with it a bit with any device that has good speakers. It's a great way to correlate 'how it sounds' to specific frequencies.

Harman How to Listen


----------



## sqnut (Dec 24, 2009)

Also, when you're tuning it's best to stick with 2-3 albums that are excellent recordings. When you get these sounding really good, everything else that is recorded well will sound excellent and if something sounds crappy, you know its cause it's a poor recording. 

Stuff by Floyd, Fleetwood Mac, Dire Straits, MJ and Madonna are universally well recorded (yeah, I'm a dinosaur). Dire Straits is excellent for dialing in your mid range, there isn't much sub bass here but the midbass in the recordings is amazing. BUT if your mid range is even a touch hotter than it should be, DS will sound thin and tinny.


----------



## Ziggyrama (Jan 17, 2016)

sqnut said:


> Also, when you're tuning it's best to stick with 2-3 albums that are excellent recordings. When you get these sounding really good, everything else that is recorded well will sound excellent and if something sounds crappy, you know its cause it's a poor recording.
> 
> Stuff by Floyd, Fleetwood Mac, Dire Straits, MJ and Madonna are universally well recorded (yeah, I'm a dinosaur). Dire Straits is excellent for dialing in your mid range, there isn't much sub bass here but the midbass in the recordings is amazing. BUT if your mid range is even a touch hotter than it should be, DS will sound thin and tinny.


Hear hear on Dire Straight and Pink Floyd. Although they are not my genre, Dark Side of the Moon for example is an incredible masterpiece of quality and production. Great reference album. A friend of mine wanted to hear my work in progress system so he brought with him Dire Straights album and even though I have issues to sort our in my tuning, it sounded so good, I was blown away. Last one I use for reference is Dream Theater, A Dramatic Turn of Events album. The first track intro, On the Backs of Angels, is an incredible demo for imaging and sound staging. You can literally place each drum in front of you as the song ramps up, rolling left to right, up and down, it all feels three dimensional. I found that track to be very useful as I can gauge cohesion and if my setup is getting better or worse. If the placement of drums washes out, I know I regressed. If it gets very detailed and cohesive, it tells me I am on the right track.

Lastly, not sure if you guys do this, but I make a log of all of my changes. Each set of changes I save as a incremental rev, so rev1 rev2 and so on. I make brief notes and write down observations after I listen to it along with matching measurement files. This has proven to be VERY useful. I have gone back to previous revs as I liked something about it and based on my notes I can typically nail what was different about it that worked or didn't. This also keeps me from going around in circles. FWIW.


----------



## sqnut (Dec 24, 2009)

bnae38 said:


> With the prs eq I can only cut boost by 1db at a time (no less), but struggled to improve on tonality.


I run a prs unit too and iirc, +/- 1 on the eq is actually +/- 2 db. I learn't the hard way to just listen while driving, and to tune only with the dsp. 



bnae38 said:


> I experimented with bringing 3k back up, since it's 2-2.5k that really irritate me, but again hard to do on the road. Also the top top end, I kind of question and have brought that up a couple times.


Listen to what's wrong. If it's tinny, cut in the 1.25-3khz region. If the vocals sound pinched, raise a bit here.



bnae38 said:


> Trouble is all the area's i play with mesh in some way or another; hence the difficulty of all of this. ...And every car is different/has a different ideal house curve. Aint nothin' simple lol.


True, but if you could plot all the ideal curves for different cars on one plot, there would be a high degree of correlation.



bnae38 said:


> Open to suggestions on fine tweaks for tonality. Main concerns are:
> 
> -Lower midrange is a bit strong like i said, though 1db down 200-500 seems too much. Large difference comparing side by side 1db down vs not (and i think a middle ground cut would be best).


To cut the bloat, cut at 200, 250 and 300 first and then if it starts honking, cut the twin peaks at 700 & 900. 



bnae38 said:


> -It's a touch bright on the high end, but I haven't found a winner with cuts in the 4k-16k range yet. Likely because the lower midrange sticks out at that point.
> 
> -2-2.5k needs to stay down IMO.. but......


Generally, the frequencies you would cut a fair bit are 4, 8, and 16, try these three specifically.


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

sqnut said:


> I run a prs unit too and iirc, +/- 1 on the eq is actually +/- 2 db.


I bet it is, sounds that way.

10-4 on the rest.

Thanks


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

Ziggyrama said:


> Hear hear on Dire Straight and Pink Floyd. Although they are not my genre, Dark Side of the Moon for example is an incredible masterpiece of quality and production. Great reference album. A friend of mine wanted to hear my work in progress system so he brought with him Dire Straights album and even though I have issues to sort our in my tuning, it sounded so good, I was blown away. Last one I use for reference is Dream Theater, A Dramatic Turn of Events album. The first track intro, On the Backs of Angels, is an incredible demo for imaging and sound staging. You can literally place each drum in front of you as the song ramps up, rolling left to right, up and down, it all feels three dimensional. I found that track to be very useful as I can gauge cohesion and if my setup is getting better or worse. If the placement of drums washes out, I know I regressed. If it gets very detailed and cohesive, it tells me I am on the right track.
> 
> Lastly, not sure if you guys do this, but I make a log of all of my changes. Each set of changes I save as a incremental rev, so rev1 rev2 and so on. I make brief notes and write down observations after I listen to it along with matching measurement files. This has proven to be VERY useful. I have gone back to previous revs as I liked something about it and based on my notes I can typically nail what was different about it that worked or didn't. This also keeps me from going around in circles. FWIW.


I have dark side of the moon and the wall on my ipod, rarely listen to them though. I'll give them a listen again soon. thanks


----------



## nhtunes (Jul 31, 2016)

This looks stupid but will get you in the correct direction:
http://wiki.fractalaudio.com/axefx2/images/a/ad/Dwarves.png

for fine tuning I refer to this on when I get stuck:
http://www.loopmasters.com/ckeditor_assets/pictures/957/content_frequencychart2.jpg


If you know you are close to getting it right, try to avoid doing daily adjustments. One bad day with tired ears and you just screwed it up. This takes discipline.


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

nhtunes said:


> This looks stupid but will get you in the correct direction:
> http://wiki.fractalaudio.com/axefx2/images/a/ad/Dwarves.png
> 
> for fine tuning I refer to this on when I get stuck:
> ...


Good stuff, thanks.


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

Ya.. i know beating a dead horse. I understand that matching speaker pairs should have xo points at the same value; but why not overlap between different sizes, if i use the same values? Below is sim of xo and filters (best i could do without boosting at xo), measurements had no xo when i took them... (tweet was at 2k i think..). All sim xo at 24db/oct, in this case 60 400 and 4000hz.

Look how short response comes up compared to Jazzi curves (leaving potential nulls).

Why not cross at say .. 500 for mb (both of them) and 250 for mr (both of them); and then trim to fit. That would give me proper acoustic response. 

To you, this causes a wonky phase response?


----------



## lizardking (Nov 8, 2008)

You talking about overlapping? Allot of people do that.


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

lizardking said:


> You talking about overlapping? Allot of people do that.


Yeah, to get proper acoustic xo.

It makes sense having them all over the place could throw things out of whack in the phase dept... but if I keep XOs matched LR and overlap, would make things easier.


----------



## sqnut (Dec 24, 2009)

Are you tuning to get a pretty curve or good sound?


----------



## Babs (Jul 6, 2007)

Regardless whether you overlap or underlap the real goal once midbass/mid/tweet on each side are aligned well is good constructive in-phase summation in their crossover regions, regardless what their up and down slopes look like. Then, once you measure a whole side, left or right, shoot for a good curve on that side that looks like the other side. Then once together with all playing nothing wonky happening between those sides. That's the goal anyway. Best you can in car. 

It's iterative. Checking left and right mid for good phase and also left right tweets. Then midbass. Then left side, then right side. Rinse and repeat until it's as good as it gets. 


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro


----------



## sqnut (Dec 24, 2009)

bnae38 said:


>


Once you have dialed in the right delays and set matching xovers and got the graph as above, whatever issues you're hearing are all down to response and 99.9% of this work is on your eq. It is as simple as that or as complicated as you want to make it. 

One suggestion, when you post response of all drivers as above, try and add a combined response with all drivers playing. Among other things, it helps to see what's happening at the xover points. Also, what _you're_ hearing is the combined response of all the drivers and not their individual response. 

Ok, let's start with the sub to mid bass xover, can you put the sub on a steeper slope and get the acoustic xover to ~70? So you want to under/over lap to cure the difference between acoustic roll off and the predicated one? You think that is a major cause of the issues you're hearing?

A symmetric acoustic roll off between LP/HP is more important than worrying about matching the predicated roll off. The peaky roll off of the mid range ~350 is about 12-13 db down from the the combined response the wiggle between 50-70 is about 15 db down from the sub. Are these the real cause of the issues you're hearing? Use the eq on each in the stop band to cure these issues and more symmetric roll off. 

Oh and irrespective of the slope on the sub, put it back in normal polarity.


----------



## Babs (Jul 6, 2007)

sqnut said:


> One suggestion, when you post response of all drivers as above, try and add a combined response with all drivers playing. Among other things, it helps to see what's happening at the xover points. Also, what _you're_ hearing is the combined response of all the drivers and not their individual response.


Certainly.. Would be interesting to see what left side, right side, and overall are looking like with those individual plots which except for that mountain of sub acoustic crossover overpowering a lot of your midbass region, looks pretty damn good. 

One might expect, from those individual plots, 500-1khz to be hot. However, that's the thing about cars... All bets are off till you see the full plots to see constructive destructive divergence from individual driver plots.


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

The pic was only planned eq, not actual results. The measurements were uneq'd/no Xo on drivers. Was playing around with a new overall curve i came up with.

Ok, fine I'll leave xo points alone... 

Although I'm still playing with tweet xo, going to bring that up a bit from 4k since I'm not totally satisfied with the "grittyness" of them atm..

10-4 on sub, I'll cross it harder.


Sigh.. art vs science. I prefer science if you catch my drift


----------



## lizardking (Nov 8, 2008)

In a car environment, it seems just about anything goes to get a proper response.


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

lizardking said:


> In a car environment, it seems just about anything goes to get a proper response.



Nooo, cant sacrifice timing. Lesson #1 from this thread


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

Changed mb/mr xo to 300 and mr/tweet to 4700. Liking results. Actually, it's pretty f'ing good 

Goal was to start with a fresh eq to curve i'm finding myself liking. Still gotta cross sub lower.

More tomorrow... f'in cold in garage brrr.


----------



## Ziggyrama (Jan 17, 2016)

bnae38 said:


> Changed mb/mr xo to 300 and mr/tweet to 4700. Liking results. Actually, it's pretty f'ing good
> 
> Goal was to start with a fresh eq to curve i'm finding myself liking. Still gotta cross sub lower.
> 
> More tomorrow... f'in cold in garage brrr.


What size are your mids? They can go that high without issues?


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

Ziggyrama said:


> What size are your mids? They can go that high without issues?


3", sure they'll play that high . Sure it's well into beaming but w/e..


Tweets crossed low (or sort of low) kind of irritate me.. Get that kinda caustic sound to them.


----------



## sqnut (Dec 24, 2009)

bnae38 said:


> I'm not totally satisfied with the "grittyness" of them atm..


To reduce the "grittyness", try cutting at 400, 800, 1.25 at the lower end and 4, 8 and 16khz t the top end. Use your eq and cut say 2db, one frequency at a time so that you hear what each cut does. Then work 2-3 three frequencies together, say 400, 1.2 and 4khz etc. 



bnae38 said:


> 10-4 on sub, I'll cross it harder.


10-4 .




bnae38 said:


> Sigh.. art vs science. I prefer science if you catch my drift


That is worthy of a full post and time permitting, I'll do it today or tomorrow. Basically the science gets you in the ball park and the art you refer to is just learning to associate what you're hearing with the frequencies on your eq.


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

sqnut said:


> To reduce the "grittyness", try cutting at 400, 800, 1.25, 3 & 4khz. Use your eq and cut say 2db, one frequency at a time so that you what each does. Then work 2-3 three frequencies together, say 400, 1.2 and 4khz.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


thanks.


----------



## sqnut (Dec 24, 2009)

Do you have a reference source that you use to compare the sound in the car? It could be a simple bookshelves + sub at home, or a pair of good cans. Close your eyes and try to clear your mind of all thoughts. Then just listen to, feel and see the music. 

You can do this with any well recorded music that you like, some suggestions are listed below. If you're going to download these, then go for the original recordings and not the remasters. Pick one song and listen to it 4-5 times and each time try and pick more details that you didn't notice earlier. Try and get a fix on how each instrument sounds and each note, how dynamic is the sound etc. But above all else just listen to and enjoy the music.

Supertramp - Fools Overture (Even in the quietest moments)







FleetwoodMac - Oh Daddy (Rumours)







Pink Floyd - Pigs on the wing 1&2, Pigs 3 different ones (Animals)













Remember, close your eyes and clear your mind. Enjoy.


----------



## sqnut (Dec 24, 2009)

Sarah McLachlan - Hold On (Freedom Sessions)







Ice - Freedom Sessions


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

Well what's wrong with my 90's grunge music? 


Jk.. point taken, thanks.


----------



## sqnut (Dec 24, 2009)

bnae38 said:


> Well what's wrong with my 90's grunge music?
> 
> 
> Jk.. point taken, thanks.


Well I listen to Smashing Pumpkins, do they count as a grunge band?


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

Honestly, these are the 3 from my collection i use as reference most often.

I do have a good set of stereo plus sub speaks on the computer to use.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QU1nvuxaMA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zzyfcys1aLM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hT2hVb1WMJw


----------



## sqnut (Dec 24, 2009)

bnae38 said:


> Honestly, these are the 3 from my collection i use as reference most often.
> 
> I do have a good set of stereo plus sub speaks on the computer to use.
> 
> ...


Nice. Also try some of the ones I suggested....if you can put up with retro music. Main thing, it should be well recorded and you should listen with your eyes closed and a blank mind. Try experiencing it rather than just hearing it. Your 2ch will be a great ref source.


----------



## Jscoyne2 (Oct 29, 2014)

bnae38 said:


> Well what's wrong with my 90's grunge music?
> 
> 
> Jk.. point taken, thanks.


The mtv Nirvana unplugged is incredibly well recorded actually.

also

Nevermind (Remastered) | HDtracks - The World's Greatest-Sounding Music Downloads


----------



## nhtunes (Jul 31, 2016)

sqnut said:


> Nice. Also try some of the ones I suggested....if you can put up with retro music. Main thing, it should be well recorded and you should listen with your eyes closed and a blank mind. Try experiencing it rather than just hearing it. Your 2ch will be a great ref source.


I agree with sqnut on using your ears. Graphs will help with the basic problems. Your ears are the judge of the system, not us or your friends or a computer. Learn to listen to the music, read some basics about resonances and how they work, basically learn how use an equalizer. 

You also need to make sure you are using a good recording- a bad recording will never sound good.

Widespread Panic – 08/30/2009 – Hartford, CT "fixin to die" -- unbelievable jam that will test the whole system. + the band joined by Warren Haynes and Derek Trucks. You may have to buy the show or song at their web-sight to get a good download. You can listen on their facebook but it is just a stream.

There is nothing better than cranking up the tunes and everything is hitting where it is suppose to, after the tune I sit back and just say wow! And of course play it again.


----------



## gijoe (Mar 25, 2008)

bnae38 said:


> Honestly, these are the 3 from my collection i use as reference most often.
> 
> I do have a good set of stereo plus sub speaks on the computer to use.
> 
> ...


Use Sqnut's suggestions, not these (no offense). You need to tune with well recorded music, not poorly recorded music. Once you get it dialed in, even the crappy hardcore punk I listen to sounds better. A lot of the demo/tuning albums out there have music that makes me want to cry, I would never listen to it, but it is very helpful for tuning. 

I suggest picking 3 or 4 very well recorded songs from some of the suggestions. Find the ones you like the most and can tolerate long enough to listen several times. You want to get to know the music pretty well. Once you know the songs well, you'll be much better off identifying issues with your system.


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

Well i guess it's interesting.. listening to the songs i listed, which by my standards are probably cream of the crop for well-balanced sq recordings, they all sound .... spot on.

The thing is when i bounce around between green day, rise against, chile peppers, bush, etc.. things aren't right.

Maybe my thought of finding a good overall tune (or preset) just isn't likely..

Or... kinda when like when i quit drinking, i quit hanging out with certain people; maybe with a high end system it's time to move on to better recorded material.. lol


----------



## gijoe (Mar 25, 2008)

bnae38 said:


> Well i guess it's interesting.. listening to the songs i listed, which by my standards are probably cream of the crop for well-balanced sq recordings, they all sound .... spot on.
> 
> The thing is when i bounce around between green day, rise against, chile peppers, bush, etc.. things aren't right.
> 
> ...


You don't want the hobby to force you into music you don't actually like. That's the opposite of what a great stereo is supposed to do. I listen to plenty of music that is recorded very poorly, and it sounds great. The problem with using poorly recorded music as a reference is just that the detail isn't there in the first place, so you can't tell if it's right, or off, unless it's really off. 

Use properly recorded music until you get the system tuned to your liking. Given the music you listed, give Rage Against the Machine's self titled album a try, use Nirvana's unplugged album, anything by the Cars, or Pixies. 

Don't change what you listen to, just realize that the tuning process requires tools, and music that you might not like can be a very good tool if it's recorded well.


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

Dont have rage, almost picked up the battle of LA the other day but that's a different album.

I do have dark side of the moon and the wall disk1 and 2, suppose I'll give them a listen again since they're highly regarded


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

Amazing how long i've been at this.

Dunno if I'm determined, stubborn, or just stupid..... lol


----------



## sqnut (Dec 24, 2009)

bnae38 said:


> Amazing how long i've been at this.
> 
> Dunno if I'm determined, stubborn, or just stupid..... lol


I spent about 3 years measuring my ass off and the next three learning to tune by ear. In the first case, I made the maximum progress in the first year and then spent the next two, going round in circles. While doing it by ear, I made the maximum progress in the third year, while spending the first two going round in circles. In these six years, I was determined, stubborn and stupid in equal parts.

If any proof is required, that you need to graduate from measuring to listening, here's a simple experiment. Measure the FR with all drivers playing as things sit, lets say this is setting A. Next, choose any 10 eq bands and raise or cut each +/-1 db and save this as setting B. 

Flip back and forth between A & B, how much of a difference do you hear? Now measure setting B and and overlay it over A. How much of a difference do you see vs the difference you hear?

Listen to well recorded music with your eyes closed.


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

sqnut said:


> I spent about 3 years measuring my ass off and the next three learning to tune by ear. In the first case, I made the maximum progress in the first year and then spent the next two, going round in circles. While doing it by ear, I made the maximum progress in the third year, while spending the first two going round in circles. In these six years, I was determined, stubborn and stupid in equal parts.
> 
> If any proof is required, that you need to graduate from measuring to listening, here's a simple experiment. Measure the FR with all drivers playing as things sit, lets say this is setting A. Next, choose any 10 eq bands and raise or cut each +/-1 db and save this as setting B.
> 
> ...


6 years!? Curious if you're into this for personal, professional reasons, or both?

Fwiw, purely sport for me. Been doing install related stuff for 15 yrs, but only in depth eq etc for about a year.


----------



## jackk (Dec 27, 2010)

bnae38 said:


> 6 years!? Curious if you're into this for personal, professional reasons, or both?
> 
> Fwiw, purely sport for me. Been doing install related stuff for 15 yrs, but only in depth eq etc for about a year.




LoL Sounds like what happened to sqn is happening to me too, cos I'm into the 4th year tuning the same setup... still have lots of ideas to try different settings!!!



Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


----------



## sqnut (Dec 24, 2009)

bnae38 said:


> 6 years!? Curious if you're into this for personal, professional reasons, or both?
> 
> Fwiw, purely sport for me. Been doing install related stuff for 15 yrs, but only in depth eq etc for about a year.


Oh well ok, so I was 1/2 stupid and 1/2 stubborn. 

Purely personal ambitions here, I just wanted to be wow'ed in the car as I was at home. My wife hated my hobby because I spent too much time on it, as also for the number of times I dragged her to listen to another meh tune. A tune I thought was mind blowing at the time. My daughter was interested, but she was 5, and at an age where anything daddy does is cool. Now as a 15 year teen with a busy social life, and dad as her designated chauffeur, she prefers pick ups and drops in my car vs the wifes, with the tunes set for the passenger seat. That's my trophy.

In hindsight, there's no way this should have taken six years. The measurement phase took a while, primarily because I was horrible at it and it took a while to get repeatable results, and then a long time spent chasing random things one read about or the obscure stuff one just knew was the real cause. The by ear bit took longer than needed, because I lacked the discipline to follow basic rules like, don't tune for more than 20 min, know when to stop etc. Learning how the bite on a violin can be an issue both at 600-1khz and/or 7-8khz, and how pinched vocals need the mid range frequencies to be raised a bit etc, also took a bit. 

I was too fixated on doing it my way, cause I knew best and to think a multiple second place finalist was helping me:blush:. The real progress came once I got intuitive with the eq and more disciplined in my approach. If you focus on learning to do it by ear, you should have a really good sounding car in 12-18 months. But the first step is to hear a difference between your 2 ch and the car and to understand the experience of hearing good sound.


----------



## jackk (Dec 27, 2010)

sqnut said:


> My wife hated my hobby because I spent too much time on it, as also for the number of times I dragged her to listen to another meh tune. A tune I thought was mind blowing at the time. .



Hey I can relate to that, actually pretty much everything that u touched on. 

My other half always asks why I'm tuning as she thought the system sounds very good alrdy & perfectly fine. My answer is always "there are so many combinations of settings, i don't know which one would sound the best in this particular car... I gotta try different ones and listen to how they affect how the system sounds, in order to learn...."

Cheers!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


----------



## Ziggyrama (Jan 17, 2016)

Hearing you guys talk about your struggles gives me hope because I am in the same boat. I installed the DSP back in May and here I am still going at it. The wife is starting to ask question like "when is this going to be done?" And I keep saying I am pretty close to being done but I am not sure if that is really true. To be fair, sometimes couple weeks go by and I don't touch anything as I am very time constrained. I feel like I have gone in circles a few times, chasing and redoing things because I was impatient or I read something and wanted to try it. Looking back on the last 8 months, the biggest gains came when I focused on precision and made changes in isolation, not doing too many things at the same time. I struggled with my staging for a while because my TA was not correct. I casually measured the distances and wasn't very precise. That resulted in poor staging and cohesion. I blamed my FR and chased something that wasn't there. It isn't until I took the time to go back, measure precisely from the right points that major improvement happened. That came from this thread, btw. I could have saved myself probably a month or two if I just did it right. Another major breakthrough came once I picked good crossover points. That came from deliberately trying multiple settings and making notes instead of just picking something. Learning about beaming and speaker behavior also helped. Once I looked at the plots for my speakers and picked a good setting, good things happened. Lastly, I am starting to trust my ears more and not just chase a particular curve just so that it looks good. That was a major lesson. I was initially tuning to JBL curve but I didn't like the actual sound (too hot in 1khz+ range). It sounds silly but once I realized that I just picked the wrong curve I made a lot more progress and I liked the sound more. I guess it takes time to teach your ears to listen for the queues and how to deconstruct layers of sound.


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

Ditto on the wife, lol. I'm lucky she puts up with my tinkering fairly well...


----------



## sqnut (Dec 24, 2009)

You measure your way to the ballpark and then hear your way to a really good sounding car. 2 years is what it should take and anything longer means you're doing something wrong.


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

sqnut said:


> You measure your way to the ballpark and then hear your way to a really good sounding car. 2 years is what it should take and anything longer means you're doing something wrong.


Been thinking about this.. So does your final (measured) curve look somewhat ragged as compared to the smooth House curves we use to get in ballpark range? After tuning by ear, that is.

I'm guessing so, but wondering to what extent?


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

Besides the above, I've got one more question.. as i try to make this absolutely as f'ing convoluted and muddled up as possible . I only ask to get a better grasp on everything.

Our most important goals are timing and response. Ok, check.

Now phase... (bear with me). I hate phase . My understanding kind of was that altering phase doesn't change when a signal arrives, only how it arrives... (think sin wave)


As I've pondered that while I've been writing this... think i had that wrong. Phase would affect timing because the rising edge of the wave would be where the falling edge was before.. ie: a speaker out of phase would be going in when it was going out before.

Meh, ok. So ...... ta is delaying ALL material out of a speaker by x amt. This fixes arrival times across all frequencies based on speaker proximity. Flipping phase is inverting all material out of a speaker; which will do... what? 

It will cause a timing offset that varies based on frequency, vs an in phase driver. So... if we flipped phase on pairs of speakers to get better summing with other sets (ie both midrange); what is the issue? I assume timing, but I'm trying to understand how much....


Starting at xo, it must be offset by 1/2 distance of wavelength at XO freq. More or less... and vary from there. Correct?

So even flipping phase in pairs would throw timing out of whack with the other drivers in the system. The worst of it would be right at the XO, right?

Ok... got it, I think. Lol.


I understand this might not have much bearing on getting a good tune if i stick to good fundamentals, BUT I'm really trying to tie everything together in my head. 

thanks


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

bnae38 said:


> So even flipping phase in pairs would throw timing out of whack with the other drivers in the system. The worst of it would be right at the XO, right?


But in my case, flipping polarity gets me to good summing... which means there isn't a timing discrepancy there. 

Oh yeah... Xo's themselves alter phase, guess i forgot that part.

Grr my head hurts.


----------



## sqnut (Dec 24, 2009)

bnae38 said:


> Besides the above, I've got one more question.. as i try to make this absolutely as f'ing convoluted and muddled up as possible . I only ask to get a better grasp on everything.
> 
> Our most important goals are timing and response. Ok, check.
> 
> ...





bnae38 said:


> But in my case, flipping polarity gets me to good summing... which means there isn't a timing discrepancy there.
> 
> Oh yeah... Xo's themselves alter phase, guess i forgot that part.
> 
> Grr my head hurts.


Slow down, you're over thinking again. 

So the unwritten rule is to keep everything in normal polarity, but that gives me a dip at my xover of 300hz. A dip that is there on both sides and one that goes away when I flip one set of drivers. The easy way is to do just that and have the smooth FR across the xover range and it's very tempting to just break the rule this once. That's one way.

The other is to find a solution within the rule, even if it means a bit of effort. First step, play the midbass and mid on one side and play with the delay on the woofer to find a point where the cancellation is eliminated. At 300hz, depending on how deep the null is at say 1/6 oct, you're looking at fiddling in the ~1-1.5 ms range. Two possible options from here, the null is eliminated or its much better, but there's still a dip. What next?

Now play with the actual xover point so try 400, 500, 250, see which gives you the least dip and use that. If there is still a mild dip, use your eq. Done and no rules broken.


----------



## sqnut (Dec 24, 2009)

bnae38 said:


> Been thinking about this.. So does your final (measured) curve look somewhat ragged as compared to the smooth House curves we use to get in ballpark range? After tuning by ear, that is.
> 
> I'm guessing so, but wondering to what extent?


Haven't tinkered or measured in about 4 years, but iirc at 1/3 oct there were +/- 1-1.5 db dips and peaks along the slope. 

Does it strike you as slightly odd that you're thinking visually in an aural hobby? The shift from visual to aural thinking is a paradigm shift and one that doesn't come easy, but you have to make a start.


----------



## sqnut (Dec 24, 2009)

jackk said:


> LoL Sounds like what happened to sqn is happening to me too, cos I'm into the 4th year tuning the same setup... still have lots of ideas to try different settings!!!
> 
> Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk





jackk said:


> Hey I can relate to that, actually pretty much everything that u touched on.
> 
> My other half always asks why I'm tuning as she thought the system sounds very good alrdy & perfectly fine. My answer is always "there are so many combinations of settings, i don't know which one would sound the best in this particular car... I gotta try different ones and listen to how they affect how the system sounds, in order to learn...."
> 
> ...


Well, just cause the dsp gives us a million different settings, doesn't mean we have to try each one. I agree the hobby takes a ton of time and 4 years is shows a lot of perseverance....but maybe also an opportunity to try a different direction? And yes wives don't see the point of this hobby.


----------



## jackk (Dec 27, 2010)

sqnut said:


> Well, just cause the dsp gives us a million different settings, doesn't mean we have to try each one. 4 years is kinda long....and maybe time to take a different direction? And yes wives don't see the point of this hobby.



Sorry OP for going off topic...

Absolutely! Recently I came to the realization, that I'm dealing w/ the limitations of running passives, off axis listening w/ stock speaker location/placement, as well as modes of the TL cabin. 

It was overwhelming & hard to keep my head straight w/ the bit1 as my 1st DSP. A lot of time wasted because of being stubborn & dumb, like trying to do things my own ways w/o following what I have read here...as simple as buying a mic to use REW right from the get go (although that had something to do w/ budgeting and USB mic was not avail yet).

I was in the chase of a good looking measured curve at first, with a free rta app on iPhone using built-in mic. 

A year had gone by. Then realized I need to get the basics (passive xo settings, amp gains) right - helped to create a good stage height + better balanced sound. Then back to picking xo types/points on the dsp side (struggled between Linkwitz/Butterworth; 24/48db slopes) - helped to get the soothing "feel" from the speakers I have. Then gains on the dsp - got a better balanced front/rear stage. Another year had gone by Thought I got the system sounding pretty good.... until I bought the cheapo Dayton imm6 mic - started the measuring nightmare.

I couldn't believe I spent a year measuring w/ the iPhone & imm6. But I learned a lot - ultimately REW & an USB mic works way better, which is what I've been playing w/ in the past year. BUT, I made the most amount of progress in the past year using the right tools to measure, as well as following what I read on this forum to tune in a more disciplined manner (no more than 20 mins; focus on small incremental changes; give myself time to listen to new even bad tunes to "climatize" things, etc.)

Now I think my system is sounding as good as it can get. To make it sound better I really need to look into better installation, going active, etc. For the amount of work involved I'll leave it it this... for now....










Hope someone will find this long read helps lol

Cheers!




Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

sqnut said:


> Haven't tinkered or measured in about 4 years, but iirc at 1/3 oct there were +/- 1-1.5 db dips and peaks along the slope.
> 
> Does it strike you as slightly odd that you're thinking visually in an aural hobby? The shift from visual to aural thinking is a paradigm shift and one that doesn't come easy, but you have to make a start.


No, i understand making the move. (Letting go is another story, sure). 

But I wanted to have an idea, in my head anyway, how "goofy" things would or could look if measured; after the final touches by ear.



Regarding the in depth phase stuff, I can research that on my own time. Xo math, derivatives, etc... not the thread for it.  Did a little reading on LR stuff last night.

I'm at the point where things are sounding very good and I'm going to leave it be for a bit here, before i make another move. I sense a small cut in the 500hz range coming, but problem is if i do that the tweets will probably stick out. I'll slow it down and bring my nice cans from work home to do a little listening....

At Jackk, no worries... all on the same team here.


----------



## sqnut (Dec 24, 2009)

bnae38 said:


> No, i understand making the move. (Letting go is another story, sure).
> 
> But I wanted to have an idea, in my head anyway, how "goofy" things would or could look if measured; after the final touches by ear.


Don't worry, the transition from measuring to tweaking by ear will be gradual. Initially with every change you make by ear you will feel the need to jump in and check how it measures and as you get more confident doing it by ear, you'll worry less and less about how it measures. 





bnae38 said:


> Regarding the in depth phase stuff, I can research that on my own time. Xo math, derivatives, etc... not the thread for it.  Did a little reading on LR stuff last night.


Frankly imho, phase is a bit of an oxymoron in a car. I mean, when 90% of the sound we hear in a car is reflected sound, phase issues are almost unavoidable and an inherent part of the mix. In a car I don't worry about phase beyond correct timing from each driver and a smooth and symmetric roll of between LP/HP. Since you have already achieved both, I wouldn't worry about phase as the cause of any issues you're hearing. You can read up on phase but be forewarned that it is a deep rabbit hole and it's very easy to convince yourself, ah my issues are phase related and that can take you around in circles. If there is anything specific you would like to ask, I'll try and answer.



bnae38 said:


> I'm at the point where things are sounding very good and I'm going to leave it be for a bit here, before i make another move. I sense a small cut in the 500hz range coming, but problem is if i do that the tweets will probably stick out. I'll slow it down and bring my nice cans from work home to do a little listening....
> 
> At Jackk, no worries... all on the same team here.


So 500 hz is the early harmonics of your midbass and this frequency gives your midbass a lot of the snap. It is also great for vocal clarity, instead of cutting at 500, try a deep cut at 630. If it's still honking cut a bit at 800. This way you will keep the dynamics of the midbass and vocal clarity, while tackling the honking sound.


----------



## jackk (Dec 27, 2010)

bnae38 said:


> At Jackk, no worries... all on the same team here.



THANK YOU mate! I learned a lot from reading threads like this one, and b able to join the discussion here & there. 

The 500Hz is a very interesting frequency. Does not sound like it's doing much when I play w/ that band on my setup. But a bit too much makes vocal sound like it comes through a toilet paper cone giving that "lounge" feel, a little too less takes away the overall warmth. Feel free to correct me plz if my observation is inaccurate.

Keep the tuning fun going. Cheers!




Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


----------



## sqnut (Dec 24, 2009)

jackk said:


> The 500Hz is a very interesting frequency. Does not sound like it's doing much when I play w/ that band on my setup. But a bit too much makes vocal sound like it comes through a toilet paper cone giving that "lounge" feel, a little too less takes away the overall warmth. Feel free to correct me plz if my observation is inaccurate.


The whole 500-800 range contributes to the honking, telephone like sound you correctly identified. 

However within this, 500 seems to be the 'good' harmonic for a lot of the mid bass elements, as also for giving clarity and power to vocals. So if the sound is dull a slight boost here can bring out snap in the mid bass etc. 

Yes, excess here will make the sound honking, but it is a frequency you should cut last, while reducing the honking. If after you have cut 630 and then 800, its still honking, then come back and cut here.





jackk said:


> Keep the tuning fun going. Cheers!


Unfortunately, we hardly have any tuning threads. People will talk at length about what equipment to buy, how to install it, how to measure, but there's a deafening silence when it comes to how folks are tuning, so threads like this are a pleasure, as and when they come along.


----------



## jackk (Dec 27, 2010)

sqnut said:


> The whole 500-800 range contributes to the honking, telephone like sound you correctly identified.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Thank you for the advice! Good to have the experienced and experts to confirm things. 

Cutting 500 is not an option w/ my setup cos there is a dip there. I ended up cutting higher bands above 500 to lvl things out a bit. Glad to read your input to learn that I headed down the right path. 

I still have a little bit of that honking/telephone effect at times when tracks have vocals w/ strong mid tone, or when some EDM tracks have that "shuuuuuu" sound effect like an object flying from far to close distance in space/tunnel, w/ strong mid tone to very low bass ending w/ a deep heavy bass note "booooom". The tunnel effect gets so strong I could feel it on my legs like I almost get sucked into a tunnel. Sounds like I can cut 630-800 a bit more but, there is always a but, I enjoy the feel on my legs when that tunnel effect happens so I'll keep listening for now 



sqnut said:


> Unfortunately, we hardly have any tuning threads. People will talk at length about what equipment to buy, how to install it, how to measure, but there's a deafening silence when it comes to how folks are tuning, so threads like this are a pleasure, as and when they come along.



Now that u mention I realize why I like to hi jack threads like this one lol. Very true that I don't see too many tuning threads like this. 

I think part of the reasons could b related to a lot of times the experts/experienced found themselves repeating the same thing? Have to say I'm always impressed by how patient you (and some of the fellow DIY members) are when I read your advice, especially when u list the frequencies w/ + this - that. I'm like wow this fellow really studies the graph & EQ to help ppl. That I have to say "THANK YOU" again. Cos I simply learned from trying to conceive/understand why u tell ppl to make those adjustments, even if u explain y pretty much every single time!!!

And, let us know how u r going too OP. Cos it always helps when I get to read the feedback from OP of what differences the adjustments made.

Have fun getting the 500Hz right OP.

Keep this tuning thread & fun alive!!

Cheers.






Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

So.. currently:

Stage is coherent, very dynamic and for the first time in a long while sounding "good" with a variety of material. That is a hell of a big step in reality... as i try to pick out what's wrong, it's hard to say that anything really sticks out.

It's a touch crispy occasionally, think when the time comes to i might cut the tweets half a db and see how that works. I still have 2-2.5k dug out a touch.

Honestly it feels like the top half is pretty much where i want it to be though, it's the lower half i question a bit. 

With 36db slopes on the midbass/sub it seems like i might be missing some midbass. I wonder about going to 24db xo on the midbass and leaving at 36 on the sub... Although I'm xo'd at 70 already so..

As far as the 200-1k region, i dont really have a bead on what could use a tweak... and i haven't tuned for a couple days. I'll give the 1/3 octave pn tracks a listen again and compare them to hp too, just to get a better idea.


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

On a separate note, the sub loudness seems to have really popped recently. I have no way to explain it other than i've brought it down 4-8db.. (depending if i'm driving or not). Weird..


----------



## sqnut (Dec 24, 2009)

bnae38 said:


> So.. currently:
> 
> Stage is coherent, very dynamic and for the first time in a long while sounding "good" with a variety of material. That is a hell of a big step in reality... as i try to pick out what's wrong, it's hard to say that anything really sticks out.


Glad to hear you're making good progress. :thumbsup:



bnae38 said:


> It's a touch crispy occasionally, think when the time comes to i might cut the tweets half a db and see how that works. I still have 2-2.5k dug out a touch.


How much are the tweets cut vs the mids? Crispy as in the cymbals sound brittle, or crispy as in the upper mid range is bright, or crispy as in vocals sound a touch harsh? 




bnae38 said:


> With 36db slopes on the midbass/sub it seems like i might be missing some midbass. I wonder about going to 24db xo on the midbass and leaving at 36 on the sub... Although I'm xo'd at 70 already so..


The one thing that has stayed pretty much constant in my setup from the early days to date is, sub/midbass xover at 50-60hz with sub @36 and midbass @24, all drivers in regular polarity.




bnae38 said:


> On a separate note, the sub loudness seems to have really popped recently. I have no way to explain it other than i've brought it down 4-8db.. (depending if i'm driving or not). Weird..


A while back, one of your graphs showed a 30-120 hz roll off of about 12-15 db. I remember thinking, hmmm...he's either a bass head or his midrange is too hot and hence masking out a ton of the low end. Now with the mid / mid high in better balance boom, tons more low end.


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

sqnut said:


> Glad to hear you're making good progress. :thumbsup:


No kidding, now the key is to take it easy and not wreck it or get off on some friggin tangent again haha.





sqnut said:


> How much are the tweets cut vs the mids? Crispy as in the cymbals sound brittle, or crispy as in the upper mid range is bright, or crispy as in vocals sound a touch harsh?


Fairly similar to post220 with bass cut 4-6db. Playing with the "course" eq on the prs, i'm thinking around 5k..

I'll post a newer pic, the cut around 2-2.5k isn't as deep atm.





sqnut said:


> The one thing that has stayed pretty much constant in my setup from the early days to date is, sub/midbass xover at 50-60hz with sub @36 and midbass @24, all drivers in regular polarity.


Cool, will try that.






sqnut said:


> A while back, one of your graphs showed a 30-120 hz roll off of about 12-15 db. I remember thinking, hmmm...he's either a bass head or his midrange is too hot and hence masking out a ton of the low end. Now with the mid / mid high in better balance boom, tons more low end.


Got it, makes sense. Yeah I tried fairly hard to smooth out those damn humps in the midrange, but was kind of a pita...

thanks


----------



## sqnut (Dec 24, 2009)

bnae38 said:


> No kidding, now the key is to take it easy and not wreck it or get off on some friggin tangent again haha.


I wish I had that discipline when I was tuning, the journey would have been much shorter, but the itch to constantly try and make it better, was an urge I really struggled with. 







bnae38 said:


> Fairly similar to post220 with bass cut 4-6db. Playing with the "course" eq on the prs, i'm thinking around 5k..
> 
> I'll post a newer pic, the cut around 2-2.5k isn't as deep atm.


Cut 5 if everything from say 500-12khz sounds a touch too bright, cutting at 5 can make everything a touch duller / darker, but if the issue is occasional, 5 may not be the cause. By cutting at 5, your first reaction may be ah! much better, but over time the frequency that was the real issue will start to stand out again. If you can define 'crispy' a little more, maybe we can isolate the frequencies concerned. To resolve any issue that we're hearing, its rarely about one frequency, more likely a combination of 2-3.


----------



## sqnut (Dec 24, 2009)

OP spoke about experiencing better dynamics and that got me thinking a bit on the topic. 

Imho, the difference between a car that sounds good and one that sounds great, say the top 1-2 cars in a competition, is down to how much more dynamic the great sounding car is. It all starts at the recording because if the recording is not dynamic, the great car will sound much closer to the good car. That's why the music used for judging is a collection of highly dynamic recordings, its also of a genre that makes some folks cringe.

We know the dynamic range of a recording is the difference in db's between the quietest and loudest part and that the DR number, an average, gives a good indication of how dynamic the recording is. You can use this site to check how dynamic the music you listen to is.

Album list - Dynamic Range Database

So whats the difference between more and less dynamic, how does it sound?
Like U2, Coldplay is another band that people love to hate, but occasionally rock out to. Most of their music recorded really loud and not very dynamic. The sound on the official 'single' version, is from the album and is a horrible recording. 

The other is the same song recorded at a concert, except here the engineer is calling the shots and does a very good job, I have the dvd. Even on this compressed you tube video the difference on the opening piano riff between the two videos is stark. Dynamics, it partly what makes everything sound real.











If the dynamics are there in the recording then reproducing them in the car is all down to getting the timing and response spot on. If either of the two or both are out a bit, you may still have good imaging and tonality but you'd lose out a fair bit on how dynamic the sound is.


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

Crispy. Hmm.... it just sounds a little too bright/too much tweets on occasion. It seemed like bringing 5k down on the prs sorta helped, but I'm thinking cutting the tweets .5db might be the better option as i like the overall tonal balance in that area as is.


----------



## sqnut (Dec 24, 2009)

bnae38 said:


> Crispy. Hmm.... it just sounds a little too bright/too much tweets on occasion. It seemed like bringing 5k down on the prs sorta helped, but I'm thinking cutting the tweets .5db might be the better option as i like the overall tonal balance in that area as is.


Also try cuts at 4 & 8, see what works best.


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

Upper (offset) is everything on, other two graphs below are L and R with sub.

Made a tweak to 7k to bring it up and 5800 down, both a couple db at about 4.4q. The bit of excess crispness seems better.

I played with bringing 200 down a touch (took a lot to measure down) and i didn't like the sound, left that alone.

Also moved the midbass to 24db and got rid of invert on the subs.. summing is nice.

Overall I'm pleased. Put headphones on the ipod which was pretty convenient, could mute the deck and listen back and forth. It's damn close with the limited listening i did.

So... that leads me to the big problem area I guess. As you can see by the L and R response. That null at 160 is a pain in the ass, I wrote another thread about it months ago. Thread here. Distance between the midbass/reflections of console, either way.. probably not a whole lot i can do. Kind of seems like apf could fix it, but I'm not sure. Plus i dont have the capability atm, unless i grabbed a mini...


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

Sigh.. regretting posting that now. True enough, it's a small cancellation and not audible in most situations. 

I'll let it go (unless arc gives me apf, then i will play with it ).

Any other thoughts?


----------



## sqnut (Dec 24, 2009)

On your eq try cutting 200 ~ 1.5-2 db and raise 160 hz by the same amount, how does it sound? Also try cutting a bit at 4khz. The measured null at 160 is only about 1/3 oct wide, not sure if that is really significant in terms of what you're hearing...


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

Sounds good, I'll give it a shot tomorrow.

Ordered the RATM album too.


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

Not a whole lot of progress as of late.

Used 1/3oct pn to fine tune center by ear, but not sure that ended well. Stage seems smeared more that it was before with that preset atm... Reflections from one side to the other are misleading when trying to center up the image. I listened to L and R individually then together and had some luck but meh. Will probably leave it closer to measured center..

Also cut the high end 3-4db gradually starting at 2k on that preset. Sounds lifeless lol. It tracks hanatsu's house curve well, but that one is a dud (at least in my car). Initially i thought it was a step in the right direction, but clearly not.

Most of the above will get scrapped. Luckily i have everything saved, and the preset with the previous setup still sounds great. Listening to RATM is something special, I like that album. 

Dynamic, lively, and punchy... but still in need of fine tweaks.

I cut some of the 50-60hz bloat out it too, that was overpowering. Also the boost at 300-400 to get XO summing sounds like it's too much although measuring correct; i cut that back and the ****ty looking xo summing is back but w/e. 

Both midrange naturally roll off hard at 400 before coming back up at 250; think i need to seriously consider just crossing there instead of 300 or 350.


Anyways, 15 things at once . I can see why it takes years (not a year) to seriously start getting good results ...


----------



## sqnut (Dec 24, 2009)

Go back to your preset and listen for a day and list 3-4 issues that stand out, ones you would like to correct. Pls write 2-3 lines about how each issue 'sounds'. Happy New Year .


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

sqnut said:


> list 3-4 issues that stand out, ones you would like to correct. Pls write 2-3 lines about how each issue 'sounds'.



Notes are using my previous (semi solid) tune.

1. Levels on the high end. I'm continuing to be indecisive here... When i turn the volume up loud, the high end is piercing currently. There is an option here, obviously . What are your thoughts on using loudness? Historically, I always used it on the prs. It was only the last 6-9mo that I've had it off. I haven't done any tuning around it with it on (obviously). I've thought about it a few times lately and it 'could' be an option....


2. On busy passages, things start to come unraveled (if that makes sense). Chaos sounds like ... crap. Ie heavy electric guitar, vocals and drum sections of songs. Again i went to 500hz and knocked that down on the prs (as a trial). I think that might be on the right track.. Most of the issue here seems to be in the midrange..

3. The top end is off to the right a few inches, some of the midrange is a bit left. I corrected that by ear, but am not having much faith in that tune (as i said). Do you have any pointers on using 1/3pn for tuning the stage? I'm learning reflections can cause mistakes if I'm not careful.

4. Cold weather can blow me... lol. Still not sure what I'm doing in WI, other than family is here. 10 degrees today.. Everything sound like flat crap until things warm up. More of a rant, no worries... I know the cold kills the bass response and our sensitivity to lower frequencies. Not sure what else, but it's not just the bass that goes to poo. 



sqnut said:


> Happy New Year .


Back at ya, thanks man.


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

Arun, dont leave me hanging.


----------



## sqnut (Dec 24, 2009)

Holy Crap, how did I miss your post from 2 days ago? I checked everyday to see if you replied and nothing showed up in the 'my threads' section, so I thought that your pet peeve had moved from the dip at 300 to needing FIR. Sorry, let me get to your post....


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

Lol no, I haven't gone off the deep end yet. Fir isn't somewhere I want to go.. I've thought about it, but nahhh

Yeah tbt I'm thinking about a helix just to have the ability to play with phase more... but that's kind of a side project. Still gathering info on the product etc..


----------



## sqnut (Dec 24, 2009)

bnae38 said:


> Notes are using my previous (semi solid) tune.
> 
> 1. Levels on the high end. I'm continuing to be indecisive here... When i turn the volume up loud, the high end is piercing currently. There is an option here, obviously . What are your thoughts on using loudness? Historically, I always used it on the prs. It was only the last 6-9mo that I've had it off. I haven't done any tuning around it with it on (obviously). I've thought about it a few times lately and it 'could' be an option....


On your processor, are the tweeter channels cut 4-6db? If not, this is the right time to do it. I know this is a long and frustrating journey and a lot of times one just wants to say F'it, I just want something I can rock out too, and for times like that, It's perfectly fine to use loudness, BBE or that other function that I can't recall right now. But are any of these a long term solution? No.

What sounds like a piercing high end is most often the 1.6-3khz range being too hot, that and 5khz is where I would start. Turn the volume knob down and chances are you will loose most of your low end and the sound will be thin and reedy right? Try playing with the frequencies mentioned at this volume, till its less bright and the low end comes back a bit. Now turn it up.

Good sound is about the right balance across your sub, mid bass, mid range and the highs. 




bnae38 said:


> 2. On busy passages, things start to come unraveled (if that makes sense). Chaos sounds like ... crap. Ie heavy electric guitar, vocals and drum sections of songs. Again i went to 500hz and knocked that down on the prs (as a trial). I think that might be on the right track.. Most of the issue here seems to be in the midrange..


Try the solution above and then revisit this issue, is it better? You are correct in that most of the issues are in the midrange




bnae38 said:


> 3. The top end is off to the right a few inches, some of the midrange is a bit left. I corrected that by ear, but am not having much faith in that tune (as i said). Do you have any pointers on using 1/3pn for tuning the stage? I'm learning reflections can cause mistakes if I'm not careful.


Here's how I centre frequencies when I'm tuning a car. I use the 1" electrical and mark a 3"x3" X under the rear view mirror. From the centre of the X I run a tape line vertically down the windscreen, across the top of the dash and down the front. Then I just play the 1/3 PN tracks and centre the frequencies to the X or the line of tape. Typically the higher frequencies will Image around the X, while the lower ones will image lower and hence the vertical line of tape. 

If your processor gives you an eq per channel then do this two channels at a time. Eg tweeters only and centre for L&R upto an octave below the HP on the tweets. Foe the mids do it an octave above the LP and an octave belw the HP and so on.

*[edit]* After you're done with centering and checking each frequency, Play one set of drivers eg say the tweets and play full range PN, if the individual frequencies are centered but with full range it skews a bit left or right, use a click or two of TA to centre. Now take a listen...*[edit]*




bnae38 said:


> 4. Cold weather can blow me... lol. Still not sure what I'm doing in WI, other than family is here. 10 degrees today.. Everything sound like flat crap until things warm up. More of a rant, no worries... I know the cold kills the bass response and our sensitivity to lower frequencies. Not sure what else, but it's not just the bass that goes to poo.
> 
> 
> 
> Back at ya, thanks man.


I'll gladly take the WI winters if you take the Delhi summers, 118F during the dry season and 100F with 90% humidity in the wet months, between them, thats like 8 months of the year.


----------



## sqnut (Dec 24, 2009)

Did any of the suggested stuff help?


----------



## OzzyQashqai (Jan 9, 2017)

Great post this is.

I really appreciate these problem solving, diagnostic style threads as opposed to the more traditional "how-to" threads.


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

sqnut said:


> Did any of the suggested stuff help?


Yes thanks. Didn't get a chance to play much this weekend though. 

The top end will likely becoming down a couple db, from 1k up.


----------



## sqnut (Dec 24, 2009)

A little write up on the eq frequencies I had posted in another thread.



sqnut said:


> Some key frequencies and what they 'sound' like:
> 
> 50-60hz: This is the mass / punch and omph in the low end. I start balancing L&R around 50 and I'm only cutting here to to balance and not to the spl per se.
> 
> ...


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

Cool

That's something I'm working on.. Recognition of what is what... As soon as i think i'm getting the hang of it, i realize I'm way f'ing off..

This weekend while on the road, I cut everything from 2k and up a db on the prs while experimenting with bringing the top end down. It seemed like something around 5-8k was still up a bit. Brought that down a bit more, no...

It was 1.25k 

After knocking that down a db too, things are sounding balanced better. You are correct, a db on the prs=1.5-2db from what i measured the other week.

Thanks for the guide.


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

Ps you forgot 20-40hz.


----------



## sqnut (Dec 24, 2009)

bnae38 said:


> Ps you forgot 20-40hz.


It's probably because I don't listen to EDM/Techno/Rap. God, you're as incorrigible as my daughter.

These are pure sub frequencies, if you have the right enclosure and sub, you really don't need to do much on the eq. On the mid bass eq, 20 is cut all the way (-12 db iirc), 30 is -6 and 40 is like -3. Most of the music I listen to has very little content below 40.


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

"Ok google" 

"what is incorrigible"


Hey.....


----------



## sqnut (Dec 24, 2009)

bnae38 said:


> "Ok google"
> 
> "what is incorrigible"
> 
> ...


In the nicest possible way......of always wanting the last word. Don't worry, I'm used to it, I have a wife and 15 yr old girl and both always want the last word.


----------



## sqnut (Dec 24, 2009)

What happens when we turn the volume down on a 2ch? Well, the SPL reduces but the balance across the various sound ranges stays intact. In fact even if we turn down the volume from, say 110db to say 65db, that sense of balance still persists and a strong bass line in the song will still make its presence felt. 

One of the biggest obstacles for me while trying to replicate this sense of balance in the car was, getting the mid range (~500-2khz) and upper mid range (2.5-5khz) done right. Most of the the time I had it overcooked as anything less and the sound got dull. Till one day, I just decided to turn the volume down and then try to make the sound less thin and reedy and it worked great, turned it up and it was much better.


----------



## Eggroll96 (Jan 10, 2017)

Cool


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

Good stuff thx. I have a helix dsp.2 coming =)

I get to play with phase now


----------



## sqnut (Dec 24, 2009)

One thing I should mention is, that when tuning for better clarity and balance at lower volumes, if you're working the say 1-4khz range, try cutting *and raising* each frequency to find what works best. So start at 1khz raise that by 1 db and listen is it better or worse? Is the sound less stretched etc. What part of the sound has that raise affected? Try and answer these questions in your head.

If the raise made it worse, go back and try a cut. Sometimes though, both a raise and a cut will make things worse, although in different ways. In such cases leave it where it is and move on to the next frequency and repeat. When you are done, the results may surprise you. 1khz to 4khz, is 7 frequencies at 1/3 octave. If as things stand, 4 of these are hot and 3 are lower than they should be, then we need to cut 4 and raise 3, that's why we do the +/- steps.

It's also allowing our ears and brains to learn what excess and to little, at 1khz etc sounds like. Now when we raise the volume, the results will fall somewhere between, somethings are better while others are worse, and better, but there are still issues. The first is most likely down to picking a cut/raise as better when that wasn't the real case, you're building reliability at calling better or worse, and this takes time. Go back and repeat the exercise and see if you can correct what went wrong.

The second is down to the fact that we're moving in steps of +/- 1 db while the average required, across the range could be 2-2.5 db, so rinse and repeat. Get your ears reliable at +/- 1 db resolution and then move on to +/- 0.5 db and repeat the process, the ears will again need some time to settle into this resolution, and so on..........Hope this made sense.


----------



## bnae38 (Oct 3, 2015)

sqnut said:


> One thing I should mention is, that when tuning for better clarity and balance at lower volumes, if you're working the say 1-4khz range, try cutting *and raising* each frequency to find what works best. So start at 1khz raise that by 1 db and listen is it better or worse? Is the sound less stretched etc. What part of the sound has that raise affected? Try and answer these questions in your head.
> 
> If the raise made it worse, go back and try a cut. Sometimes though, both a raise and a cut will make things worse, although in different ways. In such cases leave it where it is and move on to the next frequency and repeat. When you are done, the results may surprise you. 1khz to 4khz, is 7 frequencies at 1/3 octave. If as things stand, 4 of these are hot and 3 are lower than they should be, then we need to cut 4 and raise 3, that's why we do the +/- steps.
> 
> ...


It does, thanks. Looking forward to playing with the dsp.2 here and getting things very good on the timing side, then going back to response.

I have a fairly good idea of what works well for measured response so I can attempt to match that after and pick up where I left off.

Ps, yes I'm going down the phase rabbit hole again. Mostly because now I can! 

Hopefully it's a relatively quick venture... but may not be. Bear with me. Arun, I know you're a strong believer in well tuned response much more so than playing with timing/phase/apf/etc to the nth degree... but telling someone who is hyper analytical to not go there is easier said than done.


----------



## sqnut (Dec 24, 2009)

bnae38 said:


> Hopefully it's a relatively quick venture... but may not be. Bear with me. Arun, I know you're a strong believer in well tuned response much more so than playing with timing/phase/apf/etc to the nth degree..._ but telling someone who is hyper analytical to not go there is easier said than done. _


That's why I'm not even going to try........except in sharing this thought.

Iirc, the Helix lets you change the phase angles at your xover points in steps of 12.5 deg, its not like one has FIR on each tap. Imho, if one has timing and response coherence, then phase coherence falls into place, to whatever extent it can in a car. Play with it and set it where it gives best coherence. Then leave it alone till you change the timing or xover points. 

Playing with the phase angle is like fine tweaking your TA. Evaluate changes like you would with TA ie, more / less coherence i.e. cleaner vocals, more / less dynamic etc. GL.


----------

