Building the top notch SQ system

[TaylorFade 10+ year member]

Yes, I would agree with that. I'm always for a good install and I definitely appreciate taking proper steps to ensure a quiet interior. My point is that every piece of equipment has its maximum potential and the proper install, tuning, etc ensure that this potential is realized. For example, and this is my main point, not all speakers are equal...or else everyone would be buying the cheap stuff. It is a fact that some speakers lack transparency, some lack the upper end, some lack low end, some are less detailed, etc. Agreed that you can make $2,000 speakers sound like $50 ones by being careless with the install, but both properly installed, there's no way the converse is true. You can spend all the time in the world on the install and every minute detail, but if the speaker lacks transparency...nothing is making up for it. Channel separation keep_hope_alive mentioned seems to be something of note and amp lacking proper channel separation isn't going to magically get better just because it has enough power.

I won't mention any names, but there was once a well known SQ competitor that used horrid drivers in his world class install. They were behind grills with a boner brand logo on them so everyone assumed that was what was in there. He won his class and gave out a trillion demos and everyone was amazed how good it was. All the while he snickered.

Conversely... my buddy has a set of Morel Supremo on Zapco. Just haphazardly tossed in the doors. It sounds like ass. We're talking about a $4,500 set of comps here run by some of the best SQ amps ever made. He doesn't give a shit. All he listens to is AM talk radio. Lmao.

You know what has better channel separation than a high dollar amp? Two less expensive amps- one on each channel.

Are some drivers better than others? Of course. Are some more versatile? Obviously. Could you hear the difference between a $50 one and a $500 one? Maybe. Maybe not.

You keep saying transparency. What makes one driver more transparent than another?

What kind of drivers do you think I'm talking about here? Walmart type shit? There are plenty of low cost, VERY reasonable transducers that rival overpriced brand names. You just have to know what you're looking for and how to use them properly.

 

[fly_marlin]

I won't mention any names, but there was once a well known SQ competitor that used horrid drivers in his world class install. They were behind grills with a boner brand logo on them so everyone assumed that was what was in there. He won his class and gave out a trillion demos and everyone was amazed how good it was. All the while he snickered.
Conversely... my buddy has a set of Morel Supremo on Zapco. Just haphazardly tossed in the doors. It sounds like ass. We're talking about a $4,500 set of comps here run by some of the best SQ amps ever made. He doesn't give a shit. All he listens to is AM talk radio. Lmao.

You know what has better channel separation than a high dollar amp? Two less expensive amps- one on each channel.

Are some drivers better than others? Of course. Are some more versatile? Obviously. Could you hear the difference between a $50 one and a $500 one? Maybe. Maybe not.

You keep saying transparency. What makes one driver more transparent than another?

What kind of drivers do you think I'm talking about here? Walmart type shit? There are plenty of low cost, VERY reasonable transducers that rival overpriced brand names. You just have to know what you're looking for and how to use them properly.

Granted. I'm not a driver engineer, I just know what I hear. R&D paired with good materials I'm guessing makes one speaker more transparent than another. Btw next time I look for comps, make sure you're on that thread so I know exactly which ones to get to save money. No sarcasm here either, for real.

 

[LosIsATool 5,000+ posts]

Cheap equipment. Speakers, amps, source. Will fall on its face when the volume knob goes up.

 

[tommymilan311]

Started playing with my "stage" today. Sounded super flat, still using Pandora. I'm going to get away from that shortly. I only have a Slipknot CD laying around. I've seen Slipknot live, if they recorded properly they have a lot of pieces and this should help me with width and depth. Kinda hard to get width and depth with the poor recording/streaming, all kinda sounds flat. I could tell the vocalist was in the middle, lead left, rhythm right. The drums sounded less prominent than the vocals, but not really behind them, does that make sense? All the sound seemed like it was coming from the center of my window, but down by the security blinker thing. So I'll need to figure out how to raise that, and again, it could just be the recording. I think I'm going to have to really work on sound proofing my car, but I was sitting in works parking lot so I wasn't competing with any road noise.

I did do a little research last night regarding CD quality VS MP3 quality. What it came down to was 320K and CD quality had a unnoticeable difference. I can believe that when it comes to listening in headphones, or on a phone. But what about cars, or home theater were a stage is set and your locking for "live performance" type quality? Do they still all have there own space? This was much harder to find and I had found no definitive answer.

Here is a slide show I just found this morning: http://www.music.mcgill.ca/~hockman/documents/Pras_presentation2009.pdf

It pretty interesting if you have some time. This one says that most common and even "trained" listeners cannot tell the difference, but expert listens could in their genre of expertise, or something like that.

 

[tommymilan311]

Cheap equipment. Speakers, amps, source. Will fall on its face when the volume knob goes up.

All that together probably. My buddy has a cheap amp. He also has cheap speakers. And a cheap HU. Its loud though //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/smile.gif.1ebc41e1811405b213edfc4622c41e27.gif All he cares about is being heard miles away

 

[tommymilan311]

I know I've said this a few times. Thanks everyone for helping. I've been learned a ton the past few days. Lots of good information and links. Thanks again for making this a pleasant environment for newbs like me. I got a lot of questions that probably seem dumb to some of you, thanks for not making me feel dumb.

 

[trumpet 5,000+ posts]

There is a link between what can be measured and what we consider to be good sound from speakers. Sound quality isn't purely subjective. However, the current state of the audio industry is a bit of a mess. This video introduces some really good topics to think about:

 

[LosIsATool 5,000+ posts]

Started playing with my "stage" today. Sounded super flat, still using Pandora. I'm going to get away from that shortly. I only have a Slipknot CD laying around. I've seen Slipknot live, if they recorded properly they have a lot of pieces and this should help me with width and depth. Kinda hard to get width and depth with the poor recording/streaming, all kinda sounds flat. I could tell the vocalist was in the middle, lead left, rhythm right. The drums sounded less prominent than the vocals, but not really behind them, does that make sense? All the sound seemed like it was coming from the center of my window, but down by the security blinker thing. So I'll need to figure out how to raise that, and again, it could just be the recording. I think I'm going to have to really work on sound proofing my car, but I was sitting in works parking lot so I wasn't competing with any road noise.
I did do a little research last night regarding CD quality VS MP3 quality. What it came down to was 320K and CD quality had a unnoticeable difference. I can believe that when it comes to listening in headphones, or on a phone. But what about cars, or home theater were a stage is set and your locking for "live performance" type quality? Do they still all have there own space? This was much harder to find and I had found no definitive answer.

Here is a slide show I just found this morning: http://www.music.mcgill.ca/~hockman/documents/Pras_presentation2009.pdf

It pretty interesting if you have some time. This one says that most common and even "trained" listeners cannot tell the difference, but expert listens could in their genre of expertise, or something like that.

It's not just about the bit rate. It degrades as it goes through the system. Some HUs like the 80prs have a good DAC on the USB. That can help but you still lose something in compression.

 

[tommymilan311]

It's not just about the bit rate. It degrades as it goes through the system. Some HUs like the 80prs have a good DAC on the USB. That can help but you still lose something in compression.

I have thought that, but we are moving to the digital world. I know this because yesterday my lady traded her '11 soul for a '14 soul, and you wanna know something odd? It didn't come with a CD player, big *** 9" screen, no CD player. This car is set up for SQ, seriously, they had sound engineers set the system up perfectly (or so they say). It has a 6ish inch center speaker, 2 tweeters, 2 front doors, 2 rear doors, and a sub, but no way to get the highest quality music. Sound stage seemed set up right from what I could hear through a 320K track. I could hear depth and width. Not extremely loud, but clean at 42/45, best at 40/45. Just why would they do so much to tune and set this up right if you can't get the highest quality out of it?

My assumption is you can, but not from a rip. Most recording and mastering these days is done digitally. So it is being compressed while mastering and being put on a CD from a digital format, most likely WAV. Also, wouldn't buying from iTunes be as high as quality as a CD? It isn't being compressed from a CD (or I assume apple doesn't have a guy buying a ripping CDs, they are likely just getting the raw data from the production company). Now, when speaking of older or vintage recordings there would be a quality difference because back in the 70s. 80s, and even 90s things were different. So I could see a quality difference in a CD vs 320K MP3. But in terms of new music being recorded in a "digital environment" shouldn't have much of a draw back.

This is just my assumption, and I'm going to put it to the test. I have one of the newer Slipknot CDs on hand, I'm going to do a side by side with the same song. CD Vs 320K. See what I hear, if I hear anything. I'm going to do this test again later when I have sound proofed my car, EQed it properly, and set a proper stage, and see if a difference is heard. I'll be looking mostly for depth and width, to make sure the conversion doesn't flatten it out. Everything sounds very flat right now, but I'm not listening to the highest quality music.

 

[keep_hope_alive Premium Member]

My amps always cost more than my speakers. No exceptions. Amps are so much more complicated than speakers. Speakers are simple devices with very few components. Amps have thousands of parts. Cheap amps are noisy and I don't tolerate noise. I can play zero bit tracks and have silence.

saying the amp isn't important is like saying your whole car should be worth less than the rims and tires. Are there differences in tire quality? absolutely. Will tires fix poor handling and performance? Not entirely. A yugo handles like a yugo regardless of the tire package.

I used to have thousands of albums in 128 and 256 mp3. I was constantly noticing the compression. I deleted them all. I began ripping my CD's (500 or so) to 320kbps. For background music they are fine. I don't do any critical listening on mp3. I use original CD's or a lossless rip.

Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk

 

[fly_marlin]

My amps always cost more than my speakers. So much more complicated that speakers. No exceptions. Cheap amps are noisy and I don't tolerate noise. I can play zero bit tracks and have silence.
I used to have thousands of albums in 128 and 256 mp3. I was constantly noticing the compression. I deleted them all. I began ripping my CD's (500 or so) to 320kbps. For background music they are fine. I don't do any critical listening on mp3. I use original CD's or a lossless rip.

Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk

That's exactly what I'm doing. Deleted everything sub-320kbps. Started ripping lossless WAV files. Now I'm addicted to used media stores.

 

[tommymilan311]

That's exactly what I'm doing. Deleted everything sub-320kbps. Started ripping lossless WAV files. Now I'm addicted to used media stores.

Unfortunately, we don't have any used media stores around that I know of. Man, that also sounds expensive, especially considering it drives me nuts if I hear the same song in a day, let alone hours, or an hour. Pandora just needs to stream lossless media. That would make life much easier on me. Maybe when cell companies come out with 6G or something they will actually be able to stream a lossless file.

 

[LosIsATool 5,000+ posts]

Unfortunately, we don't have any used media stores around that I know of. Man, that also sounds expensive, especially considering it drives me nuts if I hear the same song in a day, let alone hours, or an hour. Pandora just needs to stream lossless media. That would make life much easier on me. Maybe when cell companies come out with 6G or something they will actually be able to stream a lossless file.

I went from having 7 crap CDs and 1 good CD to having 25 good CDs in a few weeks. Giving away the crappy 7. I kind of added that into my overall budget.

 

[tommymilan311]

I went ahead and emailed Pandora to see if maybe they have plans to change up their music quality for mobile applications in the future. Upon further review, it looks like the highest quality stream they have in mobile devices is 64K AAC+, which upon further review of AAC+ they claim that a 128k AAC+ file is about the same quality of 250-320k MP3 (a blind listening servery also confirmed it). So, even the 64k is only at 128k MP3 quality at best. Not good enough, that is upsetting. I could have gotten a much cheaper HU without Pandora had I previously known that.

I also canceled my subscription. It turns out that you only get 192k up from 128k only on the desktop. I can deal with a few commercials and save $6 a month.

 

[tommymilan311]

In 3-6 years I predict you will not want to change out the head unit in a new car. The industry is in a major shift right now and your beloved X6300BHS is going to be left in the dust. What you're going to need is an OEM integration expert.

You are 100% right. I think if I bought a new car today I wouldn't change it. I think if I had bought my car with the upgraded screen, I wouldn't have changed it. But, what is the option for amps? Do I just buy the converters that splice into the speaker wires? Or do they have processors that do that? Or will I have to do a build like Keep_Hope_Alive's with the 2nd deck for controls?

My lady got a 2014 Kia Soul yesterday. Yeah, love the screen... No CD player though.