Lord Farquaad
Junior Member
I have a 2018 Kia Soul Plus and I'm using an XD400/4v2 amplifier to power JL C5's in the front and stock woofers in the back. A JL Fix is also part of the equation. Beneath the hidden compartment in the hatchback trunk, there is an ACP110LG-TW1 subwoofer powered by itself. A volume knob for said subwoofer exists to the left of my steering wheel.
I listen to a variety of different genres. Hip-hop and hard-hitting subwoofer songs make up about 15-20% of the music I listen to.
Now to the point: I've noticed that for whatever reason, be it the acoustics of the car, or the response of the subwoofer, I get a LOT more energy around 50 Hz than I do at 40 Hz. I'm not an SPL freak who needs to wake up the block with my subwoofer. I don't even listen to music that loudly and disproportionately loud bass isn't really my thing. However, when artists include an 808 sub that hits 40 Hz in their song, I NEED it to sound like it's the biggest thing in the mix. And I CAN turn up my subwoofer loud enough to allow that to happen, but the unfortunate side effect of this is that it makes the frequencies around 50 Hz distractingly loud. My crossover was at 80 Hz so I moved it down to 50 Hz, as low as it can go. With JL's Tun software, I even added an additional low-pass filter to the sub output of the fix at 63 Hz which is as low as that one can go. The combined power of these low-pass filters is enough to slightly remedy the problem but not fix it. (And yes, I soloed the subwoofer using Tun, so I know it's the subwoofer.)
A song that highlights this problem greatly is
. This song contains 4 long, sustained sub notes that approximately go 52 Hz, 62 Hz, 39 Hz, 62 Hz in that order. Then a shorter sounding kick drum comes in whose fundamental is 52 Hz. I've actually examined the waveform of this song and that 39 Hz note is the one with the highest RMS out of the 4 notes. I have a home system with an Outlaw M8 subwoofer and when it hits that low note, it shakes the room. In fact, out of all the songs I've ever played through that home system, that song has had the loudest frequency at approx. 40 Hz out of all of them. I'm not saying this has the loudest 40 Hz out of any song EVER (my hip-hop and electronic library is only so big), but it's worth pointing out that even a lot of hard-hitting trap songs with bass notes at 40 Hz don't even shake the room as much as this one note in this Daft Punk song. THEREFORE, I think it's reasonable that in my car, this note should shake my face a little bit, and of course I can make it do that by turning up my subwoofer, but then that 52 Hz note I mentioned earlier just becomes disproportionately loud. And then once that shorter kick drum comes in, it's just "OOG. OOG. OOG. OOG." It's very annoying and it makes me just not want to turn up the subwoofer at all. And this is just a song that greatly highlights the problem (from an album that has been lauded for its engineering I should mention), but I notice this with other songs too.
I'm already far over my budget for this system. I was just hoping someone had a suggestion to get my bass sounding the way I want it to and hopefully it wouldn't cost much. Thanks.
I listen to a variety of different genres. Hip-hop and hard-hitting subwoofer songs make up about 15-20% of the music I listen to.
Now to the point: I've noticed that for whatever reason, be it the acoustics of the car, or the response of the subwoofer, I get a LOT more energy around 50 Hz than I do at 40 Hz. I'm not an SPL freak who needs to wake up the block with my subwoofer. I don't even listen to music that loudly and disproportionately loud bass isn't really my thing. However, when artists include an 808 sub that hits 40 Hz in their song, I NEED it to sound like it's the biggest thing in the mix. And I CAN turn up my subwoofer loud enough to allow that to happen, but the unfortunate side effect of this is that it makes the frequencies around 50 Hz distractingly loud. My crossover was at 80 Hz so I moved it down to 50 Hz, as low as it can go. With JL's Tun software, I even added an additional low-pass filter to the sub output of the fix at 63 Hz which is as low as that one can go. The combined power of these low-pass filters is enough to slightly remedy the problem but not fix it. (And yes, I soloed the subwoofer using Tun, so I know it's the subwoofer.)
A song that highlights this problem greatly is
. This song contains 4 long, sustained sub notes that approximately go 52 Hz, 62 Hz, 39 Hz, 62 Hz in that order. Then a shorter sounding kick drum comes in whose fundamental is 52 Hz. I've actually examined the waveform of this song and that 39 Hz note is the one with the highest RMS out of the 4 notes. I have a home system with an Outlaw M8 subwoofer and when it hits that low note, it shakes the room. In fact, out of all the songs I've ever played through that home system, that song has had the loudest frequency at approx. 40 Hz out of all of them. I'm not saying this has the loudest 40 Hz out of any song EVER (my hip-hop and electronic library is only so big), but it's worth pointing out that even a lot of hard-hitting trap songs with bass notes at 40 Hz don't even shake the room as much as this one note in this Daft Punk song. THEREFORE, I think it's reasonable that in my car, this note should shake my face a little bit, and of course I can make it do that by turning up my subwoofer, but then that 52 Hz note I mentioned earlier just becomes disproportionately loud. And then once that shorter kick drum comes in, it's just "OOG. OOG. OOG. OOG." It's very annoying and it makes me just not want to turn up the subwoofer at all. And this is just a song that greatly highlights the problem (from an album that has been lauded for its engineering I should mention), but I notice this with other songs too.
I'm already far over my budget for this system. I was just hoping someone had a suggestion to get my bass sounding the way I want it to and hopefully it wouldn't cost much. Thanks.
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