Hi,

I am no pro at SQ so pardon me if my questions are too easy for you. :hehe: In terms of stage height and depth, where should the front stage sound appear? When I don't concentrate hard on listening, it seems to be coming from the dash speedo area.

My specs
Car: Nissan Micra
HU Alpine 9835
Front Focal 165V3E woofer at OEM location, mid and tweeter at kickpanel with 2 mid crossing point somewhere near HU and passenger's tweeter aiming at driver's head rest. Passive focal crossover roll off @ 12dB/oct (3.5kHz) and frequency response: 55Hz-20kHz.


Some pics of my install

The problem is when I concentrate a little more, I tend to "know" the sounds are coming from down below. Is that bad? :roll:

Thanks!

Well it seem to sound the way it is in stalled right? YES/NO. it is actually how you set it up. your mid might be playing a bit too loud and so on. the most critical part of setting multi ways speaker system is to get the volume of each speaker right, then play with EQ.


Judgeing from the installation, the mids are not facing out enough. this can be fix by ----> say point the mid to the shift knob.

in a good setup, the image must be very defined. in other word each instrument should be precisely located. in a well recorded CD, the vocal should sound as if the artist is singing in the middle of your wind screen. in general speaking, if you can localize your staging-> you are doing well. any where around dashboard level is quite good alredy. may be boost ~12-16KHz may help in some case. cutting ~ 160-350Hz may help as well.

In competition, the best marks are gained when the stage is at eye/windscreen level.
This can be achieved but it takes time and experimentation with driver location and angles.

So far, for me at least, the best cars I have heard have actually had the tweeters mounted higher, like up on the dash.
Many people on these forums will recommend keeping all the drivers as close together as possible and that's why many recommend door/kick installs. This has many advantages but is more difficult to get naturally high and wide stage with good imaging from. I have yet to hear a car with a kick install stage as high and wide and natural as a well tuned dash install. Some, I must admit have come close but were still left wanting.

The fact that your cross over slope is not too steep and cross over point not too high is good and it would probably lend itself to working well with the tweeters mounted higher up.
If you try this, you may notice that the tweeter level becomes louder but with some judicious and subtle eq adjustment that you have available in your head unit, you can achieve a very nice sound.
You will also be able to use the simple seat position adjustment to tweek the centre stage position too.

Tyr it and see. You may not look back.
Otherwise, you just need to try modifying the angle of drivers in their current locations until you acheive the best result that you can.

My comments without ever having listened to the install:

1. Make new kicks entirely out of fibreglass. Plastic enclosures aren't recomended for high end speakers.

2. Fibreglass the area of the car where the kick pod attaches to the car.

3. Experiement with different tweeter/mids angleing. Personally i would look at placing the tweeter as per the pic below. With it facign slightly more verticle.

Thanks for the reply guys, relocating will be a pain in the ass but if I can get hold of a used panel, I might wanna make another kick and try.

By the way, gooki, what do you mean by facing slightly vertical? upwards, forward? What should be the estimated angle between axis and driver's position?

Also, how do I go about adjusting mid and tweet angle and location without building a fix "mount'? Can I do it with without baffle?

Thanks!

Upwards so your legs don't muffel the brillance of the tweeter.

Blutac is your friend for positioning tweeters.

Well, you can add ambience tweeter on the dash too. just buy a pair of littlevifa tweet from jaycar then hook it direct with your amp and make a 18 DB passive x over at around 10~12 Khz. this trick help a lot

I wouljd say if you plan on relocating your tweeters to up on the dash think about running them actively.
if you plan on running them up on the dash without an eq by simple high passing them higher matching the gains to blend with the mids.
wouljd sound and image better then running them passively thru the focal xover.

ah ic ic... 2 pairs of tweeter.. hehe sounds nice..

Anyway, I spent an hr last night sitting in my car listening to some of those "SQ" song. Delta Goodrem etc. I played with the EQ alot and kinda managed to push the sound stage alittle upwards, which is at the bottom of the windscreen. Haha I can be wrong but that's what I felt last night hehe or rather hope

Ok, here what I did to my EQ (alpine deck).

@ 50Hz -2dB
@ 500Hz +4dB
@ 1.6KHz +3dB
@ 4KHz +5dB
@ 12.5KHz +6db(max)

It is true that if I increase the "dB", I can bring the sound stage higher? That's what I feel especially crossing the x-axis (0dB) of the EQ. At let's say -6dB, it is very obvious that the sound is coming from down below but as I bring the "dB" higher, the singer's voice just suddenly appear at the dash again.

So let's say it's very personal and objective and I like the height now but I don't think I am getting the width or depth either. How big a room should I feel I am in while listening to some concert CD. For depth wise, and that's if my height is correct, the speaker seems to be stucked on the windscreen so I am like sitting in aisle AAA (right in front).

Can I use Time-correction and push (delay) the front speakers out so it seems to be coming from far away? LOL

Do you have any schematics? hehe My friend is still in Uni so I can ask him to fab a PCB board for free... now quick show me the link haha :hehe:

Sadly t/a doesn't work like that.
easiest way to get stage width and depth is to move the speaker further away and wider apart.
you may also find that the reason the stage height gets better when boosting the higher freq is because of where the speaker that are playing those higher freq are and the angling on them.
maybe try running your splits without the 6.5 in the door and having a listen to how it stages like that.
maybe playing with the left to right t/a would be a good place to start wth t/a..
play a song you like.. stick your head in the middle of the car and have a listen to what it sound like.. it should sound alot better and the vocals and intruments should be better defined.
now sit back in you drivers seat and play with your t/a on left to right and see how well defined you can get the image.

erm... what's t/a?

Time alignment

oh okie.. sorry cos I only know Time correction since it is written on the manual LOL.

Hmm.. just got back from some dodgy testing and playing around with my HU EQ again! My head is spinning right now but that's besides the point. While I was playing some female songs, I find the stage height is there but when it comes to a male singer, boom it went down quite a bit.

What's the vocal range for male and female singer?

Btw, those songs were Guy Sebastian - Angels Brought Me Here and Fantasia Barrino - I Believe. Pretty lame I know LOL

You could try the tweets on the dash about 150mm in from each pillar pointing up and slightly out to each pillar...but you seem stuck on kicks.

lucky it's ery easy to remove my tweeter from the kick panel.. I will try to run longer wires and blue tac them on the pillars.

Thanks!

Man, I am more worried about you cd collection!

Seriously, if you want to get imaging well, then do you have one of the Reference CD's? Might help you out rather than setting your stage to just one song ehy?

haha yeah I know. I ordered a Focal CD. Should be here this week LOL

IMO having tweeters up high can at best only raise the treble(high frequency info) This does not make a high stage just a high treble stage and will also create harshness isssues as well as seperation issues.

A good stage sould image evreything well including male vocals from tenors or barritones etc and lifting tweeters wont help that in slightest.

I also beleive that many ppl dont really know how to listen for staging and so listen with eyes rather than ears. I would suggest kicks as I know that a decent stage can be done this was and it avoids seperation and harshness issues.

A good stage will reproduce far more than cymbals or high female vocals across the dash. A good way to learn what staging is all about is to head to the highest end home hi fi store you can find equipped with a disc like the Alpine first encounter CD.

Play the tracks at start on the best system the store has and yopu will actually here the guy walk to back of cave...This is true staging as it has real depth, razor sharp positioning and is sharp and focused...It isalso full range and not a treble based stage. Once you have experienced this then listen to car and close your eyes as its very hard to judge stage with them open, even if you are experienced.

I judge some of the finest SQ systems in the country and have found overwhelmingly that Kicks often work really well, when done right, as not only does it image and stage well, you have far less path length issues, that often a dash mount will have.

Learn exactly what you are trying to recreate before you try it and also learn to listen properly as thats just as important. If you dont know what real staging etc is then you cant possibly recreate it or evaluate it
peace
Cyberpunky

Its getting very interesting and I wanna learn more about SQ. Btw, what's path length issues?

I won the bet that was for CP making that statement again

Even though my mids were lower in the doors, the bass was up high. The same thing that fools your mind into thinking that sub bass is coming from in front of you (when in fact the subs were behind you) was also working for the front stage and pulling the stage up higher.

Listen with your eyes closed, find the stage's centre area and then open you eyes. For me, I was looking straight ahead through the wind shield.

Like many things though, stuff this up and it will go wrong too. The secret is in the fine tuning.

hmm talking about fine tunning, how many people can get good results from HU EQ or must it be those professional external EQ equipment to make it superb? I am having a big headache with the alpine 5 band "problematic" EQ. Found out not long ago that I can adjust width of each band too....faint.

its quite often hard to really get into sq and learning HOW to listen.

my home system stages and images superbly. for example i quite often play songs to my mates and say stuff like "hear how the drummer is behind the guitarist and vocalist. and hear that bass on your left! aaah awesome!" and they'll just go... "huh???!?!?!"

training your ear takes time. i sometimes wish i never bothered to train mine cos then i'd never wish i had grand amatis in my room... but you get that. :hehe:

d

yeah I think that's abit extreme for me now but I hope to get there some day.

hmm.. will it help in learning about staging and imaging if I first visualize the "stage" then compare it with the audio stage in my car? That is, for example, watch a live concert MTV, see where the instruments are positioned then tune car audio system to "match" the stage and image.

Sometimes I try to visualize where the instruments are but it seems to be inconsistent. Sometimes I think the guitarist is on the left but it can drift from left to right! There were times where I can hear music at the back of my head, is that bad? I have no rear fill speakers.

Exactly.

ok now is there any software to rip mpg to mp3? hehe

I hope your not using MP3's of the aforementioned songs ot test your equipment/install with! That jsut wouldn't be fair!

yes please don't tell me your using mp3's to audition and tune your system...

:shock: Most of my files are MP3 format. My friend said it's good enough if its sampled higher than 192kbps. :? What are the differences between an original CD and 320kbps MP3? I know original CD sure to be better but can those difference be heard?

MP3 is a lossy codec hence it throws away information hence it is not suitable for testing subtle SQ things such as stageing.

Yes you can hear the difference between 302kb/s MP3 and the origional audio cd. Once you know what mpeg compression sounds like it's easy to spot even at such a high bitrate.

yea you'll easily distinguish mp3 from original even if its 320kbps
the top end loses a lot of its crispness and a bit of clarity and generally some smoothness and clarity is loss...thats the best way i could put it

its best to hear it for yourself, get any original cd and rip a song on various levels 320 -> 256 -> 192 etc then burn it on like 2 to 4 speed on the burner and then compare it in your car with the mp3s and original

yeah... i don't think that'll work properly. while it may be video'd and recorded the same, most of the time, the audio mixes are separately done, as a studio mix will always sound better than a live gig. most audio engineers will "place" the instruments in the best ways they think complement each other... not necessarily how they were recorded.

the best way, imo, to achieve a good stage is to set yourself some sort of benchmark. arm yourself with a nicely layered recording (NO MP3s!) and spin it on a highend home system. tell the sales guy you want him to explain "how" to hear the sound. be careful here cos some salesmen will tell you to hear in "colours" but forget all about that! lol.

you need to be able to ascertain WHAT it is you're after in a system.... and have an idea on how you want it to sound. once you've achieved that then start that tweaking!

oh... and i'll say it again. critical listening. NO MP3s!!!! why ruin everything you're striving for with a horrible source.

d

hehe ok I will stop the MP3 thingy but yeah i think its a good idea to test it myself with 320, 192kbps sampling rate vs the original CD.

Thanks folks