I'm pretty familiar with EQ adjustment, it's just a question of getting into the controls for it. Yes, I'd appreciate any and all help with tuning this system once we (my installer guy and I) get it all put together. I figure I'll use the auto-tune then fine tweak it from there. One step at a time.
John Kuthe...
its not your every day EQ. This EQ, you can choose specific frequencies along with how wide of a band that EQ would affect AKA the Q factor. There's a huge learning curve ahead of you with this and a quality RTA (real time analyzer) would help a lot. Basically you play pink noise and it'll show you your whole frequency response and show whats needed to be cut or raised.
Before you even get to the EQ, you will have to set the crossover points to match your vehicle's acoustics along with your tweeter and door speaker comfortable limits. for example a common crossover point for mids and tweeters is 3.5khz where the mid takes care of 3.5khz and below and the tweeter takes care of 3.5khz and above. however its not a complete drop, there's a slope to how fast the mids and tweets die off at that point which is called the Slope adjustment which can be in -6 db, -12db up to -48db. These options allow for a perfect blend for mids and highs.
Another example would be that you vehicle has a natural peak at 3.15khz that hurts your ears and sound quality really bad. You can actually cross your mids over at 2.5khz and your tweets around 3.5khz at a -6 or -12 db slope to naturally tame that nasty peak without even having to touch the EQ, this works A LOT better than trying to mess with the EQ and gives a much more natural sound. Couple this method along with acoustical sound treatments AKA mass loaded vinyl and you got the makings of a fantastic sounding system.
After the crossovers You would need to time align the setup which basically delays the speakers closest towards you so that every speaker driver in the vehicle, when they reproduce soundwaves, they all reach your ears at the same exact time which creates a phantom center stage, this is what makes music sound realistic.
After finishing those two, then would you want to mess with the EQ. Again, i'd highly suggest going manual over auto EQ because we've been though many auto EQs and they all are REALLY bad and innacurate, only the JBL MS-8 which has a fully programmed software built from the ground up along with their enhanced microphone can really do a proper job of autoEQ and tuning.
IF you do proceed to and use the autotune anyways, just dont be surprised when you find out you could have made it sound 100x better going manual lol.
I'd love my system to be the best it can be, and no, I nor my installer guy have a Real Time Analyzer. All we have is ears! Well, and I have the DSP and it's capabilities, the MONO microphone to auto-set the time, etc.
How bad could it all be, yano? ;-) Kind of like a Coleman canoe, not the best canoe but infinitely better than standing on the shore and wishing! ;-)
John Kuthe...
you can definitely just use your ears to set the time alignment and EQ manually, just takes a lot longer and trial and error
It can be bad. Like having the center image move all over the car and you won't know why. Having certain frequencies that localize the speaker. Bass that won't move to the front of car.
Look up the Dayton mic on parts express and software called REW
We have it in my buddy's ride and his arc audio ps-8 it doesnt work too well to be honest.
