Amp with Dsp built in help

[winkychevelle 10+ year member]

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07D3H5X5V/?tag=caraudiocom-20

Probably your best bang for you buck.

But I'd mess with you head unit first and check your hpf set points. It should be around 80hz to keep bass out of the midsaybe higher if they still sound muddy.

I'd also lower to gain for the rear speakers so the fronts sound louder. The rears are probably very bright and over power the fronts.

And jbl are known to have quite a bright high end frequency response so you may need to eq the top end down to keep it from piercing your ears

 

[Califmike33]

Thank you for the tips I will mess with the hpf. I have another question I want to add a subwoofer in the back of my car I don't have enough Bass my head unit has a sub out can I hook up a sub to my JBL stadium 4 amp? Or can I just get a self-powered subwoofer and then I just hook that up to my sub out in the back of the head unit and that'll give me my bass what's the best way to go about doing it ?

 

[Califmike33]

I will tell you the story of my system which i just finished a couple of weeks ago. I took the car to a good car stereo place to see if he could tune my dsp. This guy Mike says he has 25 years exp, so im like ok. Im more of a home audio guy myself, now getting into car audio.

He listens to my system, flac files and tells me you have no bass and no mids. So he tells me im not sure i could tune your system to sound as good as you want it to. He thinks the head unit has a cheap Dac in it, tells me to hook up my LG V60 which has a good quad Dac.

So i run 3.5mm to rca males and plug directly into the amp, taking out all sound from head unit. Now it did sound better, not much, but some, so he may be right the Dac is not quality.

He told me to get a seperate DSP of high quality and go from there and add a sub. Also he said to put my tweeters into pods so they face me instead of bouncing off the dash and windshield.

This is where i am now, i have had trouble tunning the dsp in head unit cause i have 0 exp doing it. This is why im on here wondering where to go from this point, im guessing try to tune the dsp and go from there ?.

I will mess with the hpf and set that and turn down the highs on the eq. My guess is the speakers are just not that great to start with. Thanks for all the input from everybody.

 

[winkychevelle 10+ year member]

I will tell you the story of my system which i just finished a couple of weeks ago. I took the car to a good car stereo place to see if he could tune my dsp. This guy Mike says he has 25 years exp, so im like ok. Im more of a home audio guy myself, now getting into car audio.

He listens to my system, flac files and tells me you have no bass and no mids. So he tells me im not sure i could tune your system to sound as good as you want it to. He thinks the head unit has a cheap Dac in it, tells me to hook up my LG V60 which has a good quad Dac.

So i run 3.5mm to rca males and plug directly into the amp, taking out all sound from head unit. Now it did sound better, not much, but some, so he may be right the Dac is not quality.

He told me to get a seperate DSP of high quality and go from there and add a sub. Also he said to put my tweeters into pods so they face me instead of bouncing off the dash and windshield.

This is where i am now, i have had trouble tunning the dsp in head unit cause i have 0 exp doing it. This is why im on here wondering where to go from this point, im guessing try to tune the dsp and go from there ?.

I will mess with the hpf and set that and turn down the highs on the eq. My guess is the speakers are just not that great to start with. Thanks for all the input from everybody.

Ok

1. You could hook up a sub to the stadium 4 amp if you bridged the rear channels.and just ran the rear speakers off the headunit. Personally I'd do a completely separate amp. I also would avoid self powerwd subs as they give you a little bass but not much. Most people eventually upgrade them. To me a 500w sub and a 500w amp with a proper custom box is a better investment. $500 maybe less in equip and some time to build a box is a better value.

2. Having pods to point the tweeters at the driver can help exponentially. But you don't have to get super fancy. Some pvc endcaps with some hollow threaded tube can make some nice pods with just a coat of plastidip. Reflecting of the windshield is my least favorite way to place tweeters. If you must do this I'd suggest a carpet dash mat to help absorb the excessive reflections.

3. Midbass comes from door treatments and tuning. Make sure you don't have one of the positive and negatives flipped and that both of them are in phase. You can usually let a sub play up to about 100hz if needed to cover the lower midbass range. Most properly installed midbass drivers can easily handle 100hz-3500hz.

4. Without digging into your equipment idk if you even have the ability to adjust the tweeters separate from the mids. I doubt you do but if the crossover is biamp capable. Running the tweeters on a separate channel from the mid allows for a lot more control over the tweeter using time alignment and possible individual channel eq, depending on the dsp used. Without a way to delay the sound coming from the tweeters or tone them down individually your sound stage will likely be very high and bright on the drivers side.

5. The dac on the headunit might not be great but I doubt it's making enough of a difference to be worth changing right away.

6. On your headunit settings turn off any boost, try and use minimal eq as boosting often creates distortion. And of course set the hpf to at least 80hz so the mids aren't trying to be subs. that should help clean up a muddy midrange.

 

[Califmike33]

I just changed the hpf to 80 Hertz it sounds better I just don't know enough about this something just ain't right because the whole system just don't sound good to me.

Yeah I have door treatment in the front doors all behind the whole panel of the door is all been treated the rear has been treated but I don't have my speakers in the doors bumped out like the photo you put I don't know if I can come that far out without the plastic door panel hitting that I don't actually know how much space I have between the plastic speaker grill that's part of the door panel to actually hitting the speaker itself don't know how much room is in there to further bring the speaker closer to the grill.

I'm going to take your advice and not get a self-powered sub problem is I have a tiny little Fiat 500 I don't have a lot of room for a bunch of amps in my car I really need a 1 amp solution one and done.

I'm thinking since my car is a hatchback and I have a little bit of space behind the rear seats probably an 8-in sub is plenty for this car. Which I need to find somewhere to put the sub amp and I don't want to eat up all my trunk space back where the hatchback is cuz I need to be able to put stuff in there so I don't want to put a sub and an amp back there so I'm going to have to try to put the other amp under my driver's seat to power the sub.

 

[winkychevelle 10+ year member]

I just changed the hpf to 80 Hertz it sounds better I just don't know enough about this something just ain't right because the whole system just don't sound good to me.

Yeah I have door treatment in the front doors all behind the whole panel of the door is all been treated the rear has been treated but I don't have my speakers in the doors bumped out like the photo you put I don't know if I can come that far out without the plastic door panel hitting that I don't actually know how much space I have between the plastic speaker grill that's part of the door panel to actually hitting the speaker itself don't know how much room is in there to further bring the speaker closer to the grill.

I'm going to take your advice and not get a self-powered sub problem is I have a tiny little Fiat 500 I don't have a lot of room for a bunch of amps in my car I really need a 1 amp solution one and done.

I'm thinking since my car is a hatchback and I have a little bit of space behind the rear seats probably an 8-in sub is plenty for this car. Which I need to find somewhere to put the sub amp and I don't want to eat up all my trunk space back where the hatchback is cuz I need to be able to put stuff in there so I don't want to put a sub and an amp back there so I'm going to have to try to put the other amp under my driver's seat to power the sub.

I bumped the speakers out so they sealed on my door panel. The silicon rubber ring seals to the door panel so sound doesnt get stuck between the panel and the door and cause cancellation and distortion. You should make sure you have a solid mounting surface. 3/4 inch plywood usually fits and makes the mounting surface much more rigid than just bare sheet metal. And a way to seal the speaker to the door panel foam works just as well and stinger makes the fast rings just for this purpose that's what is on the Memphis mids in the second photo

There are many good 5 channel amps that output 300-1500w on the sub channel.

A sundown sa8 in a ported box 1-1.25ft³ tuned to 34-46hz should perform well and be about the size of a milk crate.

Idk what exactly you mean about sounding bad. Its hard to describe sound but I bet aiming those tweeters will help alot. Maybe even flipping the positive and negative on the passenger side tweeter if the tweeters sound too harsh.

 

[winkychevelle 10+ year member]

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Or you could go with a mini amp mono

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07QC9N5JL/?tag=caraudiocom-20

Lots of options. That little mini amp on a sundown sd4 10d2 would only use about .75cubic foot in a sealed box and would likely satisfy you. And be more compact than a ported 8. They also make the sd4 8 which uses a smaller .4-.5 cubic ft box but I've yet to mess with them and think that it isn't enough bass. You can always turn thing down but you can't turn them up.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0787H4VK1/?tag=caraudiocom-20

 

[Califmike33]

Hey I really really appreciate your time and input I want you to know that. Here's what I think I'm finding out I just hooked up my phone again directly to the amp on just the front speakers and tweeters nothing in the rear not using the head unit at all.

I can tell you it definitely sounds better because I compared songs a&b head unit phone head unit phone the phone sounds better the sound is cleaner more defined. I'm just going to take a wild guess let me put it this way even coming out of my phone now it sounds better but it's not up to what I want I want audio file sound.

I think the jbl's are the weak point the speakers not the amp I think the amp is good I think the JBL speakers that I have in my doors are just mediocre speakers I don't think they're really good I bet you if I upgraded to something like audio frogs or focal higher end ones I bet there would be a pronounced difference and I agree with you on aiming the tweeters at me will make a pronounced difference.

I never knew it would be this difficult to get really good car audio home audio is so simple car audio is way more complicated.

So let me ask you a question given what I've told you what would be your next step for me would it be to turn those tweeters towards me and see what that does? Would it be get rid of the jbls and get something higher end for the speakers?

I really don't know what to do to be honest I'm just trying to eliminate stuff why I'm not getting good sound and if I keep to JBL speakers I'm going to be putting a 3/4 inch piece of plywood on the door always kind of wondered why I saw that in people's photos of them doing that I will be mounting a 3/4 inch piece of plywood on my door to cut down the vibrations and help with the sound and get it closer to the grill which I fully understand you're not leaking sound back into the door makes perfect sense what I got to do is try to figure out how much space I have between the front of the speaker and the grill and put a piece of wood or a spacer according to what space is available.

So there are so many ways I can go I can get rid of the JBL amp and sell it and the money I would have to spend on a subwoofer amp I could just combine the cash and get a 5-channel amp it'll do everything all in one package that's an option.

I don't know you have a lot of audio experience I can tell just tell me what from what I've told you I know you can't see what I have you can't hear it but based on what I've told you what would be your next step for me?

 

[winkychevelle 10+ year member]

Hey I really really appreciate your time and input I want you to know that. Here's what I think I'm finding out I just hooked up my phone again directly to the amp on just the front speakers and tweeters nothing in the rear not using the head unit at all.

I can tell you it definitely sounds better because I compared songs a&b head unit phone head unit phone the phone sounds better the sound is cleaner more defined. I'm just going to take a wild guess let me put it this way even coming out of my phone now it sounds better but it's not up to what I want I want audio file sound.

I think the jbl's are the weak point the speakers not the amp I think the amp is good I think the JBL speakers that I have in my doors are just mediocre speakers I don't think they're really good I bet you if I upgraded to something like audio frogs or focal higher end ones I bet there would be a pronounced difference and I agree with you on aiming the tweeters at me will make a pronounced difference.

I never knew it would be this difficult to get really good car audio home audio is so simple car audio is way more complicated.

So let me ask you a question given what I've told you what would be your next step for me would it be to turn those tweeters towards me and see what that does? Would it be get rid of the jbls and get something higher end for the speakers?

I really don't know what to do to be honest I'm just trying to eliminate stuff why I'm not getting good sound and if I keep to JBL speakers I'm going to be putting a 3/4 inch piece of plywood on the door always kind of wondered why I saw that in people's photos of them doing that I will be mounting a 3/4 inch piece of plywood on my door to cut down the vibrations and help with the sound and get it closer to the grill which I fully understand you're not leaking sound back into the door makes perfect sense what I got to do is try to figure out how much space I have between the front of the speaker and the grill and put a piece of wood or a spacer according to what space is available.

So there are so many ways I can go I can get rid of the JBL amp and sell it and the money I would have to spend on a subwoofer amp I could just combine the cash and get a 5-channel amp it'll do everything all in one package that's an option.

I don't know you have a lot of audio experience I can tell just tell me what from what I've told you I know you can't see what I have you can't hear it but based on what I've told you what would be your next step for me?

I would try and point the tweeters towards you first even if you just use Velcro or double sided tape to temporarily move them and find the best spot don't drill holes until you found what you want. The button on the crossover gan keep them at zero or +3db try pressing it and seeing if that helps. You may find you don't like those tweeters at all. jbl are typically bright and in your face. Amp settings should be pretty straight forward only the gain and the hpf needs to be used no boost or lpf is needed.

That's pretty much free. Mounting the speakers on a stiff mounting plate helps. You can judge the thickness needed by comparing the factory speakers thickness. And get some cheap 1/2"-3/4" by 1inch foam from home Depot the kind you use when installing window units works fine to just seal the gap. Shouldn't be very expensive. And the adhesive should make it easy to install without being overly difficult to remove if needed.

You can test using you radio and direct with your phone like you just did. Are you using Bluetooth when testing the headunit? Bluetooth suffers sound degradation with pretty my every headunit.

I'm not convinced that your headunit is the problem. Maybe a setting in the headunit but I doubt the dac is that bad.

 

[winkychevelle 10+ year member]

I don't think your component set is inherently bad either. Jumping up to high-end of course you are going to notice a difference. High end mids have more stout mids and usually larger tweeters that are more warm than sharp to the ears. I'm thinking those little 20mm tweeters you have are what bugging you but I can till over the internet

 

[Califmike33]

Yeah when I plug into my phone I am using Bluetooth I'm playing something off of YouTube when I use my head unit I'm bluetoothing from my phone to the head unit I do have a few flac files on my head unit which obviously sound better yeah Bluetooth is nowhere near having a direct file hooked into the head unit or through USB stick.

Okay I'm going to take my door panels off I'm going to get some foam some plywood I don't have the stock speakers anymore so I'm going to have to figure out how to determine the space between where the speakers are now and the front of the grill which don't think that's going to be easy because I can't actually see in there there's it's going to be hard to measure without the stock speakers but I'll figure it out and then I'm going to bump them out and put some foam around it so it's basically sealed and only shooting out the grill nothing's being wasted on the sides going back into the door bouncing around I know that's going to help.

Yeah other people have mentioned the JBL tweeters being bright do I have to use JBL tweeters? Can I keep the JBL speakers and then throw in some other brand of tweeters or can you do that?.

I will turn the tweeters out and I agree with you I think it's going to make a big difference because they're basically bouncing off the dash off the windshield that sounds going all over the place I'm going to direct them at me that's going to help doing the door treatment of bumping the speaker out more towards the grill that's going to help.

Obviously the source is important I can't play flac files for every song that I like I just a lot of those songs aren't even made on flac files..

I'm going to see what kind of improvement this makes my next investment is going to be in a subwoofer really don't want to have to buy another amp but.

The tuning guy when I went to the audio shop told me I don't even need rear speakers he says your car is so small inside he goes if you want just pure good sound he said I would just run the front speakers with tweeters he goes unless you want surround sound you don't really need the rear speakers I'm getting mixed views on that from different people because if I can eliminate the rear speakers I would just use my amp I have a freed up channel to run my subwoofer.

Going to do the door treatments tomorrow it's my day off I'm going to work on that get the tweeters out and turn them towards me play with that and see where that gets me before I spend any money.

Appreciate your time effort and your knowledge and I will revisit this thread after I get the door treatment done and see what kind of difference that's going to make..

 

[Califmike33]

You're probably right the tweeters probably are bothering me and it's a big jump I mean I paid like $240 for all four of my jbl's with the crossovers and the tweeters.


The audio frogs I'm looking at would be about $700 for basically the same thing but I'm guessing a pretty good jumping sound quality from what I've read but that's a big price difference I guess it just depends on how far do I want to go.

 

[winkychevelle 10+ year member]

You're probably right the tweeters probably are bothering me and it's a big jump I mean I paid like $240 for all four of my jbl's with the crossovers and the tweeters.


The audio frogs I'm looking at would be about $700 for basically the same thing but I'm guessing a pretty good jumping sound quality from what I've read but that's a big price difference I guess it just depends on how far do I want to go.

Aiming the tweeters will be the most drastic change.

And you could swap just the tweeters using those crossovers assuming the ohm load of the new tweeter is the same as the old tweeter. Crossover point might not be ideal but it would work.

And yea I don't run rear speakers or rather I have them turned away down in my install.

Good front speakers will fill the entire car and keep the sound stage in front of you.

Car audio isn't really about suround sound..

I still recommend doing what is free or nearly free before dropping alot of coin on new gear.

Hell I'm running $30/each home audio mids in my door and I'm happy with them so cost isn't everything. I do plan on pairing them with some high end DD tweeters though. Tweeters are the one thing I'm picky over.

I don't even use the crossover boxes personally and run active instead using a dsp to control my crossover points. But this means my front 2 channels are tweeters and my rear 2 are mids. Like I said I don't use rear speakers.

 

[Califmike33]

Ok thanks, im going to look for some new tweeters, ( larger) and do the door treatment. Im going to ditch the crossovers in the front doors also. Im on it tomorrow and see what changes come, thanks again will keep you posted.

I think i found some nice tweeters on ebay that come with machined aluminum pods, very adjustable.

 

[winkychevelle 10+ year member]

Ok thanks, im going to look for some new tweeters, ( larger) and do the door treatment. Im going to ditch the crossovers in the front doors also. Im on it tomorrow and see what changes come, thanks again will keep you posted.

I think i found some nice tweeters on ebay that come with machined aluminum pods, very adjustable.

If you aren't using the crossover boxes you need to either be able to set a hpf to 1.5x the fs of the tweeter or install bass blocker capacitors which commonly are made for 3khz as a general standard.

Either way do not run your tweeters without a hpf at least set to 2500khz and the db slope should be fairly steep if possible.