# Why do so many people use Focal speakers?



## regxjin (Apr 9, 2011)

Hi guys,

I think there is an overload of car audio sq enthusiasts that use Focal speakers.
My question is, do you guys really like the sound of the Focal speakers?

I think there are so many really really good speaker systems for the price of K2Ps & Utopias, I just don't really get why Focal has become the mainstream for SQ builds. What are you thoughts and do you think Focal is getting more recognition then it deserves considering there are so many awesome speaker systems in that price range.


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## miniSQ (Aug 4, 2009)

Why do so many people like pepperoni on their pizza?


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## 555nova (Apr 12, 2014)

Why does a Plymouth posi traction work?


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## claydo (Oct 1, 2012)

Availability? Marketing?.........they must be doing something right. To be honest though, it doesent seem focal has any type of majority in the builds here in the states. As far as the sound goes, I've heard em sound good, I've heard em sound bad.........just like every other speaker it depends on the instal and tune......


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## gijoe (Mar 25, 2008)

The are among the best of the commonly known brands. Most people know only of what the shops around their house carry, they see the banners, the ads, and hear their friends cars. As with just about any hobby, when you start to get into it you realize that the commonly known brands aren't the end-all be-all.


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## Sine Swept (Sep 3, 2010)

Correct me if I'm wrong but did Focal not get bought by a design company a few years back?

I have used some of the older midbass drivers (and still have Utopia 5w2's), the 6.5's were the highest calibre driver that I had used up to that point. I have a pair of the Access coaxes in the wife's car and they seem quite a solid performer for a coax.


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## Victor_inox (Apr 27, 2012)

Focals quite good if installed and tuned correctly. Problem is there too many fakes available on the market and they sound like ****.


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## jpswanberg (Jan 14, 2009)

It seems that all cheaper car stereo stores have focal as their top line around here in the LA area. Distributor pushing product? Name recognition? Personally I can't stand their tweeters, but ymmv depending on your ears/taste.


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## tnaudio (Mar 4, 2012)

Almost every time you see a speaker become very popular in the lanes is caused by an aggressive demo discount for dealers


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## Hanatsu (Nov 9, 2010)

For the record... I've never owned a Focal product 

It's probably just the thing called 'marketing'. I tend not to judge the performance of a product by its brand, but rather on individual models.


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## audison1 (Apr 10, 2014)

Focal is a great brand. There are some good fakes out there, but you can call focal and give them the serial number and they can tell you if they are legit. The other way you can tell is if they sound bad. In my opinion the polyglass line beats out most others high end lines.


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## ScaryfatkidGT (Mar 31, 2012)

I think they are over priced to, idk I would never shove a $1000 or more speaker in a car door?

I'm looking at HAT


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## audison1 (Apr 10, 2014)

They make products in a wide price range. Even the more affordable products are very well made. Focal is very much concerned about music and the way it is reproduced thru there speakers. Other than the access line everything is handmade in France. Once a week the factory gets shut down and they go listen to live music. Through every stage of building the speakers are tested and if at any point it doesn't meet their specifications they get scrapped. Once the speakers are fully assembled and pass all the other tests they are listened to. If they do not sound how they are supposed to they also get scrapped. Focal is very concerned about the quality of their product. At what point how do you feel they are overpriced?


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## pocket5s (Jan 6, 2012)

ScaryfatkidGT said:


> I think they are over priced to, idk I would never shove a $1000 or more speaker in a car door?
> 
> I'm looking at HAT


Oh the irony...


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## audison1 (Apr 10, 2014)

I'm assuming HAT is hybrid or is it somebody else


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## maggie-g (Aug 20, 2014)

audison1 said:


> I'm assuming HAT is hybrid or is it somebody else


hybrid audio technologies


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## Bruno Sardine (Dec 19, 2009)

Does it really matter what other people are putting in their cars? Use what you want. Whether you like, or dislike Focal, ultimately it's what you want to put in your car that matters.

That being said, I have a couple thoughts. I've owned a set of the 3-way Polyglass components and thought they were excellent. The sound quality was crystal clear, and the speakers and crossovers were well-built. I also owned a pair of Focal Access components in a daily drive that I felt beat anything in that price range. They do an excellent job building speakers, so there's no reason that they shouldn't enjoy a solid reputation among enthusiasts.

As far as being in the majority goes, I couldn't say. But looking at this website as a sample, the majority of what I see on here is people using raw drivers and active crossovers to assemble component sets. At this point, that's what I've been doing. It's definitely quite a bit cheaper than buying a high-end set of Focals. If I had the money to spend on a set of Poly Kevlars, though, I'd run them in a heartbeat.


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## alm001 (Feb 13, 2010)

pocket5s said:


> Oh the irony...


plus1


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## Lycancatt (Apr 11, 2010)

pocket5s said:


> Oh the irony...


beat me to it! I was going to say if theres one brand that's getting way more recognition than any other right now its hybred audio technologies, and this one I just don't get. I've never heard hat sound truly good, I've heard some cars get exceedingly close and I could live with them on a daily basis and they score well, but my personal tastes would never see me buying there product.


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## Advanced1 (Apr 12, 2013)

If you've ever heard a set of the Utopias properly powered and installed correctly you wouldn't ask that question, have you?


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## regxjin (Apr 9, 2011)

Advanced1 said:


> If you've ever heard a set of the Utopias properly powered and installed correctly you wouldn't ask that question, have you?



What's up with the condescending statement?
Are you one of those "car audio elitests who think you are better than everyone else?

If you knew what I did for a living you wouldn't be asking such a dumbass question. 

But for the record, 
I think I've heard over a 100 different vehicles with various Focal speakers installs. As a matter a fact here is a car i heard just last week.









Does this car seem properly powered and properly installed for your liking?

What do you find so special about it?

Do you think these Focal can hang with Dynaudio Esotars, Rainbow Reference, Micro Precision Zs, ZR Speaker Lab, or even Audison Thesis, Scanning, Scanspeak?

In short answer? Nope


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## sundownz (Apr 13, 2007)

They offer a certain kind of sound that many people enjoy -- that is my opinion.

There are some lines of theirs I really like and others that I am so-so about... most of the tweeters are too bright for me except a set of PolyKev I had a few years ago. But I have enjoyed almost all of the mids and midbass drivers.

Could you do better (objectively)? Certainly -- Scanspeak is a prime example of, IMO, largely superior drivers... but some people may *prefer* the Focal type sound whether objectively superior or not.

The sub-woofers always seemed a bit out-of-line in pricing to me, though.


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## cheerguyhpu (Aug 3, 2014)

By no means am I a focal nut swinger but i have to say that the new flax line is very neutral and impressive in sound. Im not into sq or anything like that but for what i have had the opportunity to audition these are what i liked. the only other high end stuff ive had the opportunity to hear is hertz mille and some of the morel stuff. I am more than pleased with the new flax 3 way set.


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## Hanatsu (Nov 9, 2010)

I haven't seen any real testing of Focal drivers. It's useless to comment on driver performance without proper measurements.


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## Victor_inox (Apr 27, 2012)

Hanatsu said:


> I haven't seen any real testing of Focal drivers. It's useless to comment on driver performance without proper measurements.


measurements has nothing to do with branding
Most non audio nuts think if they pay for anything it must be recognisable by others. for variety of reasons including resale value.
Ever tried to sell something not focal, morel, dynaudio, etc,etc?
I can sell focal axess in 10 hours on CL and it takes me month to sell way superior drivers from not recognisable brands. they might measure and sounds better than Focals but..... you got the picture.


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## Hanatsu (Nov 9, 2010)

Victor_inox said:


> measurements has nothing to do with branding
> Most non audio nuts think if they pay for anything it must be recognisable by others. for variety of reasons including resale value.
> Ever tried to sell something not focal, morel, dynaudio, etc,etc?
> I can sell focal axess in 10 hours on CL and it takes me month to sell way superior drivers from not recognisable brands. they might measure and sounds better than Focals but..... you got the picture.


I was just sayin ^^

...but yeah. That's probably close to the truth.


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## ScaryfatkidGT (Mar 31, 2012)

Didn't realize my comment was making such a stir, I think $800 Focals are fine, I think $800 HAT's are fine. I like HAT because Focal has to many options and it confuses me.

But if your going to put $1000 or $2000+ components in a car your probably going to need to spend a grand on making a custom enclosure in your door, and time and eq correction for it being in a car. Speaker companies spend lots of time, tuning the driver to the enclosure, curved enclosures to minimize resonances and port tuning. So I don't get how you can just seal a car door and stick a $2000 raw driver in there? IMO its just not worth it in a car, as you can't fully focus on the music anyway like you can in front of a hi-fi.

And I'm not setting a hard cap at $1000, I was just saying that IMO the uber priced Focal stuff is kind of pointless unless you have a SQ car in your back yard you go idle in to listen to music.


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## garysummers (Oct 25, 2010)

"So I don't get how you can just seal a car door and stick a $2000 raw driver in there? IMO its just not worth it in a car, as you can't fully focus on the music anyway like you can in front of a hi-fi."

I beg to differ!! It was way worth it!!  9.8 liter sealed fiberglass enclosures with Morel Supremo MW6.


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## LBaudio (Jan 9, 2009)

garysummers said:


> I beg to differ!! It was way worth it!!  9.8 liter sealed fiberglass enclosures with Morel Supremo MW6.
> 
> 
> View attachment 55866
> ...


cant agree more with you.....I also got very good experience with sealed and ported midbass door enclosures....


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## jnchantler (Apr 11, 2012)

garysummers said:


> "So I don't get how you can just seal a car door and stick a $2000 raw driver in there? IMO its just not worth it in a car, as you can't fully focus on the music anyway like you can in front of a hi-fi."
> 
> I beg to differ!! It was way worth it!!  9.8 liter sealed fiberglass enclosures with Morel Supremo MW6.
> 
> ...


Where's the like button when you need it. 

I've heard this car and Ill agree... it was worth it.


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## RocketBoots (Apr 16, 2011)

A bit OT here, but I happen to be reading this and you happened to post here. Gary, why did you place the mid the way you did on your dash, vs in the sail?? You could have done anything  

Thanks.



garysummers said:


> "So I don't get how you can just seal a car door and stick a $2000 raw driver in there? IMO its just not worth it in a car, as you can't fully focus on the music anyway like you can in front of a hi-fi."
> 
> I beg to differ!! It was way worth it!!  9.8 liter sealed fiberglass enclosures with Morel Supremo MW6.
> 
> ...


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## RocketBoots (Apr 16, 2011)

As to the OP, IMO, Focals have a certain sound to them, especially the tweeter. Call the "punchiness" of the mids distortion, "harshness" of the tweet lack of distortion, whatever. People seem to like that type of sound. 

And their quality is very good.

And their marketing is very good


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## wizzi001 (Apr 29, 2011)

regxjin said:


> What's up with the condescending statement?
> Are you one of those "car audio elitests who think you are better than everyone else?
> 
> If you knew what I did for a living you wouldn't be asking such a dumbass question.
> ...


That is only your opinion.


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## garysummers (Oct 25, 2010)

RocketBoots said:


> A bit OT here, but I happen to be reading this and you happened to post here. Gary, why did you place the mid the way you did on your dash, vs in the sail?? You could have done anything
> 
> Thanks.


Tried every possible positioning I could come up with for the mid/tweeter and this sounded the best to my ear.


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## The real Subzero (Apr 13, 2010)

Because ESQUE.


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## CrossFired (Jan 24, 2008)

I don't see that many folks using Focal. I'd say a whole lot more Pioneer is being used.


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## simplicityinsound (Feb 2, 2007)

any brand that has gained popularity through a combination of quality and marketing will have its supporters and detractors...i dont see much of a point in this debate when like all things related to a car, its based, in the end, on personal preference, 100 percent subjective aspects.

terms like "can't hang", beyond stirring up personal emotions of support or anger, isnt really all that meaningful in the end. 

Focal is perhaps the best known euro car audio with an uberline up, and in my opinion, its a combo of the two things listed above and perhaps they are the earliest to capitalize on those aspects, especially marketing. the OP listed several brands, but some of them have a far smaller marketing arm for car audio becuase they simply dont focus a lot of attention on car audio, others dont have enough rep/importer support here in the us, yet still others are more more pure driver manufacturers than have a specific division in car audio.

so i think we are debating a pretty pointless topic here 

we are focal dealer for the past 3 years, but my personal preference for extremely smooth and laid back (though some may say lacking highs or dull) means taht focal wasnt on my personal list other than the utopia be line (not the original utopia), and thus you dont see a lot focal products being used in our builds. however, the new flax line i feel, really changed things from the very first time i powered one on...and thus most likely that will be the line we use a lot.

in the end, car audio should only be about personal preference, meaning, if you like it, you like it, if you hate it, you hate it. if you hate something and see someone else loving it, there is no issues there, its how the world works 

cheers,

Bing

p.s. i LOVE live sea urchin, anyone else? hehe


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## ChrisB (Jul 3, 2008)

sundownz said:


> They offer a certain kind of sound that many people enjoy -- that is my opinion.
> 
> There are some lines of theirs I really like and others that I am so-so about... *most of the tweeters are too bright for me except* a set of PolyKev I had a few years ago. But I have enjoyed almost all of the mids and midbass drivers.
> 
> ...


You hit the nail on the head with the tweeters too bright statement. That's been my complaint about every set of Focal components that I heard and why I always shied away from them.


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## simplicityinsound (Feb 2, 2007)

ChrisB said:


> You hit the nail on the head with the tweeters too bright statement. That's been my complaint about every set of Focal components that I heard and why I always shied away from them.


I would try the flax..a very neutral sound out of the box


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## ChrisB (Jul 3, 2008)

simplicityinsound said:


> I would try the flax..a very neutral sound out of the box


My local dealer lost me as a a customer when they tried to sell me on the integration kit for my GTI. As a result, I am just going to use what I have which just happens to be an old set of Genesis components.


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## Deftmetal (Sep 7, 2014)

Focal speakers are the best sounding speakers that the local shops have demos of. That's why I'm considering buying them. 

There isn't that big a variety of brands available here in Saskatchewan as far as I've found so far. I'm still looking.


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## cajunner (Apr 13, 2007)

simplicityinsound said:


> p.s. i LOVE live sea urchin, anyone else? hehe


how, do you love them?

either they have freakishly short spines, or you have a freakishly long...

spoon?


hahaha..

love me some uni, OOH, NEE!

when a windfall fell my way, I ordered some from Catalina, had the bag of frozen to cook with and a few boxes of the uber delectables....


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## Patrick Bateman (Sep 11, 2006)

I believe that Focal sells well because it's a bit better than the cheap stuff you find at the low price points, and there's enough of a mark up that the dealers are rewarded for selling it.

IE, a Dayton Reference woofer is better and cheaper than Focal's mid-range line, but you're not going to see it sold over the counter and a dealer wouldn't be able to mark it up much either.

Recently I've noticed some car stereo lines which look very similar to Dayton Reference, which makes me wonder if some clever company started buying Dayton, changed the logo, and sold it for more over-the-counter.

TLDR: if you're buying speakers from a store, you could do a lot worse than Focal. If you're buying online I have no idea why you would get Focal.


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## subwoofery (Nov 9, 2008)

If people think that Focal is an overpriced brand, you're right - but only in US and in Japan. 

Focal isn't as expensive in Europe or even back home. Where I live everything is more expensive than in the States, but apparently, not Focal items... 

Kelvin


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## Negolien (May 17, 2010)

Who do so many people use high quality hi price escorts....


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## Patrick Bateman (Sep 11, 2006)

Negolien said:


> Who do so many people use high quality hi price escorts....


This is way, WAY off topic.
But a friend of mine put herself up on one of those sites. And when I heard how little she was making, I was surprised.

Turns out the prices have been falling like a rock:

The Economist explains: Why the price of commercial sex is falling | The Economist


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## ScaryfatkidGT (Mar 31, 2012)

Lol one person says they sound laidback and the next says the tweeters are to bright, right there is the key to listen for your self.

Anyway I think its all brand recognition, every body knows who Focal is, even my local show when I was talking about SQ was joking about me getting $5000 Focals when I was sealing every little bit of my sub box.

Now why did he pick Focal and not Morell or Mcintosh? or any other brand.


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## poopbunny (Aug 15, 2014)

OK, I will post my experiences here and I am not advocating one brand over another.

I have a Volvo that has factory Dynaudio and thought that my Mercedes S-Class could sound a little better, so I began this journey (which has still not ended) to see if I could improve on it.

My bottomline was not price but that everything has to look stock. So if you sat in the car, visually, you could not tell what brand of speakers. Unfortunately this bottomline also reduced the choices I had out there, due to size & fitment. I could not use Dynaudio due to the sizes, possible only with panel mods, etc... 

My upgrades below happened over about 2 years and I spent months listening to them before moving on. For my lounge loudspeakers I own Magnepan and drive them with Krell, not the best, not the worst either, I don't have golden ears, but I know what I like.

I started out with JBL which turned out to be a complete waste of time.

Then I tried Focal K2 Power Component and noticed an improvement right away, the mid range was incredible, I immediately notice a hole in the middle, the centre speaker, so I added another Focal TNK tweeter.

Very nice sound, after a few months, I felt something was lacking in the high end.

Next upgrade, Hertz Coax + Hertz HT20 at the door and I got the high end I wanted, bass also improved.

Read somewhere about the DLS and checked it out and like the mount (meant using one less spacer). So I replaced Focal mid range at the rear doors with DLS Coax and the sound again was better overall. 

Since the Hertz did such a good job on the high end, I replaced my center Focal tweeter with Hertz HT20. That was a mistake. I did get the end but the mid range and vocals was not good. So I swapped them back to Focal TNK.

Speaker brands are mixed but sound good so far, they all, reagardless of the brand, seem to have their place.


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## palldat (Feb 6, 2011)

Lycancatt said:


> beat me to it! I was going to say if theres one brand that's getting way more recognition than any other right now its hybred audio technologies, and this one I just don't get. I've never heard hat sound truly good, I've heard some cars get exceedingly close and I could live with them on a daily basis and they score well, but my personal tastes would never see me buying there product.


Gee, thanks Mike


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## SUX 2BU (Oct 27, 2008)

It's funny that this is still a topic. 10+ years ago I was asking the same thing, when Focal came on to the scene really strong in the early 2000's. If I recall, the K2P and then the Utopia was the hot stuff to have back then too especially in the local Vancouver, Canada area. Focal was it if you figured you had to have the 'best' stuff and the local dealers ate it up. Focal drivers and Audison amps. It was the like PPI/JL/MBQ combo craze of the early 90s/late 80s. I've always loved the multi-magnet look of the Utopia subs even in the early 90s. Focal has been around for quite a while but it was a little-known, exotic brand back then.

What does the Be sets sell for these days? Anything priced well into the 4 digits is way overpriced, let alone 5 digits but people who have the money to buy this stuff love the shock value and 'respect' they get for buying such expensive equipment, same with Audison Thesis. I would have no doubt though that Focal makes a quality-built product.


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## DJ Welfare (May 18, 2011)

Focal utopia be #7 are still the best speakers I have ever heard in a car


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## rxonmymind (Sep 7, 2010)

I had a pair of Focals and thought they were excellent. The detail, clarity, precision, and quickness or speed on how they reproduced the sound were all there, they just lacked the warmth and bloom/soundstage of Dyn's. I'd describe them as "cool" to the ear and never fatiguing.


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## Theronh357 (Aug 10, 2013)

regxjin said:


> What's up with the condescending statement?
> Are you one of those "car audio elitests who think you are better than everyone else?
> 
> If you knew what I did for a living you wouldn't be asking such a dumbass question.
> ...


(Smdh) Wow, what a pompus dick-head...and I couldn't care less about what you "do for a living."


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## CoLd_FuSiOn (Jun 25, 2012)

Focal by all means relies heavily on marketing and is only expensive in the United States,i've had the opportunity to listen to all of their lines and I would describe their sonic characteristic to be on the brighter side.

With that being said some people are accustomed to this sound hence there lies somewhat subjectivity to defining what is superior and what is not.Personally I like my music loud and clear as well as listenable for a lot of hours,I don't find the power handling on their drivers to be that well plus they can be fatiguing for longer listening sessions.The best results I've had in my friend's car with focal speakers is by pairing them to a warm amplifier like a mcintosh,otherwise out of the box they're a bit hard to tame.

p.s I've heard scans,alpine f1s and personally own a dynaudio set so I'd say there are definitely better things out there IMHO,even audison has a very nice sound to them.


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## Rs roms (Jul 12, 2012)

CoLd_FuSiOn said:


> Focal by all means relies heavily on marketing and is only expensive in the United States,i've had the opportunity to listen to all of their lines and I would describe their sonic characteristic to be on the brighter side.
> 
> With that being said some people are accustomed to this sound hence there lies somewhat subjectivity to defining what is superior and what is not.Personally I like my music loud and clear as well as listenable for a lot of hours,I don't find the power handling on their drivers to be that well plus they can be fatiguing for longer listening sessions.The best results I've had in my friend's car with focal speakers is by pairing them to a warm amplifier like a mcintosh,otherwise out of the box they're a bit hard to tame.
> 
> p.s I've heard scans,alpine f1s and personally own a dynaudio set so I'd say there are definitely better things out there IMHO,even audison has a very nice sound to them.


That post gave me a laugh, what if i say the Dyn system 360 has no response above 8khz, then will it be a blanket statement??
SQ is subjective, but the thing is people make up their minds after listening to the access line from focal lineup. You got to own them to unleash them, you use auto tune, auto eq, and complain about upper end response. If you can't hear the phase then you are too young to tame the Focals.
Also i would like to hear your description of "Warm" & "Harsh" and believe me Focals are not fatiguing, listen to my car on weekend and post a review again.


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## Rs roms (Jul 12, 2012)

simplicityinsound said:


> any brand that has gained popularity through a combination of quality and marketing will have its supporters and detractors...i dont see much of a point in this debate when like all things related to a car, its based, in the end, on personal preference, 100 percent subjective aspects.
> 
> terms like "can't hang", beyond stirring up personal emotions of support or anger, isnt really all that meaningful in the end.
> 
> ...





Patrick Bateman said:


> I believe that Focal sells well because it's a bit better than the cheap stuff you find at the low price points, and there's enough of a mark up that the dealers are rewarded for selling it.
> 
> IE, a Dayton Reference woofer is better and cheaper than Focal's mid-range line, but you're not going to see it sold over the counter and a dealer wouldn't be able to mark it up much either.
> 
> ...





subwoofery said:


> If people think that Focal is an overpriced brand, you're right - but only in US and in Japan.
> 
> Focal isn't as expensive in Europe or even back home. Where I live everything is more expensive than in the States, but apparently, not Focal items...
> 
> Kelvin





Negolien said:


> Who do so many people use high quality hi price escorts....


Couldn't agree more (Y)


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## mrpeabody (May 26, 2010)

I tend to just wrap my amps in blankets to get more warmth, but that's just me.


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## Rs roms (Jul 12, 2012)

mrpeabody said:


> I tend to just wrap my amps in blankets to get more warmth, but that's just me.


hahaha:laugh:


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## acidbass303 (Dec 3, 2010)

Rs roms said:


> That post gave me a laugh, what if i say the Dyn system 360 has no response above 8khz, then will it be a blanket statement??
> SQ is subjective, but the thing is people make up their minds after listening to the access line from focal lineup. You got to own them to unleash them, you use auto tune, auto eq, and complain about upper end response. If you can't hear the phase then you are too young to tame the Focals.
> Also i would like to hear your description of "Warm" & "Harsh" and believe me Focals are not fatiguing, listen to my car on weekend and post a review again.


+1 mate

Marketing, no matter how much exuberant , can not sell crap. If a lot of people are using Focals or any other brand it shows that particular brand is delivering performance people expect from it. Doesn't mean that the users were naive enough to be lured into buying stuff just by marketing them. All drivers, irrespective of the brand demand thoughtful installation and tuning. One simply just cant blame a speaker set for poor sound (subjectively) when they are not used as they should be. Good or bad, warm or bright, etc or etc...all are subjective terms and are comprehended by everyone differently. Someones "detailed" can mean bright or harsh to someone else similarly someones " warm or neutral" can mean dull or lifeless to someone else. Its all about personal preferences. What matters is a great install and frequency response, staging etc etc of the system on the whole. Just labeling a brand bright out of the box isn't sensible. In my own experience I have heard a set of morel elate 3 ways, which are known to be mellow or warm, installed poorly making them displeasing and ear pinching at certain frequencies. But that doesn't warrant me label Morels as harsh etc. I have used a lot of brands as well and, while liking other brands as well, I like the sound of my focal drivers and can listen to them all day long without a hitch.


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## regxjin (Apr 9, 2011)

Rs roms said:


> That post gave me a laugh, what if i say the Dyn system 360 has no response above 8khz, then will it be a blanket statement??
> *SQ is subjective*, but the thing is people make up their minds after listening to the access line from focal lineup. You got to own them to unleash them, you use auto tune, auto eq, and complain about upper end response. If you can't hear the phase then you are too young to tame the Focals.
> Also i would like to hear your description of "Warm" & "Harsh" and believe me Focals are not fatiguing, listen to my car on weekend and post a review again.



Obviously since you are a Focal user, yes your answer is unsuprisingly subjective. Any speaker will perform to a degree if you tune them, build them around other great components like amps, cables, custom A-pillars, enclosures, door baffles, dynamat, etc. But Focals, especially from access line, VB 165, 165V30, K2P line, and all the way up to the KRS lines the sound is not quite in line with direct competitors.

And YES, Focal tweeters are very fatiguing (aside from Utopia line). They are probably one of the brightest and unnatural sounding tweeters on the market. And it is well-documented by many many shops, dealers, consumers, and worldwide distributors around the world that Focal tweets are harsh. 
Unless you tune the hell out of it with EQ adjustments, Slops, and Freq. cuts, and stage adjustments, the "base" sound of Focal is very Harsh and Very fatiguing.

I've pushed quite a bit of Focal inventory when I used to own a hifi shop, and the reason why we pushed it so hard was because the margins were good enough and but more importantly, for the, "novist" car audio enthusiast, it is probably the perfect product as the Focal line makes enough changes to enhance sound dynamics (good and bad) with by even just changing car audio speakers without any real setup. And that is it.

But if you are a car audio purist, hobbyist, or someone looking to seriously do SQ competition, the focal line has quite a bit of, "limitations." 

I don't care if you are a Focal fanboy or hail it the greatest revolution in Car Audio, but reality is, it's overhyped, and should not rank amongst the tall trees in the car audio spectrum for, "serious" users. 

Albiet, Focal has a great marketing team after the company was acquired by another company a few years back. And they definitely have a respectable line up and do car audio the right way. 

HOWEVER, 
if people claim your Focal system (including Utopias) are the best sounding and MOST AWESOME systems, you are blowing a lot of smoke or not heard enough car audio products in your time.

From my personal gatherings in this field with my most unbiased opinion (I have heard quite a bit of speaker brands), Focal has nowhere near the products that so many people rave about. 

Focal is the Toyota Camry of the car audio brands.

And you say that after tuning the Focal systems they sound great.
However, I have heard many many many many many products from other brands that have a really great "base" sound without any digitally altered tuning involved. I think speakers that have a great base in their sound straight out of the box are truly great speakers. Because any speaker can be digitally altered and tuned and sound great if you really wanted to. 

And personally,
there is another brand called, Davis Acoustics in France.
I know some of you old schoolers know it too, but this company should be the hailed speaker maker out of France. Their Kevlar, Velvet speakers are so sweet. Seriously, it is the type of sound you never grow tired of. Their speakers have so much character and charm about them.


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## Rs roms (Jul 12, 2012)

regxjin said:


> Obviously since you are a Focal user, yes your answer is unsuprisingly subjective. Any speaker will perform to a degree if you tune them, build them around other great components like amps, cables, custom A-pillars, enclosures, door baffles, dynamat, etc. But in ideal settings Focals, especially from access line, VB 165, 165V30, K2P line, and all the way up to the KRS lines the sound is not quite in line with direct competitors.
> 
> And YES, Focal tweeters are very fatiguing (aside from Utopia line). They are probably one of the brightest and unnatural sounding tweeters on the market. And it is well-documented by many many shops, dealers, consumers, and worldwide distributors around the world that Focal tweets are harsh.
> Unless you tune the hell out of it with EQ adjustments, Slops, and Freq. cuts, and stage adjustments, the "base" sound of Focal is very Harsh and Very fatiguing.
> ...



No speakers have flat response therefore Eq comes into play to smooth out the peaks and notches in frequency response.
Now if it was that easy for audio manufacturers to built speakers which play flat, then every set of components would have same sound and signature. 
I use focals beacaue i like them and they are easier to tune them to my taste. Some people like tea and some like coffee. It doesn't mean that they start blaming the others.
As you say that speaker is bright out of box, tell me that break in period is a myth. Kelvin (Subwoofery) has used them as well and ask him what he has to say.
We all agree that mostly things get down to proper install, tuning and eq. Without them being done right, everything will sound horrible.

Sent from my SM-G900F using Tapatalk


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## 14642 (May 19, 2008)

You don't get to be a major speaker brand by making garbage. Many of the Focal speakers are great. 

Every time I read one of these threads someone chimes in about how real brands are "overpriced". What many of us tend to forget is that the cost of the product is not just the cost to produce the product. There's engineering, research and development, logistics, salaries for salespeople and all kinds of support staff, marketing, testing, training, travel and expense, commissions paid to reps, margin for distributors because they all have expenses too. Finally, local shops also have expenses that have to be paid. All of that is the cost of the product and the cost to bring the product to market.

That's a very different proposition than going to a factory, buying something that's already designed, built and tested, making up a brand name with no trademark protection and having it shipped directly to the online retailer of your choice. 

It's possible to get good speakers either way. However, the value of buying a well known brand may be in the likelihood that you'll get good speakers the first time without a bunch of experimentation. The value of brands are rooted in their history of providing valuable user experiences (great performance, customer service, reliability), and a balance between availability and exclusivity.


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## McKinneyMike (Jul 24, 2014)

Andy Wehmeyer said:


> It's possible to get good speakers either way. However, the value of buying a well known brand may be in the likelihood that you'll get good speakers the first time without a bunch of experimentation. The value of brands are rooted in their history of providing valuable user experiences (great performance, customer service, reliability), and a balance between availability and exclusivity.


Completely agree. Quality is more than marketing after a point in time. Even the best fail if they do not continue to excel (see American automobile makers for one). I like Focal and have worked in the high end audio market for many years. Are they best? That is subjective. Are they very good. Without question. In car audio the installation is so critical in making or breaking any speaker setup. A monkey can cause great damage with a screwdriver.


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## 14642 (May 19, 2008)

90 percent of the frequency response you hear in a car is the car and 10 percent is the speaker. No car sounds great without EQ. Whether or not one speaker sounds better once installed without EQ is NOT a measure of the quality of the speaker from a frequency response perspective. Non-linear stuff? Yes, Frequency response? No.


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## acidbass303 (Dec 3, 2010)

Andy Wehmeyer said:


> You don't get to be a major speaker brand by making garbage. Many of the Focal speakers are great.
> 
> Every time I read one of these threads someone chimes in about how real brands are "overpriced". What many of us tend to forget is that the cost of the product is not just the cost to produce the product. There's engineering, research and development, logistics, salaries for salespeople and all kinds of support staff, marketing, testing, training, travel and expense, commissions paid to reps, margin for distributors because they all have expenses too. Finally, local shops also have expenses that have to be paid. All of that is the cost of the product and the cost to bring the product to market.
> 
> ...




+1000

Andy, you sir, are a gem!


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## Rs roms (Jul 12, 2012)

McKinneyMike said:


> Completely agree. Quality is more than marketing after a point in time. Even the best fail if they do not continue to excel (see American automobile makers for one). I like Focal and have worked in the high end audio market for many years. Are they best? That is subjective. Are they very good. Without question. In car audio the installation is so critical in making or breaking any speaker setup. A monkey can cause great damage with a screwdriver.


Perfectly put together 



Andy Wehmeyer said:


> 90 percent of the frequency response you hear in a car is the car and 10 percent is the speaker. No car sounds great without EQ. Whether or not one speaker sounds better once installed without EQ is NOT a measure of the quality of the speaker from a frequency response perspective. Non-linear stuff? Yes, Frequency response? No.


That's the punch line. No body could have answered better than this.
I don't know why people come out of nowhere and make blanket statements.

Andy people say little eq should be used and i don't agree with them. Because there is always need to do eq apart from setting the basis right. 
We can't put the energy back in nulls but we can cut the peaks by subtractive eq. The point is that isn't it good to have a driver which has natively rising response and use subtractive eq to flaten it out to match the curve we are after instead of using a mellow driver and boosting the notches. Just a random question.

Sent from my SM-G900F using Tapatalk


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## 14642 (May 19, 2008)

Why should there be only a little EQ used? For car audio systems, there isn't enough EQ if it doesn't sound right. Trying to EQ stuff that can't be fixed with EQ obviously doesn't work, but if it can be it should be.

That statement is like saying really great race cars go really fast with a minimum of horsepower. That's ridiculous. Anyone who could come close to winning a formula 1 with 10 HP would rightfully apply those other secrets to a car with a much more powerful engine.


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## sqnut (Dec 24, 2009)

Andy Wehmeyer said:


> 90 percent of the frequency response you hear in a car is the car and 10 percent is the speaker. No car sounds great without EQ. Whether or not one speaker sounds better once installed without EQ is NOT a measure of the quality of the speaker from a frequency response perspective. Non-linear stuff? Yes, Frequency response? No.


^^^ This is the universal truth in car audio. Everything else flows from here.

Would be great if Andy posted the speaker level vs ear level FR graphs in a car. There's no way one can just swap out speakers and figure which one is best. The overall response of the car has to be right before the swap and then with each swap you'd need to tweak a bit. At the end of the day if you're tuning for a neutral sound the difference between good speakers will just be in slightly different hues of that neutrality. 

Anyone who claims that their car / install / equipment / xovers & slopes requires minimal eq to sound good, hasn't heard good sound in a car.


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## RobERacer (Sep 15, 2014)

sqnut said:


> ^^^ This is the universal truth in car audio. Everything else flows from here.
> 
> Would be great if Andy posted the speaker level vs ear level FR graphs in a car. There's no way one can just swap out speakers and figure which one is best. The overall response of the car has to be right before the swap and then with each swap you'd need to tweak a bit. At the end of the day if you're tuning for a neutral sound the difference between good speakers will just be in slightly different hues of that neutrality.
> 
> Anyone who claims that their car / install / equipment / xovers & slopes requires minimal eq to sound good, hasn't hear good sound in a car.


I think this statement added some unhighlighted clarity to the situation. Firstly, I have KRX2's. I am not an average listener and I work in audio on a level where people pay me to make potentially bad audio sound good in large listening environments everyday. I'm a newbie on this site however and with that it would seem I need to qualify myself to be considered to have a valid opinion. I don't gage good sonics against what I perceive as being the same level of expectations that "car audio" does. I believe it is entirely possible to get "high end Recording studio" level performance from car audio. Of course that requires a few things like a great installation as well as great tuning. I have heard it said that "it is a car and you can't treat it like you do a large format sound system or a recording studio". While it is true that one has to consider the environment the approach is still the same. You can not possibly get great sounding audio from bad sounding equipment full stop! It starts with good gear and you continue on from there. Good gear is flat and detailed and many other things but accross the board it is never cheap. The differences between manufacturers are also small when set up similarly. If Focal sounds bright when compared to dynaudio one has to wonder if the spl on average frequency to frequency in the tweeters pass bands were set the same. If not one will sound brighter than the other. If it sounds too bright how did it measure and from where? Any external influences? If so. Is crossover gain adjustment the right solution for this situation? Ie the car resonates at 12khz so turn down the tweeters? When I think about Focal and gage them against other manufacturers it is the K2 Power line with it's flag ship product the KRX series that I consider. While I am certain the Utopia line is nothing short of fantastic they are so expensive that they are realistically made of unobtainium for most folks. KRX was a stretch for me but I could appreciate it's value and figure in the price difference. No they are not dull sounding. Good speakers are close to flat all the way across hence not usually dull. Focal even went through the trouble of publishing their anachoic measurements on the drivers so you don't even need to do a measurement with it is in the car to see what the speaker sounds like by itself. As raw car audio drivers go they are very flat! Harsh... What did you cross them over at. Like all drivers they have a usable pass band. Mine took some tweaking (and burn in time btw) but they are pretty smooth sounding now. Eq.. yep, the car does some stuff to them and the tweets are loud somewhere around 13k. Nothing unprecidented or even unexpected with any manufacturer though. As a testiment to how descent they are I have a Pioneer Deh 80prs and that is all of the processing I have for them as of yet. While they are not where I want them yet folks are blown away with them daily. That to say they do in fact sound pretty good now but I am very picky. I need to be though. They are all about detail event at low volume. Bash away with your favorite brand this or that but the reality is these guys are serious players! You may not understand their approach and therefore think they don't make anything good but that doesn't mean that your tainted vision makes those of us who see a different storey wrong. I would describe the sound I am trying to achieve in my car as clinical. I am not too sure why but some think that is bad. I just want to hear the mix the way it sounded in the control room. No lies! If it is harsh, well they made it that way. Not enough bass well, its the engineer's fault. In my opinion the best sound has no colour. If the engineer did what he is particularly skilled at right it is pink and blue exactly where it needs to be already. If you add red to green you are gonna get a ****e Brown colour everytime and that is exactly what happenes when your listening environment is set up with typical car audio industry "this is what sounds good" colour. 
One thing is for sure. I have decided I would never have a car audio guy advise on tuning! "There is nothing of any value above 16khz"!!!!


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## Hanatsu (Nov 9, 2010)

Andy Wehmeyer said:


> 90 percent of the frequency response you hear in a car is the car and 10 percent is the speaker. No car sounds great without EQ. Whether or not one speaker sounds better once installed without EQ is NOT a measure of the quality of the speaker from a frequency response perspective. Non-linear stuff? Yes, Frequency response? No.


Sticky please... 

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy S5 using Tapatalk


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## 0nbagz (Oct 7, 2014)

I use focal cause I like the sound they produce. I actually love my focals.


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## subwoofery (Nov 9, 2008)

Where did all the haters go?  

Kelvin


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## rton20s (Feb 14, 2011)

Right here. I'm hating on RobERacer by completely skipping every single post of his that is a single block of unreadable text.


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## McKinneyMike (Jul 24, 2014)

Agree! Hey Rob add a paragraph in once in awhile why don't ya buddy


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## Victor_inox (Apr 27, 2012)

I think people don`t like Focal because it`s mainstream brand, bright tweeters easily tamed down if needed. Everything else is a matter of install/tuning.


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## RobERacer (Sep 15, 2014)

McKinneyMike said:


> Agree! Hey Rob add a paragraph in once in awhile why don't ya buddy


Ya. Trying to type all of the thoughts and then edit them with my phone (two thumbs) is a rather frustrating task to say the least. Some of the editing process got lost with it autocorrecting correct words. Anyway, I appologise for that.
As far as the Anti-Rob dudes let's just stop mincing our words and get right to it then. I pushed your buttons and you don't like it. If you make technical statements like you have you better have the capacity to back them up. I don't have a super sonicially perfect interior in my car. It is basically a standard stock Subaru outback. Basically the same as any average car. The reality is that cars are not that much less of a sonically imperfections environment than any other. Just sit and talk to your buddy beside you and that becomes very clear. An audio system is just going to make all of the audio, good or bad louder. If your rig is so difficult to deal with maybe you should consider your design. As far as your blanket 90% / 10% statement goes I am in fact challenging you on that very thing. if that were true my toyota corrolla with the JVC head unit should sound like ass as it only has 3 bands of eq and 6only one is a parametric (a sad excuse for one at that) with far cheaper speakers. Funny, both cars sound good but the Soob with the better sounding gear still sounds better. I didn't just get lucky with them. I think your statement should actually read 90% retoric, 10% shear dumb luck! The difference between arrogance and confidence is knowledge. Clearly the reason you come on here and have so much to say is to try to convince the world of your brilliance. Well, the reality is that with a tiny bit of digging your brilliance has come up really short on logic. Doc!


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## sqnut (Dec 24, 2009)

RobERacer said:


> I think your statement should actually read 90% retoric, 10% shear dumb luck! The difference between arrogance and confidence is *lack of* knowledge. Clearly the reason you come on here and have so much to say is to try to convince the world of your brilliance. Well, the reality is that with a tiny bit of digging your brilliance has come up really short on logic. Doc!


There, fixed it for you. Based on 50 years of real life experiences, the folks who are really knowledgeable in any field are the ones who are least arrogant. Those who have some knowledge but think they know everything (like you) are often conceited, opinionated and arrogant.


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## RobERacer (Sep 15, 2014)

sqnut said:


> There, fixed it for you. Based on 50 years of real life experiences, the folks who are really knowledgeable in any field are the ones who are least arrogant. Those who have some knowledge but think they know everything (like you) are often conceited, opinionated and arrogant.


The funny thing is we didn't have the technical ability to do the kind of processing that we do now until recent history. I don't know when car audio got hold of it but as it was designed for Live Sound Production by Audio Engineers to correct MASSIVE eq nonlinearities caused by the use of horn loading and bass pass cabinetry in order to gain the SPL needed for those applications and we have only had it on mass for about 15 years now. Processing was all analogue and with that LIMITED before that. Live sound in my opinion is a far more sonically harsh environment than car audio and is where the real knowledge in this sort of thing is required because as I just pointed out it is not even possible to start with a flat response there. It is skewed right off of the bat. I have to tell you that Pro Audio is far more familiar and versed in the use of such systems on a far more complex and intricate level. Your 50 years statement... I have been in pro audio myself for over 30 and I am not 50 yet. Your statement verbatim literally negates the need to concern oneself with having good quality equipment and also you quite clearly indicated to the readers that processing AKA the use of equalization to correct frequency nonlinearities on mass is going to achieve a better overall sonic than starting with a flatter response system right from the start. Quite frankly that doesn't wash bro! EQ by nature of what it does causes DISTORTION and PHASE SHIFT as well as frequency nonlinearities all on it's own. Let's say you boost nothing so you have not injected any distortion. Even with a "Cut Only" eq you are still shifting the phase of the frequency group you are adjusting. More than that at the start points of where you started adjusting your eq (the cross-over point) the exact opposite of the adjustment you are making is happening. For example if I am cutting 3db with a center frequency of 100hz then depending on the bandwidth a rise at 50hz and 200hz of 1.5db happens. Physics... two opposing forces and all! No your little cheesy rta won't show that. Meyer Sound makes a system called SIM that pro audio uses and it shows this interaction plain as day. Is eq useable? Yes, but one just can't go around frantically adjusting and expect to get great results. You need to start out as close to perfect as you can so you can make the smallest adjustments possible to achieve the best results. That is an audio FACT and has been since before they started putting audio into cars!!!! Are you going to tell me that being out of phase with the rest of the spectrum and having these "Anti-adjustments" is going to award you with better sound than starting out with better sound thereby making minor adjustments to correct what is not right? What about the fact that your cheap drivers are too slow to keep up with the program material coupled with your cheap distorted, bandwidth limited, sluggish amplifier all you're getting is mass of audio smear. AKA MUD!!! CRAP 

I won't sit here and expect everyone to believe me just because I say so either. Folks the knowledge base for all of this is housed with a group called the "Audio Engineer's Society". Accessible here online by anyone. AES for short. <www.aes.org> They are the white lab coat dudes who like rocket scientists have studied both the physics of what sound at various frequencies does in air and how electronics interacts with those sounds. Like medicine it is all there to read for yourself. You can check every word I had to say with them at will. There, I even put my own understandings to the test.

Sqnut: I think your statements have clearly spoken for themselves and have unequivocally revealed all I need to know about you and your "Level of Expertise". Doc!

As far as high frequencies reflecting around your car goes. High frequencies travel in very straight lines. In fact the higher one goes in the audio spectrum the more one has to be on axis with the emitting driver in order to hear them. Soft surfaces like skin and cloth absorb them almost entirely and immediately. If the drivers are in fact pointed at the listener's head the bulk of the high frequencies are being absorbed by the listener themselves. The next largest amount are hitting the headliner. How much is getting to the windows? Answer not much if any. The problem you are having with reflections is more than likely at a far lower frequency than 15 or 16Khz therefore bandwidth limiting (cut everything above 16Khz) is going to award ZERO results in that effort. Of course this predetermines that the system was designed correctly in the first place and that the high frequency drivers are not in fact pointed at the windows of the car. In that case you can't correct for bad audio design with electronics!


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## sqnut (Dec 24, 2009)

The way I see it, you came here for one of two reasons. Either you discovered how good your car sounds and came over to tell us that and to help us all reach your level. In which case I would recommend that you listen to some good cars. I'm sure MECA has a Canada chapter, I'm sure some of the top cars will be from your area. Go hear what good sound in a car really means.

More likely though, you can tell good sound when you hear it and are frustrated cause you can't get the car to sound like you want, like it should be. So you trooped over to see if you could pick up anything that helps. 

Well the first thing you need to understand is that in a car you're listening to the room way more than you're listening to the speakers. One look at the speaker level vs ear level response in a car and you will know that 90% of what you hear is the effect of the room and about 10% is direct sound. This kind of skewed ratio does not exist anywhere else. Neither Pro nor home audio. If you can't wrap your head around this you will never have the sound you want in a car.

To make your car sound good, you need to un-learn some things and learn some new ones. BTW still can't read your posts save for a bit here or there. Like I said earlier, break up what you want to say into unique thoughts / points. Then devote 3-4 lines per thought to explain everything you want to say about it. Make a para out of it then move on to the next thought.


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## Hanatsu (Nov 9, 2010)

sqnut said:


> The way I see it, you came here for one of two reasons. Either you discovered how good you car sounds and came over to tell us that and help us reach your level of good sound. In which case I would recommend that you listen to some good cars. I'm sure MECA has a Canada chapter, I'm sure some of the top cars will be from your area. Go hear what good sound in a car means.
> 
> More likely though, you can tell good sound when you hear it and are frustrated cause you can't get the car to sound like you want, like it should be. So you trooped over to see if you could pick up anything that helps.
> 
> ...


x2 ^^ 

Here's someone who knows what he's talking about and can sum it up without writing down a frikkin china wall of text full of BS. I just had the urge to post that. Now carry on... 

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy S5 using Tapatalk


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## Rs roms (Jul 12, 2012)

I don't know why people mix home audio or PA kinda systems to car audio. Its the worst and hardest environment to work in. 
One should prove the point with logic instead of mincing the heck out and blasting the members who actually know this **** and greyed their hair. +1 for Sqnut.
Now as Hanatsu said, carry on with china wall.

Sent from my SM-G900F using Tapatalk


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## locotony (Feb 28, 2009)

Every higher end brand has its periods of greatness, Infinity was big time in the mid to late 80's with the old Polycell and Polyfoam equipment and well as the old RSDS stuff then HK took them on their ride to a low to mid end line. Next was the early to late 90's were almost everyone wanted to run the old german MQ Quart line, why? One part was they sounded good (although like Focal some of the tweets were harsh), 1 part was marketing, and last was that they were a good value for the money as they had everything from entry level to the Premium high end stuff where almost everyone could afford a set of them. Rainbow was like that for a while as well from about 2000-2005. Focal Has been on its run for a good 8-9 years now and sooner or later another bandwagon will start with some other brand that becomes the go to for everyone. What brand is that, who knows as who would have thought Focal would be where they are now 10 years ago.


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## subwoofery (Nov 9, 2008)

locotony said:


> Every higher end brand has its periods of greatness, Infinity was big time in the mid to late 80's with the old Polycell and Polyfoam equipment and well as the old RSDS stuff then HK took them on their ride to a low to mid end line. Next was the early to late 90's were almost everyone wanted to run the old german MQ Quart line, why? One part was they sounded good (although like Focal some of the tweets were harsh), 1 part was marketing, and last was that they were a good value for the money as they had everything from entry level to the Premium high end stuff where almost everyone could afford a set of them. Rainbow was like that for a while as well from about 2000-2005. Focal Has been on its run for a good 8-9 years now and sooner or later another bandwagon will start with some other brand that becomes the go to for everyone. What brand is that, who knows as _who would have thought Focal would be where they are now 10 years ago_.


... me  

Actually, make that 15 years ago 

Kelvin


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## Victor_inox (Apr 27, 2012)

Rs roms said:


> I don't know why people mix home audio or PA kinda systems to car audio. Its the worst and hardest environment to work in.
> One should prove the point with logic instead of mincing the heck out and blasting the members who actually know this **** and greyed their hair. +1 for Sqnut.
> Now as Hanatsu said, carry on with china wall.
> 
> Sent from my SM-G900F using Tapatalk


If you think that Dynaudio for car use all that different from dynaudio for home or studio use you would be mistaken, it`s very similar drivers.
People using non car specific drivers because they can be found cheaper.


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## sqnut (Dec 24, 2009)

A good driver will work well in all applications. There's no such thing as special home audio vs car audio drivers. Except the fact that most home audio drivers tend to be 8 ohms while the car ones are mostly 4 ohms. Some environments will require more work to make any good driver sound good.

Once the above is in place, that good driver can be expensive, cheap, affordable, big brand or diy. A good driver from an established brand has a certain set of advantages while the cheaper diy one has its own and different advantages.


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## Hanatsu (Nov 9, 2010)

Well... car audio drivers for "door IB" tend to have higher Qts together with highish Fs to boost the midbass a little. Lower impedances are common. Some are actually weather proofed as well. Car audio tweeters tend to be easier to install since many come with mounting details. I believe you need to pay more for car audio stuff performance-wise compared with home audio drivers. Dyn's drivers are similar for car and home audio applications indeed. Some other brands differ. 

Focal ain't making crap, otherwise they wouldn't sell and people would bash the crap of the brand on every forum around. I've competed against people with full Focal setups in the past and they scored very good. It's lots more how the systems are installed and tuned than the overall character of the drivers (even though this of course matters as well). I've said it before, it's very hard to evaluate individual drivers that are part of a system with processing applied. Incorrectly tuned systems will sound bad no matter what drivers are used.

I've heard tons of cars which owners treated EQ as evil. The sound ranged from bad to complete crap even though they used high end equipment. I'd rather run mediocre drivers with a proper setup/EQed system than uber super drivers with crappy tuning that ruins everything. A car is THE worst environment to put a speaker in. Failing to understand why EQ is required in every car is beyond me.

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy S5 using Tapatalk


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## RobERacer (Sep 15, 2014)

Hanatsu said:


> x2 ^^
> 
> Here's someone who knows what he's talking about and can sum it up without writing down a frikkin china wall of text full of BS. I just had the urge to post that. Now carry on...
> 
> Sent from my Samsung Galaxy S5 using Tapatalk


I already showed why he doesn't know what he is talking about and here you go praising the ground he walks on. More than that you have gone completely out of your way to try to limit me from speaking so as to take my ability to prove what I am saying away. What's the deal here one might ask? Well, the fact that the two of you have been badgering me and trying everything you can to discredit me at every turn ever since I made my first post makes it all very clear.


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## RobERacer (Sep 15, 2014)

Rs roms said:


> I don't know why people mix home audio or PA kinda systems to car audio. Its the worst and hardest environment to work in.
> One should prove the point with logic instead of mincing the heck out and blasting the members who actually know this **** and greyed their hair. +1 for Sqnut.
> Now as Hanatsu said, carry on with china wall.
> 
> Sent from my SM-G900F using Tapatalk


So you say. Yet when was the last time you ever tuned a PA system in an arena or concert hall? You have no freaking idea bro! Home audio....? Really? I did use logic. Apparently, you can't read. If you take an acoustical source and blast it through a horn the sound you get out is not what went in. Why??? Acoustical environment! You can hear it. If you sit in your car and speak thereby exciting the acoustical environment you have in fact become the acoustical source and from that can hear some of how that space is going to influence the sonics of any source you inject into it. I never said you didn't have to account for how/where those sources were mounted however with good installation (ie sealing the doors you put the speakers in as well as eliminating loud resonances created by that space, etc) one can MINIMIZE the effects caused by positioning of the elements and thereby derive a sonic that is largely reflective of the sonic that one heard when they sat in their car listening to the human voice. Does that tell you about the entire spectrum? NO! If you want to ping the car (a term we use in pro audio for measuring numerous tones throughout the entire audio spectrum injected into a given space in order to gain a clearer picture of how sound will react in a given environment) go ahead. I am certain that data can give you an even clearer understanding of how to deal with that specific environment. More than that you would realise just how full of **** you are!

Is that a worse environment to get good audio in than a concert in the middle of downtown Manhattan in January. My cars aren't and neither are anything special (again I said that before) so why would most other cars be different than mine? The short answer is they aren't. You just want everyone to think you are superman. I've gotten my own fingers dirty tuning both my cars and I tune large format sound systems and studio control rooms daily. Both my cars sound good! I am a professional, well recognised and BTW well respected pro audio tuning guy. That makes me far more qualified than you folks who have never even touched a pro audio system to comment on this very subject. I have personal hands on experience with both! More than that one would have had to handle both environments from the ground up to have any clue and I am quite certain as you were clearly not aware of what influence horn loading has on speakers that you have had little to no involvement in large format pro audio. Much less the high end of that. The interior of most cars doesn't even come close to matching the level of challenge that comes with large format pro audio in average venues. Match or surpass extremes??? HA HA HA HA. Overcoming those challenges are different granted. The causes are generally different but the problems are basically the same in the end be they smaller scale in a car. The funniest part is said problems actually manifest themselves in pretty well the same ways in both.


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## RobERacer (Sep 15, 2014)

sqnut said:


> The way I see it, you came here for one of two reasons. Either you discovered how good your car sounds and came over to tell us that and to help us all reach your level. In which case I would recommend that you listen to some good cars. I'm sure MECA has a Canada chapter, I'm sure some of the top cars will be from your area. Go hear what good sound in a car really means.
> 
> More likely though, you can tell good sound when you hear it and are frustrated cause you can't get the car to sound like you want, like it should be. So you trooped over to see if you could pick up anything that helps.
> 
> ...


Let's start with "The way I see it, you came here for one of two reasons. Either you discovered how good your car sounds and came over to tell us that and to help us all reach your level." Wrong! I came here looking to find the real car audio guys who actually were into making their cars sound great in order to gain some "tricks of the trade"! I started looking for a headunit that outputted in digital and not just analogue as I don't think that through adding another set of conversions so I can insert a digital processor into my system I am going to gain any better sonic anything. At least if it was going to be better the difference would be minimal and the negatives might weigh very heavily on me. What did I find in my search? Wow! I honestly can't believe it. I am still holding out hope that we are just hearing from the loudmouth few and that the real guys are just sitting there silent but I have to say I am starting to lose faith. 

I see a post below that alludes to the fact that good audio speakers are good audio speakers regardless of what environment they are used in. That was my case in point but it goes further than that. Good gear is good gear across the board. Will some things work better in some environments than other? Perhaps, depending on how they are used but this is not true as a rule. Here is the thing. Another case in point. Dome tweeters. Dome tweeters radiate energy in a very wide pattern. Here folks are complaining about how they have high frequencies bouncing around their cars but they are insistent on installing dome tweeters. It is very clear what is going to happen. The tweeter is going to radiate significant energy in a very wide pattern. 130 degrees perhaps? Focal uses inverted dome tweeters which by nature of the fact that they are really a parabolic dish makes them much more directional thereby allowing the installer to focus them at the listener and not the windows of the car. What is going to give you better sonic? Minimizing the reflections will go a lot further than splattering audio everywhere and then band limiting it in order to mask it's negative effects later. Hmm, isn't directional control what all of this cabinet and speaker design crap in pro audio has been all about for the last oh 30 years? Imagine, just like in car racing we take what we learn in high performance and apply that to every day user applications. In everything it always works better when you didn't make a mess in the first place than making a mess and having to clean it up later but you guys know way more than any audio engineer ever could. Don't you? The funny thing is the guys that are designing for Dynaudio and Focal are Audio Engineers and their designs clearly indicate that they have no disagreements with what I have been touting all along. Why the hell do you think they work so well? Unlearn? HA HA HA HA! You guys are chumps! 

Oh before I let you run off at the mouth with more supposition in innuendo about why I want a digital processor I thought I would address that also. I have done what I feel reasonable to address the various sonic imperfections within my car and I feel that if I had said piece there are a few things I could do that I currently can't and a few things that I could do better because the processor that I have is limited in it's functionality. At least as compared to what I am used to working with. Also, I will be looking to have my car as (measurably) flat as possible without massive phase smear right from 20hz all the way up to beyond 20khz. Moreover there is no reason it can not achieve this and as it is neither "harsh" nor "brittle" sounding I will not have any need to band limit it within the human hearing spectrum. This is a system that was designed from the ground up with car audio guys to perform "true high spec audio" and not fake it in any way!


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## RobERacer (Sep 15, 2014)

sqnut said:


> A good driver will work well in all applications. There's no such thing as special home audio vs car audio drivers. Except the fact that most home audio drivers tend to be 8 ohms while the car ones are mostly 4 ohms. Some environments will require more work to make any good driver sound good.
> 
> Once the above is in place, that good driver can be expensive, cheap, affordable, big brand or diy. A good driver from an established brand has a certain set of advantages while the cheaper diy one has its own and different advantages.


Now the hilarious part. Here you are saying the same thing I was. "Good gear is good gear"??? What you aren't saying is that price is not the determining factor in better drivers. Performance is. Price is just a common reflection of better performance. Who cares what the brand name says. For me it is just that I can look at focal and know that they aren't trying to snow me with crap. They have a reputation to uphold. They make some of the most sought after studio monitors in the world today. BTW Studio monitors are "critcal listening" speakers and as they are used by guys who know what great audio is and how to capture it that is a very valid reference. If they are going to make something and say it is good. They will stand behind that. You can see that. They publish the performance data that shows it too. Others...not so much.


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## Rs roms (Jul 12, 2012)

Victor_inox said:


> If you think that Dynaudio for car use all that different from dynaudio for home or studio use you would be mistaken, it`s very similar drivers.
> People using non car specific drivers because they can be found cheaper.


Mate i was referring to the environments, in the post you quoted. Even if they are same or not, like Andy said earlier, 10% is the speaker and rest is the car.


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## Rs roms (Jul 12, 2012)

RobERacer said:


> So you say. Yet when was the last time you ever tuned a PA system in an arena or concert hall? You have no freaking idea bro! Home audio....? Really? I did use logic. Apparently, you can't read. If you take an acoustical source and blast it through a horn the sound you get out is not what went in. Why??? Acoustical environment! You can hear it. If you sit in your car and speak thereby exciting the acoustical environment you have in fact become the acoustical source and from that can hear some of how that space is going to influence the sonics of any source you inject into it. I never said you didn't have to account for how/where those sources were mounted however with good installation (ie sealing the doors you put the speakers in as well as eliminating loud resonances created by that space, etc) one can MINIMIZE the effects caused by positioning of the elements and thereby derive a sonic that is largely reflective of the sonic that one heard when they sat in their car listening to the human voice. Does that tell you about the entire spectrum? NO! If you want to ping the car (a term we use in pro audio for measuring numerous tones throughout the entire audio spectrum injected into a given space in order to gain a clearer picture of how sound will react in a given environment) go ahead. I am certain that data can give you an even clearer understanding of how to deal with that specific environment. More than that you would realise just how full of **** you are!
> 
> Is that a worse environment to get good audio in than a concert in the middle of downtown Manhattan in January. My cars aren't and neither are anything special (again I said that before) so why would most other cars be different than mine? The short answer is they aren't. You just want everyone to think you are superman. I've gotten my own fingers dirty tuning both my cars and I tune large format sound systems and studio control rooms daily. Both my cars sound good! I am a professional, well recognised and BTW well respected pro audio tuning guy. That makes me far more qualified than you folks who have never even touched a pro audio system to comment on this very subject. I have personal hands on experience with both! More than that one would have had to handle both environments from the ground up to have any clue and I am quite certain as you were clearly not aware of what influence horn loading has on speakers that you have had little to no involvement in large format pro audio. Much less the high end of that. The interior of most cars doesn't even come close to matching the level of challenge that comes with large format pro audio in average venues. Match or surpass extremes??? HA HA HA HA. Overcoming those challenges are different granted. The causes are generally different but the problems are basically the same in the end be they smaller scale in a car. The funniest part is said problems actually manifest themselves in pretty well the same ways in both.


This post shouldn't be on technical forums, Mr. Superman go make your fan page on fb.
Compete in sq contest in your area, win a trophy and get back here to tell us how cool is your piece of crap.


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## Hanatsu (Nov 9, 2010)

RobERacer said:


> I already showed why I don't know what I'm talking about


Fixed.

If you feel that we are harassing you or whatever, perhaps you should stop posting incorrect / illogical statements and only partly valid points proving nothing, all over the forum while constantly highlighting that you are a professional and that noone else but you know what good sound is about. I have never in my time on any forum come across someone as arrogant as you seriously. 

Here's some excerpts: 



RobERacer said:


> Ie the car resonates at 12khz so turn down the tweeters?


Resonates at 12kHz? What kind of example is that? lol



RobERacer said:


> Good speakers are close to flat all the way across


Is that what a good speaker is? I assure you, there are more important factors than a flat on-axis FR when determining speaker performance. Even more in a car since FR will not be remotely close to flat once you put it there. Non-linear distortion and off-axis behavior (linearity) beyond the beaming point are more important than some deviations in the on-axis FR.



RobERacer said:


> Focal even went through the trouble of publishing their anachoic measurements on the drivers so you don't even need to do a measurement with it is in the car to see what the speaker sounds like by itself


OK- How is that helping? Fail to understand what "anechoic" is? You don't even have to do a measurement in the car to see how the speaker sounds like? WHAT??? What kind of logic is that? 

and FYI, almost every speaker manufacturer post either anechoic or psuedo-anechoic measurements of their drivers, not only Focal.



RobERacer said:


> As raw car audio drivers go they are very flat!


Wow! So by your logic. ALL raw drivers are good drivers? If you had any clue what you are talking about you wouldn't make such a generalization.



RobERacer said:


> They are all about detail event at low volume


Again, WHAT? Explain what detail is? How are they more "detailed" at low volumes? Seriously?



RobERacer said:


> -I would describe the sound I am trying to achieve in my car as clinical. I am not too sure why but some think that is bad. I just want to hear the mix the way it sounded in the control room. No lies! If it is harsh, well they made it that way. Not enough bass well, its the engineer's fault
> 
> -In my opinion the best sound has no colour.
> 
> ...


If you want a sound that has "no color" you should perhaps focus more on the tuning than the gear you using. If you like your sound "clinical", fine. The majority of audio enthusiasts would most likely not agree though.

You keep bashing the entire car audio industry. We supposedly don't know what good sound is. You can tune your system to whatever you like but don't come here and say that the entire industry is wrong and you're not. 

and finally "There's nothing of value above 16kHz". I love how you keep throwing that around, I know that you refer to what I said in another thread and it was you who made a big deal of it, as it was more important than anything else. 

The sad part is that these quotations are from one post only. I'm so done with you. You are just confusing people with your illogical BS. Go ahead and send more emails, PMs and crap how much I discredit you.... Oh wait, you can't - you still the first and only member on my ignore list.


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## 0nbagz (Oct 7, 2014)

You all seem arrogant too me.
But I'm a little confused as to this guys examples :/


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## Rs roms (Jul 12, 2012)

0nbagz said:


> You all seem arrogant too me.
> But I'm a little confused as to this guys examples :/


Its not arrogance, its the attitude towards the learning and towards the seniors who deliver to everybody here. Knowledge should be respected without butchering the opinions of ppl who spent their entire lives in audio world.


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## RobERacer (Sep 15, 2014)

Hanatsu said:


> Fixed.
> 
> If you feel that we are harassing you or whatever, perhaps you should stop posting incorrect / illogical statements and only partly valid points proving nothing, all over the forum while constantly highlighting that you are a professional and that noone else but you know what good sound is about. I have never in my time on any forum come across someone as arrogant as you seriously.
> 
> ...


Incorrect and illogical. What part? All of it? I love how you do that. A little diversion tactic completely aimed at confusing and disjointing the conversation so as to take the focus off of you not really knowing what you need to in order to have anthing of value to add. No-one except me and you know what you are referring to. I am not going to make any reference to any of it because I am going to let you. By the way if you are not smart enough to realise it I will blatantly tell you It is a trap. I will corner you with that and embarrass you further. What I said is absolutely correct and completely logical although like you probably not well understood.

Don't bother discussing how you think I should go about handling my system I am doing a better job than you could possibly. That is completely evident from your previous posts and how you go about using an RTA. 

I prefer that you ignore me. You actions clearly indicate that you have no concern for either gaining more understanding or studying this subject furhter in order to have anything of value to share. Really this for you is just all about you trying to convince us that you have a big ****. Considering your argumentative twisted verbal tactics I think it is actually really small to be honest. If you were to have some tidbit of knowledge that I found valuable that would be great but upon testing that supossed "knowledge of yours" it has come up full of gaping holes with important facts that you clearly don't understand. You aren't anyone who is of any value whatsoever to me.


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## RobERacer (Sep 15, 2014)

0nbagz said:


> You all seem arrogant too me.
> But I'm a little confused as to this guys examples :/


I am sorry if what I said wasn't as clear as it should have been. If you were to be specific I would be glad to explain.


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## sqnut (Dec 24, 2009)

RobERacer said:


> If you were to be specific I would be glad to explain.


I think that's a splendid idea. You have a pro audio back ground, you know good sound when you hear it. You know tuning and can tune the sound for a much tougher environment (downtown Manhattan on a January day), the car environment is much less of a challenge. 

Let's say someone wanted to setup their car for that clinical sound (I assume you mean neutral sound i.e. one where you're hearing the music the way it was recorded). Given that they have the same equipment you have p-80, focal speakers and amps. What all would you do, how would you do it and what sort of response at your ear will give you that neutral sound? Set it up for us.

You complained that we don't let you say what you want to, so here's your chance. The floor is yours.


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## rton20s (Feb 14, 2011)

Must be rough...


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## seafish (Aug 1, 2012)

sqnut said:


> Let's say someone wanted to setup their car for that clinical sound (I assume you mean neutral sound i.e. one where you're hearing the music the way it was recorded). Given that they have the same equipment you have p-80, focal speakers and amps. What all would you do, how would you do it and what sort of response at your ear will give you that neutral sound? Set it up for us.
> 
> You complained that we don't let you say what you want to, so here's your chance. The floor is yours.


splendid idea!!!


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## RobERacer (Sep 15, 2014)

"So you say. Yet when was the last time you ever tuned a PA system in an arena or concert hall? You have no freaking idea bro! Home audio....? Really? I did use logic. Apparently, you can't read. If you take an acoustical source and blast it through a horn the sound you get out is not what went in. Why??? Acoustical environment! You can hear it. If you sit in your car and speak thereby exciting the acoustical environment you have in fact become the acoustical source and from that can hear some of how that space is going to influence the sonics of any source you inject into it. I never said you didn't have to account for how/where those sources were mounted however with good installation (ie sealing the doors you put the speakers in as well as eliminating loud resonances created by that space, etc) one can MINIMIZE the effects caused by positioning of the elements and thereby derive a sonic that is largely reflective of the sonic that one heard when they sat in their car listening to the human voice. Does that tell you about the entire spectrum? NO! If you want to ping the car (a term we use in pro audio for measuring numerous tones throughout the entire audio spectrum injected into a given space in order to gain a clearer picture of how sound will react in a given environment) go ahead. I am certain that data can give you an even clearer understanding of how to deal with that specific environment. More than that you would realise just how full of **** you are!"

I wanted to apologize to some of the readers for coming off as arrogant with reference to the above post. I actually didn't intend it to sound like no-one else had any right to speak regarding audio but that could be how some would interpret that. What I meant to say was simply that for a person to be able to comment on whether making a PA system sound great is more complicated than making a car audio system sound great that person would have to have experience in both and understand both well enough to be able to make them both sound good. Few folks have ever ventured there. The truth about audio guys are they are like barbers. Most don't go home at night and turn on any audio. They just don't want to hear it anymore. What does the barber's son's hair typically look like? With that I still maintain that because pro audio has such a complex grouping of problems with both making the equipment it'self sound good as well as making the equipment interact with the space to sound good it is far more complex and difficult. Sure two speakers on sticks can sound great easily in fact almost right out of the box most of the time but a 48 element line array would sound like crap if you just ran signal through it without any processing after you just hung it and I am presuming that you ran the array calculation program and determined a wise set of angles to place between the elements. If not you're really in trouble. Eq will definitely not be saving your ass then.

As far as that applying to car audio speakers exciting the air in a vehicle. That space and the components in that space create resonances, reflections, cancellations and interactions with other speakers just the same as in a much larger spaces. More than that because Pa speakers utilize horn loading, driver coupling, compression loading and bandpass loading in order gain more efficiency they have the tendency to also have typical "small space" problems commonly associated with cars within the cabinets themselves. With that those types of problems are not foreign to pro audio either. The very speakers themselves are imperfect and are infective in the same ways. With car audio you do have the ability to do permanent alterations like installing absorptive substances to aid in overcoming these problems. You don't typically have those kinds of options with pro audio though so electronic processing is often your only option. The effects of that become very clear really fast. The way I see it with both venues carefully directing audio so as to be heard by the listener and not reflecting (actually refracting) off of the various surfaces inside the space is key. It is true though. I wholeheartedly think that dome tweeters throwing sound around the cabin is a very bad idea and I am a big fan of trading some of the "smoother frequency response" of a silk dome (which also typically have a tendency to round out transient waveforms as the silk flexes easily thereby reducing intelligibility or detail). Focal's inverted domes are directional for one but secondly as the cone material (aramid fibre sandwich) is stiffer the waveforms are less rounded and therefore the resulting transients are far closer to the way they were before the sound was sent through the speakers. The result is that the output is closer to what is being put in and as the interaction with the interior of the vehicle is more limited. The amount of processing required to correct for those interactions with the environment as well as the deficiencies in the speakers themselves (which are also less) the overall experienced sonic is closer to what the original source material is and with that I maintain that the resulting end product is better than many others. Does it require eq? Yes, but less eq is more when it comes to any audio and I have found less overall corrective eq is required because we are minimizing adding sonic problems to what already exist in the car.


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## Jepalan (Jun 27, 2013)

Which company makes the best car speakers?










:lurk:


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## Victor_inox (Apr 27, 2012)

car audio iseasy if you know how to tune concert hall or arena.


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## RobERacer (Sep 15, 2014)

seafish said:


> splendid idea!!!


 Sure. It is back to design. Obviously you need to consider the reflective surfaces (windows) and the resonant/nullifying chambers (ie doors). That is where pro installers come in which in my mind is not the same as folks doing the final tuning process. My installers did a great job at 1 placing the speakers where they would be most effective without creating problems in terms of use of the vehicle and controlling refraction. The tweeters in my car are mounted on the dash in the pods that come from Focal directing the tweeters at the listeners heads. Mid range being far more able to travel in not so straight lines is emitted from the mid driver placed in the factory location. Yes, they had to modify that so as to 1 fit the driver while still being able to operate the windows and sealed the door up. They also heavily recommended dynamat so we did that as well. The result was there are a few resonances in the doors which need to be taken care of with Eq and the drivers are a little off in places themselves but overall the mid is pretty flat to around 100hz where it starts to naturally fall off. The High frequencies sound like the driver's eq curve says it should. 
The next step is crossover. I used a 24/octave crossover and I think the tweeters are crossing at either 3.15Khz or 4Khz (I was playing with that recently a bit). The mid is at 2Khz if I remember right and is also 24db /octave. 
The next step is time alignment. The Pioneer DEH 80PRS does that and a starting EQ as an auto alignment function. I put the mic on a stand directly in the middle and in front of the front seat backs right at ear level and ran the program. 

Next I defeated the "position" setting as I want it to sound good for everyone in the car as I don't often travel alone. More than that the funky arrival times were causing some strange driver interactions and that function really messed with the overall sonic. Not to mention defeating it brought the outputs of the crossover back to neutral gain. 

I found it hot somewhere around 800hz. I am not certain as to why the autoeq didn't take care of that but I am yanking 2db there and 1 at either point beside it to try to balance that out. Also I am adding a bit at 125Hz and 80hz. You will notice I am taking nothing away in the top. By spec the amp is down 1db at 18.5KHz and the tweeters fall off rapidly up there as well which is typical of most. In a perfect world I would probably add a db or two at 19Khz but I can't do it without moving a huge swat of the spectrum as the next point is centered 12.5Khz which it most certainly needs no more of.

What does it sound like? Well to explain it a rough version of the clinical, hyper critical listening environment I would prefer it to be. With that it is better than most mid level studio monitors in terms of accuracy and intelligibility though. I could mix a record way easier in my car than I could on a set of Mackie HD824's in most of the control rooms I have been in. That said. The system hasn't yet come to where it is rivaling the performance of my Tannoy System 8 NFM II's with the Hafler amp driving them. A bit of an unfair yardstick I realize but the idea is to see just how close we can get. That Tannoy rig is pretty close to the single most accurate, sonically anally retentive I have ever heard. Hence why I broke the bank (at the time) to get it. In my biz your last gig. It gave me an advantage over my competitors. It's simple better reference point equals better sounding work. Even the legendary Genelec 1031's or Dynaudio BM6A's weren't there. If we fall a little short of that goal I won't feel bad but it is an interesting test. LOL. 

Overall the reality is the car is just as effectual of the resulting sonic as just about any other space I have had to work in and like I said probably less than many as I can't usually tune a line array with only a 31 band graphic eq much less 16 bands. That is why I so wholeheartedly disagree that it is 90% the car that determines the sonic. Back to it when we make a record we start with good sounding gear to capture it and use good gear throughout. This isn't because we can't fix problems but to preserve what is good already so that we can focus on fixing the few problems that arise much more easily and effectively. It just doesn't even make sense that that approach won't work in car audio and I have two examples of that being exactly the case. Can you do the work completely without eq? Probably not. To be honest I have not tried employing techniques to nullify the resonances in my car even though I know my installer did some things but I suspect that most of that can be fixed mechanically as opposed to electronically which would award you with an even better sonic because Eq shifts phase. If you don't shift the phase of any given frequency set while flattening out response it is going to sound better than with eq.


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## RobERacer (Sep 15, 2014)

Victor_inox said:


> car audio iseasy if you know how to tune concert hall or arena.


Again, what I do for a living is not why I am here. I just simply wanted to gain a few insites into your world as I didn't understand why car audio tends to do things the way you do. Instead I got beat up right off of the bat for noting some clearly way off base advice that I saw coming from some of the members that was directed at some new folks looking for assistance. I just couldn't stand to sit back and watch. In my book it is ok to advise. It is ok to be wrong but we (me included) need to be open to finding out we are wrong while being decerning enough to know when/where we are not and more than that willing to admit we are wrong and correct ourselves when we are. 

More than all of this I really want to find the little known manufacturer that makes a high end head unit that outputs in digital. LOL (I am getting the sense they doesn't exist)


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## Jepalan (Jun 27, 2013)

OK. Got it. 

1) Hire a pro installer to do the dirty work.
2) Run auto-EQ.
3) Apply golden ears.

How is this helping the "new folks"?


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## rton20s (Feb 14, 2011)

RobERacer, I see no mention of how the car stages. Owning a DEH-80PRS myself and hearing the description of how you approached your install and tuning, it doesn't seem to me that the car would stage all that well. It might have decent tonal accuracy from the driver's seat, but I wonder if you have the same tonal accuracy from the passenger seat? Or the back seat? Since you essentially stated you didn't want your car to be a one seat car.


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## RobERacer (Sep 15, 2014)

rton20s said:


> RobERacer, I see no mention of how the car stages. Owning a DEH-80PRS myself and hearing the description of how you approached your install and tuning, it doesn't seem to me that the car would stage all that well. It might have decent tonal accuracy from the driver's seat, but I wonder if you have the same tonal accuracy from the passenger seat? Or the back seat? Since you essentially stated you didn't want your car to be a one seat car.


You kinda hit the nail right on the head. As it is more of a critical listening thing than a theatre kind of thing staging hasn't been of great concern. With the Tannoy rig that is certainly a lot more prevalent and certainly a consideration with that but with this I had to make a decision. If I wanted sonic accuracy I was probably going to have to sacrifice somewhere and that is more what I am inclined to let go of. We considered putting the tweeters on the sail panels but these are a little larger than most and it didn't look like the sail panels would accommodate them so easily. In terms of directional control putting them on the dash by the A pillars made a lot of sense. Especially when you consider that the energy is totally being directed away from the glass towards the occupants. Back seat... If it ever becomes a concern I may put coax's back there. I was looking at some KRC's for that. Depth is a concern though. What would you consider for that and how do I go about getting ears on them. I need a processor first though. For that I want a head unit with digital outs too. It makes so much difference to keep the signal digital. Until you actually A/B it you don't realize just how much difference that actually makes. Smoother but more detailed with less noise. 

I did a bit of an experiment. I ran the alignment program with the mic in a few different locations and settled on the center as the best for overall sonics. I defeated the "Position" setup and set the preset Eq to flat. Then I defeated the auto eq and tried to make the single graph to sound like the auto eq. Try it and tell me what you think. 

I noticed you have Arc Kar series amps. I have been considering a KS 300.4 for the fronts. It looks like it should fit under my seat and sound fairly open not to mention it is basically class A/B. Do they have a fairly high slew rate? In mid/high application damping factor is almost a non issue. They are pretty cheap eh?


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## RobERacer (Sep 15, 2014)

Oh, yes. It actually is pretty sonically uniform accross the front. Like I say the back is lost at this point though


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## Niebur3 (Jul 11, 2008)

This is amusing.


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## Golden Ear (Oct 14, 2012)

Jepalan said:


> OK. Got it.
> 
> 1) Hire a pro installer to do the dirty work.
> 2) Run auto-EQ.
> ...


You rang?


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## sqnut (Dec 24, 2009)

RobERacer said:


> Oh, yes. It actually is pretty sonically uniform accross the front. Like I say the back is lost at this point though


So you're saying that changing the arrival times at your ears for L/R speakers has no effect on tonality, in that sonically it stays uniform. 

Sit with your left ear two feet from the left speaker and your right ear six feet from the other. Can the tonality ever be normal?

Now move so that your right ear is two feet from the right speaker and the left ear six feet from the left speaker. Does it still sound the same?


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## RobERacer (Sep 15, 2014)

sqnut said:


> So you're saying that changing the arrival times at your ears for L/R speakers has no effect on tonality, in that sonically it stays uniform.
> 
> Sit with your left ear two feet from the left speaker and your right ear six feet from the other. Can the tonality ever be normal?
> 
> Now move so that your right ear is two feet from the right speaker and the left ear six feet from the left speaker. Does it still sound the same?


Where did I say that? I think what I said was eliminating the customization of the arrival times to suite only the driver made the spectrum more uniform across the front of the car. 

Oh and if you are also confused about the eq thing. I decided I needed to have more than the custom eq to deal with the sonics so I utilized the auto eq as well. Someone decided to allude to the idea that I didn't know how to tune it without the auto eq. Children!!! For one tuning with a 16 band graph is a lot like fileting a fish with a machetti. I would not call it precision and I am not so arrogant as to try to convince anyone that I did anything outside of the realm of what anyone else could do. The gear has limited functions. That is how you deal with that. No magic. Sorry.

You do actually see how your intent to be malicious is tainting your ability to comprehend don't you?


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## Niebur3 (Jul 11, 2008)

RobERacer said:


> Oh and if you are also confused about the eq thing. I decided I needed to have more than the custom eq to deal with the sonics so I utilized the auto eq as well. Someone decided to allude to the idea that I didn't know how to tune it without the auto eq.


You do realize it is the same eq, correct??? Meaning the auto eq isn't using a separate set of bands or even more bands. It is using the exact same bands you are when manually setting the eq. 

Based on your process of tuning, IMHO, you don't seem well versed with tuning, at least with that particular head unit (don't want to imply that you can tune a concert hall or anything, which by you account is MUCH harder, even though most concert halls have acoustic treatments throughout). 

Maybe you should type a little less and read a little more :

http://www.diymobileaudio.com/forum...first-timers-guide-measuring-your-system.html


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## sqnut (Dec 24, 2009)

RobERacer said:


> You do actually see how your intent to be malicious is tainting your ability to comprehend don't you?


Take a deep breath and think about what you said above........does it apply it to you? 

I'm calmly addressing facts, without making it personal. You on the other hand.....anyway. So basically you're saying auto tune on the p80 for any seating affiliation is better than what you can achieve manually, even with the limited control? End of discussion. Carry on.


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## RobERacer (Sep 15, 2014)

No. That wasn't what I was saying. Both are digging canyons in order to pull out a sliver. I settled on what they did as fine for now.


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## RobERacer (Sep 15, 2014)

If you were me how would you feel? Other than it is now an honor issue this site is a complete waist of my time now. As far as did I find the auto eq and the graphic to function identical in the 30 second test that I did? Clearly, No. I wouldn't consider what I did a critical listening test though. I was sitting at a stop light. The only references as to how Pioneer achieves their eq that I have seen to date including a few scrolls through the manual are all heresay! I guess I should pull it and put it on a scope to see but I am more inclined to not concern myself with it because that doesn't actually change how it functions. All so the d##ks can go and jerk off together. I have better things to do.


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## Victor_inox (Apr 27, 2012)

Rob you`ll have to separate the wheat from the chaff yourself and like every forum there is more chaff than seeds.
also losing attitude a bit would help. 
You might be a brilliant person but you`d have to prove it every time you jump on new to you forum.


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## rton20s (Feb 14, 2011)

Victor_inox said:


> You might be a _brilliant_ person but you`d have to prove it every time you jump on new to you forum.


Honestly, I think you're giving him too much credit. I now know who this guy is and have seen his qualifications. I'm not going to "put him on blast," but what I have seen in combination with his stop light tuning of his DEH-80PRS tell me all I need to know. 

I probably have more to learn than the majority of people on this site, so don't think for a second what I wrote above comes with any sort of condescension. I am intelligent enough to know though, who I'm likely and unlikely to learn something from. 

Oh, and Focal? I'm not a fan of everything they do, but have been thoroughly impressed by some of what they do. Of course, much of that comes down to install and tuning.


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## RobERacer (Sep 15, 2014)

So Sherlock you finally decided to show your real face. You don't say though. Why don't you tell us what is sonically resolving in the front seats of my car?


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## RobERacer (Sep 15, 2014)

Pre eq of course.


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## Niebur3 (Jul 11, 2008)

^^Dude, are you seriously going to keep this up?


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## 0nbagz (Oct 7, 2014)

Just stop rob!


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## 0nbagz (Oct 7, 2014)

All I've seen is attitude and negative non helpful posts from you in this thread. And as a new member to the forum it's a big turn off!


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## RobERacer (Sep 15, 2014)

Alright. It just took till now to steer this to where I could make my last point. He wasn't going to answer that anyway. I will make it really short. Never mind proving anything. You're just going to have to take my word on it. 

I did take the auto eq out and adjust mind to compensate. Didn't change much! Why. Neither were doing a lot. Of course it is compensate for a few resonances in the car doors (2 actually) but also even though the crossover is dealing with some of the driver imperfections the speakers like all have a few things that need to be adjusted. 

1. Did that make a world of difference whether I did it or the machine did. Not really. In fact I purposed to ignore some of the things that it dealt with and as I listen further I am on the fence about changing my mind. 

2. Many of the adjustments that need to be made for the drivers could be done without even hearing the car. We have graphs made by the manufacturers that tell us those things. 

3. 2 points were needing adjustment to compensate for the car's influence. Actually they are almost single frequencies but we don't have the capacity to deal with them on that level. I remember folks arguing tooth and nail that the car's influence was 90%. I wouldn't say it is opposite to that but it is most certainly not 50%, not even 30% at least in any car I have ever heard. The sonic of the speakers is far more of an influence than the tone of the car!

In conclusion. What speakers you put in your car and how matters greatly. Focal, well that is your choice. You know why they are made the way they are now though and some of how they might influence your car. The point is the better the speakers (actually all of the parts) the better the outcome.

Oh one last thing. A bigger more common reason things might sound bright in a car more than likely has to do with the fact that all of the eq controls are broad spectrum and most of the adjustments are made in the mid range. Eq is like a balancing act. If you add to much bass and low mid it sounds dull. If you take away a bunch of energy in the middle with broadband adjustments and balance the bass section to that yes, it will sound bright. Is that the speaker's fault? Mine are pretty flat in the middle for a speaker. Shall we put speakers that need more attention so we can carve the eq even more? Is that going to make it sound better?


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## Niebur3 (Jul 11, 2008)

RobERacer said:


> Oh one last thing. A bigger more common reason things might sound bright in a car more than likely has to do with the fact that all of the eq controls are broad spectrum and most of the adjustments are made in the mid range.


Well Rob, I think you solved a lot of issues with your tremendous experience (care to elaborate for any that missed what that is?) and deep level of tuning knowledge. Tweeters sound bright if you turn the mid range frequencies down....that is some good **** there Rob. 

I always thought it has something to do with the dome material of the speaker, glass in the car reflecting, plastic in the car reflecting; in fact, everything in the car reflecting. I guess it could be a level matching issue or possibly an eq problem, sure. I would hope anyone tuning would have the basic knowledge to do this part correctly. 

Anyway, thanks for fixing all tuning issues in a vehicle in one single post. Makes this one about worthless now (http://www.diymobileaudio.com/forum...first-timers-guide-measuring-your-system.html).


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## RobERacer (Sep 15, 2014)

Niebur3 said:


> Well Rob, I think you solved a lot of issues with your tremendous experience (care to elaborate for any that missed what that is?) and deep level of tuning knowledge. Tweeters sound bright if you turn the mid range frequencies down....that is some good **** there Rob.
> 
> I always thought it has something to do with the dome material of the speaker, glass in the car reflecting, plastic in the car reflecting; in fact, everything in the car reflecting. I guess it could be a level matching issue or possibly an eq problem, sure. I would hope anyone tuning would have the basic knowledge to do this part correctly.
> 
> Anyway, thanks for fixing all tuning issues in a vehicle in one single post. Makes this one about worthless now (http://www.diymobileaudio.com/forum...first-timers-guide-measuring-your-system.html).


Tweeters sound bright if you turn the mid range frequencies down.... It is the obvious but it comes back to the fact that EQ IS NOT GOING TO SAVE THE DAY ALL BY ITSELF. I did actually say that there is no magic. With that I would have to say I am no magician. All things work together to create the end product. Is it good or bad? That is all a measure of what we do. Again my philosophy is that if want to get great audio put great drivers into a well cared for and tuned cabinet and then tweak the tuning. In the end we see that the electronic portion (a friend of mine calls it Psycho Acoustic Infection... He's right. It is.) is very little.

I was going to start a new post regarding using absorption, refraction and a few other techniques to deal with flattening out how speakers sound when installed. I realised after all of this that besides being off topic which we seem to be anyway the conversation was ignoring the fact that an important part of installation is treatment. Doors are basically speaker cabinets when you stick a speaker in it. If it resonates like mine (or prettimuch all of them do at a few points) then the best way of caring for that influence is to nip it in the bud as we say. I don't have time to start that today. I need to go and make some more money to buy more crap to dump into my car. LOL. This would be a great conversation for me as it is an area I and most electronic operation guys know limited amounts about. I have a working knowledge and that is all. I would love to discuss changing the resonant frequency to one that is at a point where the driver is weakest and how different materials absorb different frequency sets. 
Anyway, You mentioned "I always thought it has something to do with the dome material of the speaker, glass in the car reflecting, plastic in the car reflecting; in fact, everything in the car reflecting." Back to it all things work together for good or bad. As far as reflecting off of the glass. Listen to the sound when someone speaks away from you. What did you hear. Mostly low frequency right? Remember if they face a wall and do that much of what you are hearing is reflected off of that and yes, that is the point. Obviously this experiment needs to be done in a none reflective space. Car installers traditionally have purposed to bounce high frequencies off of the glass. How has that helped? Well, it does use the rounded surface of the glass like a parabolic dish and spread that energy around but the reality is that some frequencies are too volatile and die easily when reflected like that. 20Khz would be one of those. We aren't going to argue anymore about the need for 20Khz. Let's just assume we are trying to build a completely full range system that is not band limited within the human hearing range. The solution comes from what pro audio has been doing in just about every application. Don't direct the energy where you don't need it! You then minimize reflective sonic interference on every level. With that placement is key! The second part of that was driver resonance. Aramid fibre part of as a sonic transduction device (a speaker or driver) has a few pluses and minuses. As you can tell by the chart for the KRX high frequency driver they are pretty flat in the mid. Up top they seem to be able to carry frequencies usable right up to the end of the human hearing range. The other thing is they are very light and hard so they don't flex a lot and resolve detail really well. All of this makes them a good choice for that application. One problem is that they also have a tendency to distort at certain frequencies. In this case partially due to size and shape but it seems to be somewhere just below 3 k. That is common with high frequency drivers too. Titanium is another common material used and it has its own set of problems. In fact they all do, silk included. None are perfect. I used the crossover on a steeper slope to try to band limit the driver away from that frequency to get a smoother sound. With that the mid had to take care of that range and it has the problem of not being that linear in that range so it needs some help so I brought it back in on a shallower slope starting at a lower frequency. That is a bit of an imperfect science though as there are peaks and valleys in the mid driver in that area and even though I have kind of levelled out the overall I need to be a little more surgical with the eq. Back to needing another processor and digital outputs off of the head unit.
Alas that is all I have time for right now.


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## Niebur3 (Jul 11, 2008)

^^^No way in hell I'm reading that brick wall.

Robb, my post we sarcastic, I don't think you understood that.


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## subwoofery (Nov 9, 2008)

-- RobERacer --
What do you think happens to the frequency response when you put a relatively flat response's driver (near field or anechoic measurement) into a reflective room like a car. Let's take for eg. the pic below: 










In your opinion, will it: 
A. stay mostly flat and require minimal EQ 
B. frequency dips and peaks all over the place 
C. still be smooth that it doesn't require much EQ to work properly 

Care to share your answer with us?  

Kelvin


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## sqnut (Dec 24, 2009)

Ah, finally some one who has the speaker level vs ear level graphs!!!!

:lurk:

Classic case of pictures saying a 1000 words.


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## mmiller (Mar 7, 2008)

Niebur3 said:


> ^^^No way in hell I'm reading that brick wall.
> 
> Robb, my post we sarcastic, I don't think you understood that.


Anyone that does read all of that deserves a prize.......lol


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## Hanatsu (Nov 9, 2010)

Hahah. This reminds me of the 'Dark Knight fight' in Monthy Python's Holy Grail 

Know when to stop eh? 

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy S5 using Tapatalk


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## 0nbagz (Oct 7, 2014)

I was nice about it the first time. Stop wasting everyone's time?


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## Rs roms (Jul 12, 2012)

What pro audio, he is a pro keyboard warrior  

Sent from my SM-G900F using Tapatalk


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## 0nbagz (Oct 7, 2014)

Hahahaha!


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## RobERacer (Sep 15, 2014)

subwoofery said:


> -- RobERacer --
> What do you think happens to the frequency response when you put a relatively flat response's driver (near field or anechoic measurement) into a reflective room like a car. Let's take for eg. the pic below:
> 
> 
> ...



Yup. I noticed you pulled this from Harmon. It says a 6 inch woofer Ya? Or did you notice that? I love how you g


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## RobERacer (Sep 15, 2014)

Rs roms said:


> What pro audio, he is a pro keyboard warrior
> 
> Sent from my SM-G900F using Tapatalk


you have to be a professional sandblaster that doesn't think hearing protection is necessary.


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## sqnut (Dec 24, 2009)

RobERacer said:


> Yup. I noticed you pulled this from Harmon. It says a 6 inch woofer Ya? Or did you notice that? I love how you g


Since you obviously haven't understood the question, let me try and explain. It doesn't make a difference what the size of the driver is or what it's response looks like. The graph posted is the FR of the speaker measured one inch from the speaker installed in a cars door. 

The next graph is FR at ear level in that same car. Now, you claim that you don't need much eq and the environment is not intrusive so stands to reason that the ear level response should be largely similar right? Now go back and answer the question.


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## RobERacer (Sep 15, 2014)

All I see is one graph. Quite frankly. Your just all pissing ****e out your ass's. Why? It is certainly not to make any kind of valid point. Obviously, you bunch are the only ones on here so there is no point in me bothering with this site any further. 

As far as what you are talking about goes in order make that valid we have to see what the driver does without any outside influences (anachoic measurement). Harman has one of the best anachoic chambers in the world. If they needed he measurement it would be there with a complete expanation. Of course you knew that right? Not!!!


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## Avalanche (Jun 13, 2006)

Please leave. Now.

You can't teach because you have little car audio knowledge.

You won't learn because you haven't grasped the above.

Later.


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## sqnut (Dec 24, 2009)

RobERacer said:


> All I see is one graph.


You'll see the other one once you pick one of the options. Why does one have to explain everything to you like you're a 5 year old?


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## RobERacer (Sep 15, 2014)

Hahaha. Actually. You all can be honest now it is more because I am not telling you what you want to hear. I am not going to either because it is missleading crap! Sorry, clearly none of you hear well enough to know why car audio is despirate to have digital transport infrastructure between their components. The best part of that is thé maunfactures gave it to you without asking and becuabecause you said "we have no use for that" they took it away. Of course why add $5 to the cost when it is a waist anyway? The fact that what you are saying doesn't hold up in either of my cars (one of them being a wagon) is all the proof I perspersonally needed but you can believe whatever you like. Go on focusing your driver layouts at the glass and take everything out above 2K for all I give a ****. Like I said. You are the children you say I'm acting like. Oh btw another piece of your confusion. If you put any microphone an inch from any driver even in an anachoic environment it is not going to give you a usable reference as to what that driver is going to sound like unless it is a very small driver. Measurement Mic or not. Audio engineering 101 boys. Anyone putting mics in front of guitar amps can tell you that. I will let you sit and blab your **** about why I am wrong only to find out later i am absolutely right like I have been about everything else I said and feel really f'n stupid after. Also I said the car has influence. I never once argued that it did not. How much? You claimed "90%" which I will say it means far more than double that of the driver. I have been screaming ********! You have yet to show a direct comparative of the driver FR vs the exact same driver mounted in the space FR or better yet FR with cohearence (phase etc). We need to physically subtract the amount of influence the driver had and what is left over is the influence of the car. Mine shows it clearly. I have a resonant tone in the door no less at about 850hz and again (harmonic I would say too) at around 1700. Other than that it looks and sound basically like the plot from Focal. Especially, above the crossover point. Jealous? Get your own! Again I also noted clearly without being misleading like you that just like a house, studio or concert venue sonic treatments may be required. I did say I have treated my doors in my car too. The Focals have done everything they have claimed to do and in my book that is all I can expect. Maybe you're pissy because I don't feel I should run out and get different speakers of that I am not begging you for help fixing it but the truth is it is good in any book and that is what is bothering you I think. Can I make it better? Yep, More gear! Will I? Probably. Will I need your help? Definately not!!! You are wrong. I am certain it is all a result of your evident approach and that is that. It is your cars do what you like. I don't care! Get over it!!!


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## sqnut (Dec 24, 2009)

RobERacer said:


> Hahaha. Actually. You all can be honest now it is more because I am not telling you what you want to hear. I am not going to either because it is missleading crap!


You can't respond because you just plain don't know. You're sensing a heads we win and tails you lose kind of trap and think obfuscation with bluster will see you through. The penny on your rants Achilles heel still hasn't dropped. This despite a liberal sprinkling of clues, heck I've pretty much told you the last scene and it still hasn't dropped. Or maybe you're just caught between a rock and a hard place. 



RobERacer said:


> If you put any microphone an inch from any driver even in an anachoic environment it is not going to give you a usable reference as to what that driver is going to sound like unless it is a very small driver. Measurement Mic or not. Audio engineering 101 boys.


Here's another clue. It doesn't make a difference what it sounds like for the purpose of this exercise. We are only comparing speaker level vs ear level response in a car. The actual response of the driver, its size etc are irrelevant. I mentioned this in my last post. Should I have explained more clearly?



RobERacer said:


> You have yet to show a direct comparative of the driver FR vs the exact same driver mounted in the space FR or better yet FR with cohearence (phase etc).


That's what this whole exercise is about, genius. You've seen the door level response now based on your knowledge, beliefs and experience choose one of the options for the possible ear level response and Kelvin will then post the actual response. Get it? 

BTW the first graph is for a single driver. When we talk single driver, we don't talk about phase. Phase is relative you need two or more drivers. Sound 101. Don't use power words when you're unsure about their application.



RobERacer said:


> I have a resonant tone in the door no less at about 850hz and again (harmonic I would say too) at around 1700. Other than that it looks and sound basically like the plot from Focal.


So you're saying other than the peaks at 850 and 1700 the ear level response in your car is like the plot put out by Focal? Let's keep this simple. You either measured wrong or your statement is BS. Take your pick.



RobERacer said:


> Especially, above the crossover point. Jealous?


Not at all. I don't know what the xover point is but you're saying that the ear level response in the car above ~2.5khz was pretty flat like Focals FR plot. Are you really sure?


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## Niebur3 (Jul 11, 2008)

Rob, Face it, you have no clue about how to properly tune a system in a car, and no clue about how to type on a forum.


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## 14642 (May 19, 2008)

Subwoofery, thanks for posting my graph. I was going to do it the other day, but I forgot my password for flikr and was too busy to figure that out. 

Rob,
Believe it or not, tuning large spaces and tuning small spaces are not all that similar. While you appear to have at least some experience with pro gear and big rooms, that doesn't qualify you as an expert in applying the same tech to cars. Small space acoustics is a completely different discipline. 

I think when you see the second graph that goes with the one that's already been posted, you may decide to respond in a slightly less boorish way. Believe it or not, there are people here who know as much about small-space acoustics as you know about big rooms. It's entirely possible that someone might know more. It's also possible that what you know about big rooms is of absolutely no consequence in the confines of a car.


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## Hanatsu (Nov 9, 2010)

Andy Wehmeyer said:


> Subwoofery, thanks for posting my graph. I was going to do it the other day, but I forgot my password for flikr and was too busy to figure that out.
> 
> Rob,
> Believe it or not, tuning large spaces and tuning small spaces are not all that similar. While you appear to have at least some experience with pro gear and big rooms, that doesn't qualify you as an expert in applying the same tech to cars. *Small space acoustics is a completely different discipline*.
> ...


Took the words right out of my mouth... ^^


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## Hanatsu (Nov 9, 2010)

sqnut said:


> You can't respond because you just plain don't know.


Direct Rob's quotes to this thread:

http://www.diymobileaudio.com/forum/general-car-audio-discussion/135721-**stupidest-thing-anyone-has-said-you-audio-wise-**.html

...at least they are not off-topic any longer then.


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## RobERacer (Sep 15, 2014)

Na, I am sensing exactly what it is. A bunch of know it all goons that totally ignore physics because they don't understand and repeatedly argue the same statement ten different ways to try to convince the folks who might have been paying attention that aren't that they are not idiots. Why did the folks leave? After time and time again I have more than showed how everything you have been saying is totally crap they just weren't interested in your more than obvious gang tactics. You are the kind of guys that if you knew me I could totally expect you to threaten me physically because your whole personally perceived value to the world lies in your "knowledge" of car audio that you just don't have. How do I know none of you actually know me? Simple everyone who knows me knows that I don't go around spouting **** about what I don't know. They also know that I won't take **** from people and I am not afraid of them in the least. As far as your site goes. It is now a complete joke and proof as to why people need to go to school to learn audio now and backyard bumpkins like you guys are nothing short of just that. Have a great circle jerk. Oh don't forget to post your graph that shows how you fixed your top end problems with a low pass filter at 2k. Do they have Dr. Dre car audio speakers yet? Focal won't take out enough top for ya. I think that would be the best ones. Especially for you goons. ****?????


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## 0nbagz (Oct 7, 2014)

Call me a goon. You sir are the most rude negative barsted I've ever come across on a forum. You don't listen and you post ******** that isn't helpful on the topic what so ever. I'm done with you and your nonsense


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## RobERacer (Sep 15, 2014)

I listened far longer than I should have to the goon squad completely ignoring and twisting my words to try to find a way to dig at me. I keep hearing people making blanket statements about the "wrong" information that I was posting but not 1, not 1 will go on record as to which statements they are referring to. Why because they are afraid I just might be factual! Guess what. I am. I am not on here trying to sell my services either. It is purely personal to me and anyone one of my colleagues would recognise me too. I am not the least bit afraid of one of them asking me about this tomorrow because even though I ended the conversation rudely (It really could not have gone anywhere else could it?) what I had to say was correct in every sense. Did it cost some of you idiots some customers. I hope so! You deserve to be set straight. You need to be accountable for your actions too and ripping people off by filling them up with a bunch of bold faced lies deserves you having to come out of the shadows. Go ahead try to bury and obscure my comments. It won't matter. In the end the truth always comes out!


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## Kriszilla (Jul 1, 2013)

You may want to Google Andy's name before you completely swallow your foot. He's likely forgotten more about audio than you've ever learned. 

This is actually a fantastic resource site, if you can clamp the ego and listen with an open mind. Tuning for a car is a completely different animal than tuning for any other kind of environment. It's harsh, unforgiving, and requires a completely different bag of tricks than tuning your home theater or a concert venue.


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## subwoofery (Nov 9, 2008)

When/if you answer my simple question, then I'll just post the other pics that goes with my previous post. 
I won't try and twist your words, I won't try to make you look like a fool, I'm just gonna let you reply to my next post with the picture if you feel it is necessary... 



subwoofery said:


> -- RobERacer --
> What do you think happens to the frequency response when you put a relatively flat response's driver (near field or anechoic measurement) into a reflective room like a car. Let's take for eg. the pic below:
> 
> 
> ...


Kelvin


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## rton20s (Feb 14, 2011)

I'm curious to see if Rob provides a response to Kelvin's even more clearly presented request.


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## sqnut (Dec 24, 2009)

No he won't cause finally realizes that he's stuck in a catch 22. He will obfuscate, rant and rave and post some more text walls.


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## rton20s (Feb 14, 2011)

Since it is only sharing what Rob Himself has posted online, I will share what I know of his qualifications. If someone claims themselves an expert, or more accurately, a professional in their field one should expect that they would be willing to share their qualifications. I know I am expected to do as much in my own line of work. 

Robert Chapman, Part-Time Engineer, Compact Audio, Dartmouth/Halifax, NS
Compact Audio - Engineers

Work Experience: "Volunteer" (Behance Resume)
Education: Recording Arts Certification, Nova Scotia Community College
https://www.behance.net/RobChapman043b/resume

Rob's Youtube Channel:
https://www.youtube.com/user/RobChapman91/videos

There is more out there to see and hear, if you are really interested. I just thought if he was going to proclaim himself an expert and attempt to discredit those who have proven their value in this forum, it would be worth knowing exactly how he might be qualified.


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## Jepalan (Jun 27, 2013)

My worthless lurker observations:

1) Rob's own words in this thread and the other RTA thread already tell us everything we need to know about Rob's credentials, level of car audio knowledge, and ability to communicate effectively via written word.

2) Nothing anyone can say (with good intention or not) is likely to change Rob's opinion of himself or the other posters (aka goons) here.

3) It seems like this thread is about to dissolve into a group-think based hazing incident where everyone jumps-in on the easy mark (yes, I'm guilty as charged in my prior posts) 

4) Based on 1), 2) and 3) above - I think everyone should just stop and move on to other mobile audio discussions (like my CR-V SQ design thread)


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## RobERacer (Sep 15, 2014)

Andy Wehmeyer said:


> Subwoofery, thanks for posting my graph. I was going to do it the other day, but I forgot my password for flikr and was too busy to figure that out.
> 
> Rob,
> Believe it or not, tuning large spaces and tuning small spaces are not all that similar. While you appear to have at least some experience with pro gear and big rooms, that doesn't qualify you as an expert in applying the same tech to cars. Small space acoustics is a completely different discipline.
> ...



Sorry Andy. I didn't even see your post yesterday. I read the first paragraph of the one before it and skimmed down through "HANATSU's" disjointed and rhetorical crap and then saw the last one before my comment. This whole thing is not about good audio in the least whatsoever. I started out choosing and regularly returned to being respectful. I know I pointed out things to them that even though they are taught to first year audio engineering students they were met with statements of them being lies and inventions. With this thing black is white, white is black. It doesn't matter what physical proof is presented whatsoever. That isn't what this is about to the goon squad. 

As far as who you are and what your qualifications are. I am not going to even guess. I will take you at your choice to approach me with respect. You get what you give. No respect equals what I gave back. I have not looked at your graphs. I will probably at some point but I am willing to bet that the data is not going to tell me anything that I can not hear for myself in any standard automobile. ONE MORE TIME. The car, just like every other single little part of any audio rig has an effect on the sonic performance of the whole system. What I have been arguing is the fact that the figure of 90% (as indicated as only the sonic influence of the vehicle and as compared to all of the other parts both collective and individually) of the sonic is solely due to the car itself. I agree it is more effectual than your standard living room and in my personal opinion different but not any better or worse than some performance venues. With that the inference is that they are making is that the sound of the drivers is INEFFECTIVE as these guys completely believe that their self proclaimed super amazing abilities to tune using a 16 band graphic eq is what makes almost all of the balance of the whole 100%. I have enough practice of being around, Owning and sitting in cars and being around audio things for more than 30 years (yes, my hair is grey too) to know this can not possibly be 100% accurate and is obviously greatly exaggerated so as to cause the reader to preclude that "no matter what the speakers sound like only these guys can make it all perfect using their magical abilities". Are you saying that you absolutely agree with that as is?

I am not questioning their ability to use an eq to do whatever. Who cares really? What I am trying to say is that by way of sonically treating the space with various absorptive materials or changing the resonant frequencies of the various spaces inside the car and by way of putting better sounding equipment in it is entirely possible to build a sonic capacity that will outperform that of the setup that they have proclaimed would work best. And yes, by proxi it should require less eq if it is done right. That was all I was saying all along!!!!! The best part is with every one of my cars the philosophy of no crap in equals no crap out reproves itself everytime and in greater ways. 

The goons can go ahead and post all of my technical statements they like. They're all textbook things and anyone could get their hands on that info at their local library at any time I suppose. I acquired the info the expensive way. The best part is the theory becomes very evident in practice too. At some point someone in the know is going to come along and all they can say is the truth. Who is the joke going to be on then? They would probably ignore that as just plain ignorance though which is what I am intending to do with this from now on. 

Again there is not any intention of anyone doing anything here other than badmouthing and I am not wishing to be party to that.


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## JVD240 (Sep 7, 2009)

Less typing, more reading, Rob.

It would do you good.

Andy posted some very helpful info... and it seems like you brushed passed that and continued on your rant.

No hate. You just need to cool it. You act as if this is your first time visiting the internet. People will question you just as you have questioned them. 

This is coming from an unbiased, big room/automotive audio noob trying to learn.


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## sqnut (Dec 24, 2009)

Option A, B or C? I was right. He will obfuscate and write a long rant, but he won't pick an option. Maybe it's time to put him out of his misery.


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## rton20s (Feb 14, 2011)

I either owe RobERacer an apology because the references I posted are not him, or he is lying. He hasn't addressed that post though. If and when he does, I will respond appropriately.


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## 14642 (May 19, 2008)

Rob,
The 90%/10% figure was my number. Of course it is stated to make a point and I'd be hard pressed to back up the exactness of that figure. 

All performance spaces, whether a concert hall, a club a living room or a car are simply giant comb filters. The main difference between cars and big rooms is the size, of course. Sounds that arrive within the first few milliseconds are perceived as part of the original sound, Sounds that arrive later are perceived as separate events. In cars, the reflected sound arrives very soon after the original sound and we perceive those as simple modifications to the frequency response of the speaker. In a car, we can simply apply EQ to correct the response. I wish someone would post the other graph and I wish you'd take a few minutes to look at them. Theone that has been posted is simply a near field measurement of a factory speaker in the door of a mini cooper. The second one, which hasn't been posted is the same speaker measured in the listening position with the doors closed. That graph is, of course, the sum of the speaker and all the reflections from the interior of the car. It includes some very high-Q peaks and dips as well as some much lower-Q aberrations. It is, essentially, the power response of the speaker modified by the car. 

Much of the high-Q stuff isn't audible, but the low Q stuff is. The audibility of the high-Q problems depends on the stimulus signal and the occurrence of sounds that correspond to peaks and dips in the response. A spatial average would reduce the prominence of many of those high-Q peaks and dips and would likely be more representative of what we'd hear. A spectral average achieves a similar result, but a simple 31-band analysis is insufficient to expose what's really going on. Certainly a 16-band graphic can improve the performance. A 31-band graphic EQ would be better. Neither are sufficient to really fix what's going on.

In cars, the placement of speakers is relatively fixed. We can move the front speakers around a little bit. The subwoofer is similar, but the range of mounting options is not sufficient to eliminate the problems while maintaining other important attributes--like the width of the image, the distance to the stage, the height of the image, etc. Additionally, absorptive and diffusive treatments that are possible in the car aren't sufficient to remove the "room". The biggest problems are caused by the glass, and that can't be covered by thick absorptive or diffusive panels. Bass traps have to be huge in order to work, and that isn't practical, either. 

Finally, choosing a speaker with a slightly different frequency response in the hopes of finding something with a response that's the inverse of the car's transfer function is a ridiculous crapshoot and unlikely to yield appropriate results.

In cars, EQ is the best fix because the small space allows us to EQ the speaker and the room together in one big filter. 

In big rooms, EQ is more difficult because direct sound and the reflections (depending on the distances to the reflecting surfaces) cannot be equalized together. In addition, in big rooms, uniform frequency response over a wide range of listening positions is important. For that reason, it's useful to use room treatments to tame some of the problems that persist in separate locations in the room. A big bass trap in a corner can help to tame a mode nearby, which improves the sound for listeners located in that mode, for example. 

In cars, we don't have to do that. There are few listening positions and one is far more important than the others.


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## Hanatsu (Nov 9, 2010)

Again, I agree with Andy and since we obviously don't get an answer... here's the second picture:










Here's a few others I've measured myself:



Nearfield measurement of a 3" driver:



In-car response of the same driver:



As the headline on the first picture state. No car will sound good without EQ. As seen from the measurements, a great deal is required. What's even worse is that the left and right side differ as much as they do, this will lead to serious imaging problems. Some areas are caused by destructive interference and cannot be EQed, these are either visible from the FR plot as narrow dips or visible as sharp peaks in group delay, easiest way is to view the minimum phase regions in REW (for example). These are best left alone.


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## JVD240 (Sep 7, 2009)

Thank you guys for posting this info. I have never seen Andy's nor Hanatsu's graphs before.

Awesome stuff!


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## RobERacer (Sep 15, 2014)

rton20s said:


> Since it is only sharing what Rob Himself has posted online, I will share what I know of his qualifications. If someone claims themselves an expert, or more accurately, a professional in their field one should expect that they would be willing to share their qualifications. I know I am expected to do as much in my own line of work.
> 
> Robert Chapman, Part-Time Engineer, Compact Audio, Dartmouth/Halifax, NS
> Compact Audio - Engineers
> ...



Wow, Where in the hell did you pull that from? I live in Toronto. It says that right here and I have no need to lie either. More than that most everyone connect to the music biz in an major way knows me here and I know a lot of reps, engineers, bands etc in Halifax. Whoever you pegged. That is not me. The force is definitely not with you at all sir. I didn't allude to my exact qualifications because it doesn't matter any more than what yours are. I did say I work "for myself" and I am very busy. I also work for a lot of high end audio operations as a key guy. That is actually more than this matters. You are trying desperately to disqualify me. Why? I don't have any need or desire to devote all of my time to trashing you on any personal level but you seem to with me. Try! In my biz the proof is all in the eating of the pudding. Qualifications mean squat! History tells all and I have a great track record!!!!


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## RobERacer (Sep 15, 2014)

Hanatsu said:


> Again, I agree with Andy and since we obviously don't get an answer... here's the second picture:
> 
> 
> 
> ...



LOL. You agree. You already previously proved conclusively that you don't even know what these all mean so give it up dude.


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## sqnut (Dec 24, 2009)

Rob, I'm afraid the sound in your car will always suck. There's no hope of you ever getting it to sound like the monitors. You may claim that your car sounds great with a little eq as long as you run high end gear. Proof of the pudding is what you're hearing and you know that is less than ideal. Get used to the idea that it's going to stay that way and find a different hobby.


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## rton20s (Feb 14, 2011)

As I stated, if I was wrong, I would apologize. *So, Rob, I'm sorry. 
*
I made poor assumptions based on your user name (and how it was used elsewhere on the web) and what you did share of your experience. Apparently I followed the red brick road rather than the yellow to find the person I linked to above. 

Having said that, it does not change the tact or demeanor in which you've approached this forum and the other members. Despite any experience you may or may not have, your blanket dismissal of knowledgeable individuals including some who are industry leaders will always taint anything you post in this forum. 

Have fun posting your non sequitur walls of text.


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## JVD240 (Sep 7, 2009)

Cliffs notes for those who missed it:

Andy Wehmeyer - Noob:
You want as much EQ as possible in the automotive environment to make a system sound good.

RobERacer - Audio Dinosaur/Secret Weapon/Return-less Keyboard User(HEAVY hitter in GTA pro/commercial scene):
I've read a lot of books(made of paper) about tuning big rooms. There is no difference between big rooms and cars. Buy good gear if you want your car to sound good. Eff everything(one) else.


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## subwoofery (Nov 9, 2008)

RobERacer said:


> LOL. You agree. You already previously proved conclusively that you don't even know what these all mean so give it up dude.


That's all you have to say about the measurements that has been posted? Really? 

Kelvin


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## rton20s (Feb 14, 2011)

subwoofery said:


> That's all you have to say about the measurements that has been posted? Really?
> 
> Kelvin


You're surprised by this at all? Really?


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## Niebur3 (Jul 11, 2008)

RobERacer said:


> LOL. You agree. You already previously proved conclusively that you don't even know what these all mean so give it up dude.


You are pathetic.


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## Hanatsu (Nov 9, 2010)

rton20s said:


> You're surprised by this at all? Really?


Nope, not really


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## gumbeelee (Jan 3, 2011)

Advanced1 said:


> If you've ever heard a set of the Utopias properly powered and installed correctly you wouldn't ask that question, have you?


Thats all that needs to be said about Focal..i have focals as my tweets right now and i love the way they sound...car audio is nothing more than personal preference, "what sounds good to your ears"..thats just my 2 cents


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## Jepalan (Jun 27, 2013)

Hi Guys! Now that I am out of recording school and have some new Focals (yeah, I said FOCALS - WHOA - envy much!!!???) I have come to teach you all about how to audio up your car the rite way. YOU ARE WELCOME    Oh, and I play bass - man our lead guitar player has a nice a$$ - SO - if anyone needs help tuning their system or installing Garage Band - I am here to help - YOU ARE WELCOME!!!!!!!! The most important first thing is to remember first is to first treat your room/car/arena/auditorium - so get some heavy linen curtains to cover the doors and some acoustic tiles to tame those nasty glass windows. If your bass is too mushy or too boomy, just move the sub a few inches away the corner of the trunk until it sounds "better". Next - find a shop that can use a screwdriver and knows where the auto-tune button is located on your new audio source (novices call it a "head-unit") - WHOA - YOUR WELCOME - OK, see, this is EASY - ha ha ha - WHY do YOU GOONS make it sound SO HARD - it isn't rocket science - its ROCK and ROLL - ha ha ha - LOL LOL - anyway, I am so glad I found this new community - YOU GUYS ARE GONNA LOVE ME - ha ha ha - YOU'RE WELCOME!!!


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## Hanatsu (Nov 9, 2010)

@ this thread. lols.


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## jnchantler (Apr 11, 2012)

So after all that, did we ever figure out why so many people use Focal drivers?

I'll give my experience... I've been into audio since I was about 12 (this doesn't mean I knew anything about it), playing around with home stuff mainly until I got my first car.

When I got my first car I threw the proverbial Pioneer Champion, pre-fab box and a Boss amp in it (I already had a Pioneer premier deck and infinity coaxials, so I was set). After moving this system through a couple of cars I wanted something better. Being a young guy that didn't know much I headed to Al & Ed's, their sales rep seemed like a decent guy and demo'd most of the speakers on their board for me. I was shocked at how much better the Focal's sounded than anything else they had and bought the best ones I could afford at the time which was the Polyglass components.

After a while I wanted something a little better and moved up to the KRC and then the KRX line. Neither of which I was particularly impressed with, but nonetheless I can see the appeal to them. They are extremely well built drivers and pretty to look at. I just didn't like the smoking voice coil and wasn't 100% happy with the way they sounded.

After a total of 4 different sets of Focal's I befriended a local shop who demo'd some Dynaudios for me. That was it, I was sold and I haven't changed lines in the last 2 years.

To me, Focal is the widely known brand that all moderate-to higher end shops carry. They also have the reputation in the home and near-field categories. And there is no doubting that pretty much any set of Focal's will sound better than anything BestBuy carries, or any stock system. I guess the reason I think so many people buy Focal is anyone looking for a good upgrade that is smart enough to stay away from Bestbuy or the local rim store is going to see Focal, their freakin everywhere. I have managed to find 1 store near me that sells Dyn, one that sells Rainbow and one that sells Audison. That's it - I don't know any local stores that sell HAT, Seas, Scans or any of the other brands that the members of this forum have a hard-on for (please don't take that the wrong way - I'm not against of these brands at all).

I consider Focal to be my gateway drug to car audio. I don't know that I'd be in as much debt as I am now without them, but I'd never go back to them as there isn't enough of a high in it for me.


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## RobERacer (Sep 15, 2014)

Andy Wehmeyer said:


> Rob,
> The 90%/10% figure was my number. Of course it is stated to make a point and I'd be hard pressed to back up the exactness of that figure.
> 
> All performance spaces, whether a concert hall, a club a living room or a car are simply giant comb filters. The main difference between cars and big rooms is the size, of course. Sounds that arrive within the first few milliseconds are perceived as part of the original sound, Sounds that arrive later are perceived as separate events. In cars, the reflected sound arrives very soon after the original sound and we perceive those as simple modifications to the frequency response of the speaker. In a car, we can simply apply EQ to correct the response. I wish someone would post the other graph and I wish you'd take a few minutes to look at them. Theone that has been posted is simply a near field measurement of a factory speaker in the door of a mini cooper. The second one, which hasn't been posted is the same speaker measured in the listening position with the doors closed. That graph is, of course, the sum of the speaker and all the reflections from the interior of the car. It includes some very high-Q peaks and dips as well as some much lower-Q aberrations. It is, essentially, the power response of the speaker modified by the car.
> ...


Hey Andy. Sorry it didn't happen. I actually tried to reply earlier but between phone calls and important emails in the limited time I had in my office I was unable to get my reply off before the site timed it out. It actually just completely lost my reply. So here we are again. 

I did briefly look at the graphs this afternoon. It does show some stark differences between the original nearfield that I saw and what we will call the "far field" for lack of a better term. I also read what you had to say. Let me start by saying I am not disagreeing with the need to eq and fact is in live sound we use copious more eq than seems available in any car audio processor that I have seen. I was never saying I believed eq could be completely eliminated either. Even studio control rooms use some. As far as the type of eq I think what we are both saying is that a multi band fully parametric is going to yield far better results pretty much every time. Yes, I am stating the obvious and that just to point out that I am agreeing with that. The thing that I will note is that from what I am seeing I would have to say that space you are showing is in my mind unusable as is. 

I see there are some other crap comments about what my car sounds like and all I can say is that none of you has any idea what my car sounds like other than what I tell you. Quite frankly, almost all of my friends are audio engineers and many of those some of the most respected in Canada. It won't do for me to have spent 5 grand on car audio and have it sound like ass! Especially since I have involved a few of them on parts of the build. It think more the issue is that considering what is in it you would be eating your words if you did hear it! I really don't car a bit about what you think though.

Here is the thing Andy. In my car we used Dynamat which actually adds weight to the surfaces and changes the resonant tone and in this case in theory to a lower root tone than what the speakers are emanating. Thus making it inert inside the doors. I suppose dynamat has some absorbent qualities but from what I understand that is less of a factor than it's ability to change the weight of the structure. In short we started with treating the car for sonics. A similar thing like we would do if we were building any audio listening environment. I am eqing a few things though. You mentioned micro/macro view of the plot as being a big factor. Agreed but I think we are both also agreeing that what matters is what we are actually able to hear. I have a pretty discerning as well as trained ear and I am sure I am not alone in that. By trained I mean I have learned what kinds of things to listen for as to bring one's attention to a specific types of sonic anomalies. Phase cancellations due to temporal miss alignments are part of my daily gig and we work in point whatever milliseconds as well as at times over 100 milliseconds. Whether it is the time difference between the inside kick mic and the outside kick mic (usually less than a foot) or making a set of delays time relative in a given area to the main pa thrust (100'+/-) it's all audio and having the waveforms line up so that less frequencies are cancelled and impulses are repeated making the sound more intelligible that matters greatly. I don't think that discussion needs to go any further. 

Here is the thing. I think we are both agreeing AS A WHOLE controlling reflections, resonances and cancellations in car is pretty much impossible. Given what others have been saying and their solutions high frequencies are particularly troublesome. Yes? Other than the little bit of dampening that you might gain from putting tint on the glass there is certainly little one can reasonably do to stop high frequencies that are hitting the glass from being reflected. Those reflections are not going to return in time with the rest of the audio so it is going to slur the image making it far less intelligible. I doubt you disagree with me there otherwise time aligning the mid to the high frequency driver would be a moot point and no-one is touting leaving them out of time with each other here. More than that because the reflections are not in time they are also going to be out of phase at some frequency lengths and that is going to change with where in the space one listens so in short it is cancellation hell. More than that there is a ganging effect that also happens at certain frequencies (also position/vehicle sensitive). How much difference then would it make to not direct those frequencies at the glass in the first place? 

My point is this. With higher frequencies just by nature of what they are we have the innate ability to point them almost exactly where we want them and they will in fact travel straight there. They don't bend and they don't travel much off axis. That is a principle that live audio would be completely dead without. We are often called to do events in very reflective spaces. A church with marble walls and floors for example. "Point it only where you need it" is a rule we live by. Horns are often how high frequencies are directed with live sound but not the only way and we have piles of different devices with really fancy prediction software just to help us to figure all of that out. Meyer Sound has a Parabolic Dish ummm device (for lack of a better explanation) that they built for the Celin Dion Tour in the early 90's. (It is not a speaker cabinet that is for sure). It is basically a high frequency device designed to transmit audio over very long distances. Like 300+ feet. They are rather impressive actually and still in use today in some situations. If I remember right it was something like +150 db max. Been a long time since I read about them and I personally have never used them in one of my rigs. I am personally not much of a Meyer fanatic but they do make good products. Parabolic dishes use the effect Andy is talking about with the glass in order to focus (converge actually) audio. What is really neat about them is that on axis you could go deaf if you were close enough but walk a couple of feet off and you can't hear them. They are that effective in controlling pattern. In fact possibly the most effective method. An inverted dome tweeter is a very similar device. The only real difference is the dish part is the driver where as with the Parabolic set it is just a lense. Is it not possible that a big part of why I am not having as many of the problems that others seem to be having is a lot because the high frequencies are not hitting the glass in the first place? My tweeters are mounted on the dash in the pods that come with them from Focal. I actually wanted to mount them on the sail panels but my installer was honestly worried someone would inadvertently knock them off so I decided we'd do it their way although my idea would have been even more focus specific. I hired them for a reason otherwise I would have done the job myself. The guys have proven their value too! I twist knobs, I don't build speakers so why would I in a mission critical application. They almost sit 90 degrees from the top of the dash pointed right at the occupants heads. I don't seem to be the only one that thinks this matters either. I see a number of manufacturers are creating somewhat directable devices for their high frequencies. Infinity uses that in some of their coax's with the slightly angled rotatable tweeter for example. Actually we have them in the Toyota doors. Again pointed in the direction of the occupants. That seems to have worked out too. The speakers in the back window are really more noise than anything. Same scenario though ya?


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## rc10mike (Mar 27, 2008)

In general, people run Focal because they are expensive but also popular, same reason others hate on them; because they are expensive and popular...just like JL.

/thread


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## jnchantler (Apr 11, 2012)

So much for trying to get the thread back on topic.

Rob, for Christ's sake use the return key once in a while. Trying to follow this thread is difficult with paragraphs that rival the length of the entire bible.


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## Golden Ear (Oct 14, 2012)

jnchantler said:


> So much for trying to get the thread back on topic


You'll learn


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## TOOSTUBBORN2FAIL (Jan 31, 2011)

Roberacer, I'm not going to quote because I'm on my phone, but changing the weight structure is NOT AT ALL how dynamat works. It is a constrained layer damper, not a mass loaded damper.


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## TOOSTUBBORN2FAIL (Jan 31, 2011)

Also just to clarify further, the dynamat in your car isn't lowering the resonant frequency to something below what your speakers are putting out, nor is that the theory behind it.

Dynamat, like all other constrained layer dampers, reduce the amplitude and decay times of the main resonant frequency of the panel you are damping. The effectiveness depends not on the mass of the damper, but primarily by the formulation of the viscoelastic layer. Yes, it also lowers the resonant frequency, but not by enough to care. In fact in my controlled testing, the resonant frequency was never lowered by more than about 15hz, and sometimes was only lowered by a couple of hz.


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## 14642 (May 19, 2008)

Increasing the mass of a vibrating object in a resonating system reduces the frequency of resonance. Increasing the stiffness of of the suspension of the vibrating body increases the frequency of resonance.


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## RobERacer (Sep 15, 2014)

rton20s said:


> As I stated, if I was wrong, I would apologize. *So, Rob, I'm sorry.
> *
> I made poor assumptions based on your user name (and how it was used elsewhere on the web) and what you did share of your experience. Apparently I followed the red brick road rather than the yellow to find the person I linked to above.
> 
> ...


 Apology accepted. Just so you know my user name is actually my nick name. It is a play on Wyle E Coyote that the chief engineer in the first studio I worked at in the 80's gave to me. You see I was one of the original Ritalin kids... Not just a little ADHD either which I am certain comes out in my posts. Let's just say he noticed. LOL. The funniest part was I originally hated it but I later saw it's charm. Bruno was the best too. I learned a lot from that guy.
If you follow the posts back you can see that the escalation happened first on the repliers to my posts end. Like many Canadians and added to the fact that I am ADHD and naturally wound my family is also of Scotish/Irish descent. The guys PERSONALLY attacked my honor and as you can see are continuing regardless of how logical or scientifically accurate my statements are. Like I said respect is a 2 way street and I give it freely to those who choose to give it to me. I am trying my hardest to ignore their ignorance but you have to know where I come from people loose their teeth for saying things like that. Thanks for your respect.

Rob


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## JVD240 (Sep 7, 2009)

RobERacer said:


> Hey Andy..........


Rob: How much experience do you have with car audio specific DSP? Just curious. I think you will be quite surprised at the power they have... EQ-wise anyway. There's a few with 31 bands of parametric EQ per channel. You should check them out. Download some software and mess around with it. 

I find it kinda similar to the fixed architecture pro DSPs available today. Similar to say... a Symetrix Jupiter if you've ever used one of those. 

Obviously won't have unlimited flexibility like open architecture stuff but it's amazing how much better a car can sound with the additional processing power. Not to mention the work flow is much better than pushing buttons on a head unit.


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## TOOSTUBBORN2FAIL (Jan 31, 2011)

Andy Wehmeyer said:


> Increasing the mass of a vibrating object in a resonating system reduces the frequency of resonance. Increasing the stiffness of of the suspension of the vibrating body increases the frequency of resonance.


Absolutely agreed. My point was just that that isn't the primary function of constrained layer dampers like dynamat, more of a side effect.


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## RobERacer (Sep 15, 2014)

TOOSTUBBORN2FAIL said:


> Also just to clarify further, the dynamat in your car isn't lowering the resonant frequency to something below what your speakers are putting out, nor is that the theory behind it.
> 
> Dynamat, like all other constrained layer dampers, reduce the amplitude and decay times of the main resonant frequency of the panel you are damping. The effectiveness depends not on the mass of the damper, but primarily by the formulation of the viscoelastic layer. Yes, it also lowers the resonant frequency, but not by enough to care. In fact in my controlled testing, the resonant frequency was never lowered by more than about 15hz, and sometimes was only lowered by a couple of hz.


The off topic part:
Hmm. Ah like I said. I only have a working knowledge of that side of things. I don't build speaker cabinets. (ie. car doors used as speaker cabinets in this case) That is a specific discipline. Still it is very interesting. So the reality is that the damping that clearly comes through the use of dynamat or similar products is more by way of it's inherent absorbent nature. I won't start it but I would like to talk about that further. It is another subject though.

On topic:
With the KRX2's the other thing they did that I thought strange was to use a "Phase Plug" in the middle of a direct radiating diver. (The mid) Whenever I have seen phase plugs used it was in a horn load application where it was suspended in front of the driver forcing projection to sides of the horn. In this case there is no horn shroud and there was never intended to be one. Someone said "they aren't designed to be listened to on axis" of course I was immediately considering the top end in that and was very puzzled by that statement as clearly the more on axis you are to the top end the more full range it gets. They do use a phase plug in the tweeters too insidently but my estimation is that is more to widen the pattern because parabolic dishes are extremely directional. As far as the mid thing goes I did notice that their 1+2K coherency factor is far better than I expected it to be with them mounted at almost 90 degrees to the listener. Do you suppose that was what that phase plug is for?


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## RobERacer (Sep 15, 2014)

JVD240 said:


> Rob: How much experience do you have with car audio specific DSP? Just curious. I think you will be quite surprised at the power they have... EQ-wise anyway. There's a few with 31 bands of parametric EQ per channel. You should check them out. Download some software and mess around with it.
> 
> I find it kinda similar to the fixed architecture pro DSPs available today. Similar to say... a Symetrix Jupiter if you've ever used one of those.
> 
> Obviously won't have unlimited flexibility like open architecture stuff but it's amazing how much better a car can sound with the additional processing power. Not to mention the work flow is much better than pushing buttons on a head unit.


Oh, yes. That was my point to some of my friends who looked at me like I was an idiot spending thousands of dollars "on an audio rig that can never sound right". "Car audio has come a long way since I was a kid". I have been looking at both the Alpine system, the better Soundstream processor and the Rockford processors. Again I would like to get the tonal inaccuracies down to the point that with 1 and 2 db max movements the car could be tuned with 5 or 6 bands of parametric. That is hard to do without accurate tools. Either that or you have to settle for some things that you might not wish to. Even that is a lot of eq for a critical listening environment. That said the experiment is more to see just how close we can get to a high spec listening environment. So far it is looking like we can get very close indeed and without spending 5 figures which is the cost of one BSS London Blu unit for example. Sure it does more. Do you need that though?

Another good point is tuning the drivers separately. My experience is also that if the components are flatter specifically around the crossover point coherence is greatly increased so having a processor that can do that is something that I would personally value greatly. The better car units have this too. For me for tuning purposes graphic eq's, even 31 band are just too clumsy of a tool. If you really want to correct fine details you need to be able to accurately choose what you are going to manipulate. The other thing that no-one here has said and I think might be important is that sometimes the cure is worse than the disease. As much as something is bothering us tonally sometimes it just works better to leave it alone. This of course only works with minor issues but a principle that I had a hard time really comprehending when I first started working outside of studios. That principle even works in that environment as well because studio monitors resolve audio that most systems can't even hope to. I should also note that is a lot owing to the fact that they aren't using as much eq to correct the listening space. You have to make decisions about the fly crap in the end. What do you just put up with and what do you shovel out?


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## Reerun_KC (Jul 8, 2015)

This thread started out solid then turned into a derailed aids train.

Kinda learned something about Focals, which I have PS 165 F3 and PS 130 f heading to my house for my Dodge Ram.


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## pocket5s (Jan 6, 2012)

It also died 8 months ago like it should have until you revived it. 


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## Reerun_KC (Jul 8, 2015)

pocket5s said:


> It also died 8 months ago like it should have until you revived it.
> 
> 
> Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


One would figure that using the search feature to educate ones self on car audio topics wouldn't bring out the dickholes. 

Guess I was wrong .


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## pocket5s (Jan 6, 2012)

One would figure reviving an old thread would only happen if there was something worthwhile to contribute. 

Guess I was wrong 


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## Reerun_KC (Jul 8, 2015)

pocket5s said:


> One would figure reviving an old thread would only happen if there was something worthwhile to contribute.
> 
> Guess I was wrong
> 
> ...


Your hospitality to a n00b okie poster is unquestionably awesome. Thanks for making me feel welcome to the board, toolbag.


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## pocket5s (Jan 6, 2012)

Your mastery of name calling will be right at home here, along with your mastery of adding useless noise to a thread, dead or otherwise. 

Two of the many reasons the many people who truly have useful and educational information no longer visit this site. 

And I'm no okie. 


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## Reerun_KC (Jul 8, 2015)

pocket5s said:


> Your mastery of name calling will be right at home here, along with your mastery of adding useless noise to a thread, dead or otherwise.
> 
> Two of the many reasons the many people who truly have useful and educational information no longer visit this site.
> 
> ...


No my problem, but I am sure they appreciate you falling on the sword for them. Fight the good fight sir.

I was hoping this site would provide some useful and helpful info for my focal/audison install. But I see that it's like everyone forum out there. 

So not worth the digging through the trash to find quality info....


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## Phil Indeblanc (May 27, 2015)

ScaryfatkidGT said:


> I think they are over priced to, idk I would never shove a $1000 or more speaker in a car door?
> ...


Its funny you mention this. In home audio the speaker has always been the cheap part. The only reason they would raise the price of the speaker was mainly because of the rare woods they used for the cabinet. Otherwise great speakers were had for very low prices. But the idiots drove the market up. People paying stupid amounts of money for spekers and then it became a "thing" of luxury, and then sound quality, so now the brands have taxing on these 2 ideas in unison.

Look at Paradigm (or NHT, and a number of others), a great set of Studio2 monitor V2 speakers for $400 a pair at one time. Then they had cherry wood, or some alder, mahogany, and we had $700, and now $1400 a pair! Same stuff folks! they massaged this and that to be this material or that, and look this way etc....All beautiful sounds!

With car the lunacy is even more mind boggling as there IS NO FFFF'n CABINET!, but idiots or people with loads of cash, or SQ desperation leads people to buy $2000+ for speakers....

I mean if you have limitless funds and you are chasing some sound tone you have to hear, and thats your thing...have at it Hoss...

but to glamorize these drivers, back in the 90's it just started to take off as a fad, and created a huge OVERBLOATED market. (not that overbloated as folks still dig in).

I cant remember the name, but I think it was Focal or Vifa that used to make single drivers for purchase and perfectly great ones would be had for $40-65. Tweeters, $60-100 or less. Then designing of the crossover was where the artistry came in for components. Thats what you would end up paying most of that chunk, the cross over!

Have you seen the crossover for a MB Quart QSD component set? Or any of the hunks of mass with shiny copper coils? Amazing piece of art. 

But now with the DSP, and many installs opting out of xovers...maybe things will change. I expect someone to start selling calibrated drivers, with a sheet that specs the driver for 3 basic acoustic environments, and call it a day...I donno!? But its lunacy I tell ya!

(I know, not the popular post) :-/


(You revived a thread that was worth reviving, but surely not to answer your question. try starting a new thread with a specific question and you will likely get feedback.
Sometimes new members what to give their 2cents worth to an interesting heading, and subject matter. So I don't think there is anything wrong with it. If someone has a problem with it, its easy enough to ignore the thread. )


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## I800C0LLECT (Jan 26, 2009)

Right on Phil!! That's what was great about this site when it started...it was all about removing the blinders so we could all focus on what matters most; application and install techniques.

Also, I do understand a certain romance one can have with a brand for various reasons as wanting to support the business model, vested interests(friendships), nostalgia...or whatever else motivates an individual. No reason to hate on that. Their wallet, their choice. I have to admit, there's a few things out there in the market that make my pants tight but really aren't sensible.


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## Phil Indeblanc (May 27, 2015)

Sure, there is a lot of room for romance, and that is pretty much the bulk of it.

I still love me a pair of 901's (with additional sub). They are amazingly a satisfying pair of speakers. But you couldn't give me a Bose Acusta-ass system.


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## mendopell (May 28, 2015)

I've spent all week reading, and re-reading this thread. Aside from the idiotic nut swinging, I found it VERY interesting to begin with ... a good question. I also found an interesting sub-subject in the mix as well.

To begin with ... we all have different preferences in how our systems sound. And how we perceive our music to sound most "live" ... isn't that the ultimate goal? If not, time to go to a different hobby than sound reproduction. So there can NOT be a definitive 'best' speaker system, unless we all have the same opinion to start with, on how reproduced music should sound, as well as we would all need calibrated ears for there to be a consensus. 

Having said that, I do feel Focal has changed some over the recent years, in regards to their tweeters. I have NEVER cared for Focal, and have always found them too bright, and lacking any real warmth below 500hz. I chose systems in the likes of Rainbow Profi Phase plugs, ADS, Dynaudio, Morel, etc ....

Then recently, after 7 yrs away from car audio completely, I listen to a set of PS165V, as well as some Flax PS 165FX, and the K2P 165KRX2 sets. All in the same sized sealed enclosures, with all controls set flat. And I was surprised to hear the tweeters no longer sounded bright to me. The Flax was very smooth. While the lowest line TNP tweeter was very detailed and non sibilant to my ears. The Poly woofer dug deep and kicked hard, and shocked me that it was warmer than before experiences. Sounded to me like they had addressed some of the issues I had always disliked about them. Then I heard the KRX2s. These speakers sound almost live. I can see why most wouldn't like them however. The tweeters are so much more wide open loud than most others, they MUST be seriously tamed !! This however is a great thing. means the tweeters can be turned waaaay down, never getting close to their capabilities, and remaining more linear due to it. This also allows way more dynamics on cymbal crashes and horns. But the KRX2 system is also way easier to sound badly, unless someone really knows how to get the most from it. I wouldn't personally run the KRX2 speakers, unless I had a large budget, and could spend a thousand on proper treatments and speaker install stiffening fabrication. I feel they are TOO revealing of anything less than a perfect install, and very knowledgeable tuning procedures for the particular product. 

But as a few others have said on this thread, I feel the Polyglass line with TNP tweeter is going to be hard to beat under $500 anymore. VERY revealing and smooth at the same time, with strong mid-bass and a good tweeter IF MOUNTED OFF AXIS, how it was designed. And listen to the Flax line if you want something CRAZY impressive. But the KRX2 speakers sound live, if all else is perfect. 

So to answer the OP ... the sound being very impressive for the price, is why I chose the PS 165V speakers, and will be upgrading to Flax in about a week. They sound good enough, without me spending $800 on a set of tweeters.

Lastly, the sub-subject I mentioned is the whole Dyn vs. Focal thing.
To my way of seeing it, speakers all fill in the range from the warm, euphoric, laid back sound .... to the analytical, fast, and lighter sound. And ALL of these are a twist on exactly what the 'live' recorded instrument of choice was. These 'flavors' of sound suit our preferences and tastes, and we dub them 'the best' .... All subjective. 
Having said that, Dyns have a certain sound that is very different than Focal. Both closer to the opposite ends of the above mentioned spectrum. People liking one very strongly, will most likely not like the other very well. This is why we have a hobby ..... this is what makes it interesting. JMO


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## JimmyDee (Mar 8, 2014)

regxjin said:


> What's up with the condescending statement?
> Are you one of those "car audio elitests who think you are better than everyone else?
> 
> If you knew what I did for a living you wouldn't be asking such a dumbass question.
> ...


Seems silly to dredge-up such an old post... but here goes:



regxjin said:


> If you knew what I did for a living you wouldn't be asking such a dumbass question.


What is it that you do for a living? Don't tease us with a statement like this: 



regxjin said:


> Are you one of those "car audio elitests who think you are better than everyone else?


I'd bet that more than 75% of the people on this site think they are a 'car audio elitist' (myself included). This is why we come on this website! We share ideas, we dream about bigger and better systems, and we all want to build the best (most elite) system we can afford...




regxjin said:


> Do you think these Focal can hang with Dynaudio Esotars, Rainbow Reference, Micro Precision Zs, ZR Speaker Lab, or even Audison Thesis, Scanning, Scanspeak?


Can they hang with Esotar, Rainbow, Thesis, Scanspeak...? Ya, I'd say they can, as long as you're comparing apples to apples. I have a Dynaudio Esotar woofer / Scanspeak tweeter active front, and I would say that a comparable Focal setup (Utopia No.6) would definitely 'hang' with my stuff...

Onto the topic at hand; I have owned a few different Focal components, and honestly, they have all sounded superb! I have a personal preference for the sound of the Polyglass woofer. Unfortunately, I don't like the sound of their tweeters (with the exception of the berillium utopia).


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## GEM592 (Jun 19, 2015)

This thread is like the end of Terminator where the eyes keep lighting back up ...


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## Phil Indeblanc (May 27, 2015)

LOL. Do the Terminator eyes represent the Focal speakers?


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## GEM592 (Jun 19, 2015)

No then they would have to be off-axis ... the eyes were looking straight at you.


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## Reerun_KC (Jul 8, 2015)

GEM592 said:


> This thread is like the end of Terminator where the eyes keep lighting back up ...


Yeah my bad. I was just overly excited that my focals shipped. I got ripped for bumpingg the thread.


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## Phil Indeblanc (May 27, 2015)

Well then just let it be the thread dying out. Please. No one post hear from now on.

If you purchased Focal speakers, do not post. If you are tired of hearing about how good Focals are and you know there are better speakers for more or less, do not post.


The only thing you can post here are sentences made by tweaking the different car audio brand names to say something you want to say, like.....

"Mother Focals just wanna turn the SoundStream on to Maxxonic so they can get PrecisionPowerful and Symphonic sounds in their headunits"..etc.....etc. But something more creative, and not so lame 80's sounding.


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