Looking to get a JBL MS8

[Ge_off_me 5,000+ posts]

Careful with the blanket statements, there. The OP is just asking about ease of use and, at his price point, the MS8 happens to offer the closest match to what he wants. I'm sure he'd rather let the L7 processing take care of his TA and phasing since he's just kinda getting started into all this.
OP, the MS8 is not the simplest piece of equipment to understand, but IMO only it and the Alpine Imprint offer such ease of use without having to spend significantly more. For now, use those frequencies you listed and play around with bringing the bands up and down as you feel works better. Just please, please RTFM. If you don't understand what you're doing going in, you're going to hate your purchase.

I would still recommend the Threesixty.3 over the ms8 any day. Ease of use, options, and sonic purity.

 

[DARKHART 10+ year member]

The ms8 is not exceptionally sonically accurate, hence why no competitor will use them.

Not trying to be an as*hat or anything but this statement is not accurate....it may be better to say that not many competitors use them. I know of a few that are an one more notiable one is my friend Todd Crowder owner of TC Audio who himself won 1st Place Expert Sound and Expert Install at the 2011 Spring Break Nationals and 1st place Xtreme SQ and Xtreme Q at the 2011 USACi World finals with his 10' Camaro SS using an MS-8 in his setup....

here's a link to his shop and magazine articules...

PASMAG | PERFORMANCE AUTO AND SOUND - First Light: 2010 Chevy Camaro SS/RS

TC Audio

 

[Ge_off_me 5,000+ posts]

Not trying to be an as*hat or anything but this statement is not accurate....it may be better to say that not many competitors use them. I know of a few that are an one more notiable one is my friend Todd Crowder owner of TC Audio who himself won 1st Place Expert Sound and Expert Install at the 2011 Spring Break Nationals and 1st place Xtreme SQ and Xtreme Q at the 2011 USACi World finals with his 10' Camaro SS using an MS-8 in his setup....here's a link to his shop and magazine articules...

PASMAG | PERFORMANCE AUTO AND SOUND - First Light: 2010 Chevy Camaro SS/RS

TC Audio

You're right I should have been more specific. VERY few competitors use them. This year at Meca finals most of the first place winners were using Mosconi 6to8s and the Helix processors. Same goes to most of the other competition formats.

It is true however that the ms8 is not nearly as sonically pure as other processors.

 

[Julian 10+ year member]

Why not a Mini DSP 2x4? Much cheaper and filled with features.. You can stack 2 for 4x8 channels of processing

 

[DARKHART 10+ year member]

It is true however that the ms8 is not nearly as sonically pure as other processors.

I'm just picking at ya cause it's Christmas //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/veryhappy.gif.fec4fed33b4a1279cf10bdd45a039dae.gif as far as sonically pure, well the processor shouldn't add anything to the sound itself unless it was designed to do so and in saying that I will say this, I've listened to Todd's Camaro several times and just this past July I got a chance to listen to Scott's Altima as it sat right next to Todd's car and sonically both were incredible. I say this because everyone knows the level of car that Scott has and he's running a moded Audison Bit processor and Todd the MS-8, you could not hear ANTHING other than the music IMO as it was intended to be heard in both cars.....

 

[West]

Why not a Mini DSP 2x4? Much cheaper and filled with features.. You can stack 2 for 4x8 channels of processing

I highly doubt you could make a Mini DSP sound as good as a 6to8, Helix, PS8. Why? Because you are getting a generic DSP, yes the high end mini's have 24 bit dac's, but that doesn't mean much. I recently bought a $400 Denon receiver with a 24 bit generic dsp/dac and the sound was absolutely terrible through HDMI. Needless to say I sent it back to the store. I would love to a mini dsp for time alignment for subs, where a large amount of detail is not required. But even then you would have to try it out to see how it sounds. Have you used one? How did it sound?

The fact is, and it's somewhat unfortunate, that you get what you pay for. Also will all the processors, including the MS8 you still need a fair bit of experience (and some additional hardware or some serious tuning skills) to get the most out of any of the processors. You also end up paying more for the processors because they come with more polished software and often more tuning options.

 

[West]

One more thing, many of those processors are using the same boards and components, so in reality they are probably more similar than the manufacturers would like people to know. The differences boil down to the software and some baseline settings...

 

[Ge_off_me 5,000+ posts]

I'm just picking at ya cause it's Christmas //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/veryhappy.gif.fec4fed33b4a1279cf10bdd45a039dae.gif as far as sonically pure, well the processor shouldn't add anything to the sound itself unless it was designed to do so and in saying that I will say this, I've listened to Todd's Camaro several times and just this past July I got a chance to listen to Scott's Altima as it sat right next to Todd's car and sonically both were incredible. I say this because everyone knows the level of car that Scott has and he's running a moded Audison Bit processor and Todd the MS-8, you could not hear ANTHING other than the music IMO as it was intended to be heard in both cars.....

One of the more impressive cars that I heard was Grayson Strakele's lancer. I will say that his car sounded absolutely amazing and he won the modified class at finals.

Also Steve Cook's car was something else as well!

 

[butterMilk 10+ year member]

So I want my car to sound really good, but I'm not looking for award winning sound. Would you guys say that most people would be very happy with the sound you can get from the jbl ms8? Ive read a lot of reviews and most people say it sounds really good. I just dont want to be disappointed.

I just read the user manual and it seems very easy to install, so I'm just about ready to order one.

 

[Ge_off_me 5,000+ posts]

So I want my car to sound really good, but I'm not looking for award winning sound. Would you guys say that most people would be very happy with the sound you can get from the jbl ms8? Ive read a lot of reviews and most people say it sounds really good. I just dont want to be disappointed.
I just read the user manual and it seems very easy to install, so I'm just about ready to order one.

Honestly, you're going to do what you want to do. I feel like you would be better off with the rockford 3sixty.3 it is a much more well-rounded piece.

 

[mahc 10+ year member]

This guy looks satisfied.

 

[Beerdrnkr 5,000+ posts]

So I want my car to sound really good, but I'm not looking for award winning sound. Would you guys say that most people would be very happy with the sound you can get from the jbl ms8? Ive read a lot of reviews and most people say it sounds really good. I just dont want to be disappointed.
I just read the user manual and it seems very easy to install, so I'm just about ready to order one.

My car sounds pretty **** good right now. I think you'll be happy with it. As simple as it is to set up though, you will definitely have to run the calibrations more than once and play with the xover points and slopes and then you can do a little fine tuning with the eq. Even playing around with head movement to get a good center image will take a bit of messing around with. It's still probably the easiest solution out there right now for setting up a good sounding system. The key is having a center channel though, it makes a big difference!

 

[Ge_off_me 5,000+ posts]

He can be happy with it all he wants, it doesn't mean it is the easiest to use or the best processor. People are happy with Focal aren't they? //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/rolleyes.gif.c1fef805e9d1464d377451cd5bc18bfb.gif

 

[butterMilk 10+ year member]

My car sounds pretty **** good right now. I think you'll be happy with it. As simple as it is to set up though, you will definitely have to run the calibrations more than once and play with the xover points and slopes and then you can do a little fine tuning with the eq. Even playing around with head movement to get a good center image will take a bit of messing around with. It's still probably the easiest solution out there right now for setting up a good sounding system. The key is having a center channel though, it makes a big difference!

A center channel is definitely on the to do list. How did you go about doing the centre channel? How do you recommend I do it?

Right now I have a 4 channel amp to use for the mids and tweets up front, was thinking of running the stock rear speakers on the ms8. And centre channel on the ms8.

Or use the 4 channel amp for front mids and the rear coaxial mids. And run the front tweeters on the ms8 and the centre speaker on the ms8.

I am wondering how I hook up the output for the centre channel and the sub channel to a amp. The outputs are for a single rca hookup. If I found a small 2channel amp to use for the centre channel, would I just use a rca "y" splitter for input to the amp. And the same for the sub amp? I know some mono amps have the single rca hookup, but mine has 2 rca plugs(1 red and 1 white) just use a splitter?

 

[upvan257]

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