# Poor recordings or system problem?



## Old Skewl (May 30, 2011)

Have you ever experienced a song or album that sounds fine in your home system or ipod dock and then you play it in your car and it sounds like crap? I know some systems can be more revealing than others. I recently installed my system in my BMW E46 using the factory Nav head unit. I am using an audio control LC2i and also an Alpine PXA-H100 thorugh an Intravee. I have noticed a few songs on Santana/Shaman and my daughters Taylor Swift/Fearless albums that distort even at very low volume levels. But on other old school rock it sounds fine. Not sure if they are recorded at high levels or if there is a problem in my system. Figured I would run it past the experts. Any ideas?


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## Alrojoca (Oct 5, 2012)

Many new recordings are loud and they use a lot of compression degrading the quality while keeping it just loud.

Your system may need some good turning, voltage gains, EQ etc. some music just sounds bad, no matter what you do. 

If the cd sounds bad, you have a problem, if it's through an iPod, the files may be 128k, you are listening to it through the ear piece jack, aux and not the USB, also check the iPod EQ, vol limiter should be off.


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## Hoptologist (Sep 14, 2012)

Old Skewl said:


> Have you ever experienced a song or album that sounds fine in your home system or ipod dock and then you play it in your car and it sounds like crap? I know some systems can be more revealing than others. I recently installed my system in my BMW E46 using the factory Nav head unit. I am using an audio control LC2i and also an Alpine PXA-H100 thorugh an Intravee. I have noticed a few songs on Santana/Shaman and my daughters Taylor Swift/Fearless albums that distort even at very low volume levels. But on other old school rock it sounds fine. Not sure if they are recorded at high levels or if there is a problem in my system. Figured I would run it past the experts. Any ideas?


I know what you mean, but it can also be the reverse- sound good in your car and bad in your home. Depends on the speakers I guess. iPod dock shouldn't count either way, small cheap speakers unless we're talking $700+ dock.

I made sure to get very smooth sounding speakers for my home, almost everything sounds great on them. Ascend Acoustics Sierra-1. I chose against the Nrt upgrade since it's been said to add extra shimmer/revealment, but I'm thinking about the Sierra-2 with RAAL.

For my car, some songs that sounded good on my old coaxials 5 years ago sound much worse on my current system. The songs now sound a little thinner or low quality... must be lack of distortion or something from the better speakers.

I was just thinking about this earlier- the better the speakers, the more revealing, the worse a lot of current music sounds- is there any truth to this? For the record, I do lossless through iPod USB.


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## Old Skewl (May 30, 2011)

Thanks for the feedback. I only tried the Santana CD but it sounds just as bad as the iPod. You can hear the distortion at almost any volume level. 

I need to check a couple things. The PXA has a media expander circuit. In general it makes the sound fuller. But maybe on highly recorded albums it's causing distortion.:shrug: The other thing is the LC2i has a bass enhancer for systems that roll off bass at higher volumes. I am not sure about the BMW head units. I need to make sure it's turned down/off.


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## Hoptologist (Sep 14, 2012)

I would definitely keep the media expander off. I believe those things are for low bitrate mp3s. Try to replace as many of your mp3s with lossless quality files, or at least 320kbps


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## Old Skewl (May 30, 2011)

90% of my songs are apple lossless. There are a few that we're downloaded from the app store that are not. I tried today without the media expander and those few particular songs still had bad distortion. I double checked the iPod and the eq,is off and the sound check is off. I will try to check the LC2i tomorrow and readjust the gains for the heck of it(I don't think the gains are the problem.)


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## ou812 (Oct 25, 2008)

Alrojoca said:


> Many new recordings are loud and they use a lot of compression degrading the quality while keeping it just loud.
> 
> Your system may need some good turning, voltage gains, EQ etc. some music just sounds bad, no matter what you do.
> 
> If the cd sounds bad, you have a problem, if it's through an iPod, the files may be 128k, you are listening to it through the ear piece jack, aux and not the USB, also check the iPod EQ, vol limiter should be off.


Unless it's Metallica death magnetic......then it sounds like total A$$ no matter what.


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## Old Skewl (May 30, 2011)

Well it appears as though the major part of my issue was that I was overdriving my PXA-H100. Again I am using a Audio Control LC2i off of my Balanced Differential outputs of my factory BMW headunit. It feeds into my PXA-H100 and then splits out to my amps. I lowered the gain on the LC2i and then increased the gains on my amps and the distortion all but disappeared(picked up a little alt noise though). I do think these couple albums had higher recording levels and made the distortion more pronounced. 

I initially used the method from Audio Control YouTube video to set the gain on the LC2i, but with a processor in the mix, I guess that method doesn't necessarily work. For now I basically reduced the gain on the LC2i from about 3/4 to 1/2, FWIW. Thanks for the input guys!


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## JohnVella (Sep 2, 2013)

Hoptologist said:


> I would definitely keep the media expander off. I believe those things are for low bitrate mp3s. Try to replace as many of your mp3s with lossless quality files, or at least 320kbps


yes i totally agree with you.


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