25 replies to this topic

[mrock]

I know wear your going with this, but I have found to get my sound right I needed to use passives. I have a bit of a different setup than you guys. I was going back in circles using the decks dsp, while the other day it took me only 3 hours to finally tune my car. And that was listening with different values. You'll laugh because of the gear I am running. Kenwood xxv01D, LA Star paragraphic eq, 4 Motorolla piezo tweeters, 1x 2' centre channel, 8' dual cone Jaycars, IB sub bolted to the chassis. Now you see where I am going...

[br85]

I do see where you're going, and I also see that in NO WAY is the dsp what's degrading your sound

[~Spyne~]

Phil's famous "Dog Poo" theory....explains a few things actually
Your headunit is quite decent though

[mrock]

Then why is there less distortion with the Kenwoods dsp off? Even with the EQ set to flat. The sound still changes. Experiment a bit. That's what makes car audio fun. No need to get too serious. Btw, I am running a slightly modded coustic DR505 hexfet. It is a very flat and revealing amp. I just tried to have a normal convo, and your being a complete ass. Don't get me wrong, but to me it is more of a challenge getting the cheap stuff to work "well" then the expensive stuff. Have you seen the internals of the LA star? Nope. It's all surface mount and discrete. For your info, I do have an Audiocontrol DQT at home. It is good, but I don't need the 31 bands. The golden rule of audio. Less is better. The less you have in the signal path, the cleaner it is.

[br85]

mrock, on 21 May 2010 - 02:20 PM, said:

The golden rule of audio. Less is better.

This is true for 99% of "audiophiles" and any other enthusiast who knows next to nothing about acoustics

I'm being a bit mean spirited, yes, but that's how you force someone to either back up what they are saying, or concede. It's all in fun, really, I'm not an angry person.

[br85]

mrock, on 21 May 2010 - 02:20 PM, said:

The less you have in the signal path, the cleaner it is.

And to address this point more constructively instead of just ignoring it or telling you you're wrong, remember that you're in a car. The things that happen to the signal between the speaker and your ears is what people with good car audio tend to focus on moreso than clean signals (though a clean signal is important). Nobody has ever won a sound comp with great electronics and a clean signal path with a shoddy install. Nobody. On the other hand, there are a few people with fairly mediocre equipment and smart, well planned and implemented installs that have cleaned up.

Of course, there are 2 sides to every coin, but almost every time I see someone's expensive car stereo (MEASQ competitors aside), there's something I can do for $100 to drastically improves the sound more than upgrading to a $3000 amp would.

[Luke352]

mrock, on 21 May 2010 - 02:20 PM, said:

Btw, I am running a slightly modded coustic DR505 hexfet. It is a very flat and revealing amp.

I've got a couple DR's stashed away, and they are noisy little bastards don't know if it's something wrong with them or not but I tried to get them in with a reputable repair tech to see if it was something wrong and he wouldn't even touch them said he wanted nothing to do with them.

[mrock]

Sorry if I got a bit upset. I agree on the last comment. I got a bit excited to, as I have recently discovered that I can turn down peaks in the setup with a simple contour network. For instance, you know how the cabin response raises by 6 db from 100hz - 20hz, well a 1500-2000 microfarad cap together with a 2-4ohm resister in series will flattern the reponse and actually improve the damping of the subwoofer itself.

Luke352, They don't seem to be noisy. The repaire doesn't want to touch them bexause they are a hexfet. lol. half bipolar and half mosfet. The best of bothworlds, and the circutry inside them is complex. But it is an audiophile amp and a slighty different kettle of fish to the other car amps out the. Transient reponse is extremely good.

[Luke352]

mrock, on 21 May 2010 - 03:11 PM, said:

Luke352, They don't seem to be noisy. The repaire doesn't want to touch them bexause they are a hexfet. lol. half bipolar and half mosfet. The best of bothworlds, and the circutry inside them is complex. But it is an audiophile amp and a slighty different kettle of fish to the other car amps out the. Transient reponse is extremely good.

Actually his comment was something more along the lines of he was the repair tech for Coustic back in the 90's and in his opinion they were all crap. I'll admit though when I had them installed for a while they did sound nice and clean apart from the hiss and they did seem to have good transient response as you put it. I think maybe he was just bitter and twisted from working on all the lower range rubbish they made.

In either case the Zed performs much better IMO.

[mrock]

I have noticed, before the big companies go down hill they allways release a top notch product. Looking inside of the other coustics, they just don't come close to the dr-s. It's like my Akai reference master amp. Weighs in at almost 20kg, and has audiofile grade caps throughout. After that they just turned to crap.lol I guess they all want to go down with class.

[Pulse-R]

Not wanting to rain on anyone's parade, but my initial statement applies well to the Kenwood XXV deck. don't use the dsp in the deck.