My first "Active" "SQ'ish" build attempt.

[MattinMO]

The thread title should be changed to longest daily driver system install ever

 

[ThxOne Premium Member]

Ahhh, now I know why it sounds different. I guess the DSP pushed an 8v signal to the amps whereas the head unit at max volume may hit 4v to the amps... That explains why I can max the volume and it sounds super clean but not very loud lol. I am off Monday... I am charging the laptop battery now, the DSP will go back in Monday and now I know it is going to be stupid loud.

 

[ThxOne Premium Member]

So far no rain... time to put it back in.

Gonna go 0db to get the input signal then -5db @4Khz, -5db @1Khz, -10db @40hz. I will follow all this up with the miniDSP Mic and some pink noise for the equalizing.

I am gonna do the crossovers as follows:

65hz @ 24db - RF Sub
80 - 4Khz @ 24db - Silverflute Mids
4Khz @ 24db - Arc Audio 1.0 Tweeters (there is an ARC passive crossover on these for protection. ARC says it is a 3,200hz crossover point)

 

[SkizeR 10+ year member]

Do not set amplifier output gains with sine waves. Especially with the speakers connected. Set midbass or sub output with sine wave and dmm/scope, then use the rta to match output of every other speaker to it.

 

[ThxOne Premium Member]

Do not set amplifier output gains with sine waves. Especially with the speakers connected. Set midbass or sub output with sine wave and dmm/scope, then use the rta to match output of every other speaker to it.

I actually did the mid/mdbass gain with a 1Khz -5db tone and adjusted the gain with my DMM/Oscope. It tells me the output voltage while it is showing the sine wave... 17.6v no clipping. 77.44w with a -5db tone. I brought the tweeters up by ear, brought the sub up both ways DMM/Oscope and then by ear. It's gonna chill till Wednesday, my next day off... then it's pink noise and EQ for a couple hours. I did the time alignment and it seems wide though my left side is still noticeably low in the door compared to the right channel which sounds head level. Not sure how to deal with that.

Oh, all EQ's are dead flat right now. The crossovers are as above.

 

[ThxOne Premium Member]

Ok, took the car to the store, rolled the windows down and cranked the volume. It is loud enough all day so no worries there. So good, got the volume, got the left center right imaging good. She is kicking in the treble area and thin in the mids. The sub is perfect, tight, snappy, perfect. SkizeR was right on with the crossover point for that and the high pass for the mid. On a side note, when I set the head units max volume it actually was perfect at 37 of 40 and not 35 of 40 like before.

Any ideas on how I can raise the left speakers image a bit to more or less match the "height" of the right side speakers? I know the kenwood's DSP can do it and it is pretty noticeable... but how do they do it?

 

[SkizeR 10+ year member]

height is going to mostly come down to two things.. phase, and rattles/resonance.

If you have any rattles and resonance, it'll never alleviate the issue. Your ears will always be drawn to it. Phase (no, not polarity. phase) is the second one. If your midbass is out of phase with your midrange, and/or midrange is out of phase with your tweeter, they will never act as "one". When they are all perfectly in acoustic phase, the highest frequency driver will usually dictate stage boundaries


side note, I'm doubting you have any form of good imaging right now if you didn't do any eq and your stage hight is pulling down. Good news to that is, there is a LOT of improvement that can be made in your current system

 

[ThxOne Premium Member]

height is going to mostly come down to two things.. phase, and rattles/resonance.

If you have any rattles and resonance, it'll never alleviate the issue. Your ears will always be drawn to it. Phase (no, not polarity. phase) is the second one. If your midbass is out of phase with your midrange, and/or midrange is out of phase with your tweeter, they will never act as "one". When they are all perfectly in acoustic phase, the highest frequency driver will usually dictate stage boundaries


side note, I'm doubting you have any form of good imaging right now if you didn't do any eq and your stage hight is pulling down. Good news to that is, there is a LOT of improvement that can be made in your current system

I liked my tweeters better in the A-Pillars but whatta ya gonna do. They are in the stock upper door locations now. Midrange and midbass are the same speakers. I have a sunroof with a cover... when the cover is closed the treble is less harsh, cover open and the treble gets harsh. Main rattles I can here are left sun visor and the center forward sunroof area when bass hits. Doors are pretty quiet.

Tweeters face each others in the doors and are about 12" above the mids, which also face each other. Mids upper Xover is 4k @ 24db and so is the tweeter 4k @ 24db. If I remember reading some of the links you sent me, crossovers have a lot to do with phase? It rained today so no EQ settings... no rain forecast for tomorrow.

I just read this: Let me ask you this. If I play a 4Khz tone in the car and the left side sounds lower in the door than the right side... do I then adjust the tweeter delay in the left door to move the sound to be in phase with the mid and tweeter therefore moving the image higher?

Time Alignment Part Three: Delays and Crossovers for Tweeter...

In part two, we discussed comb filtering and how it affects both frequency response and imaging. Comb filtering is caused when two sources of the same...

www.audiofrog.com

 

[ThxOne Premium Member]

Did the mic and EQ stuff in the rain that they said wasn't in the forecast.

 

[SkizeR 10+ year member]

Tweeters face each others in the doors and are about 12" above the mids, which also face each other. Mids upper Xover is 4k @ 24db and so is the tweeter 4k @ 24db. If I remember reading some of the links you sent me, crossovers have a lot to do with phase? It rained today so no EQ settings... no rain forecast for tomorrow.

Yes, crossovers effect phase

RANE Commercial - Knowledge Base

Rane Commercial

www.ranecommercial.com

I just read this: Let me ask you this. If I play a 4Khz tone in the car and the left side sounds lower in the door than the right side... do I then adjust the tweeter delay in the left door to move the sound to be in phase with the mid and tweeter therefore moving the image higher?

Time Alignment Part Three: Delays and Crossovers for Tweeter...

In part two, we discussed comb filtering and how it affects both frequency response and imaging. Comb filtering is caused when two sources of the same...

www.audiofrog.com

Do NOT play a 4khz sine wave. Do not play ANY sine wave with your speakers attached/unmuted. TBH, im not really going to get into this since you are still learning the basics. To much info at once is going to just frustrate you. At this point, just try playing pink noise with left mid and left tweeter playing and flip polarity on the tweeter or mid. pay attention to certain frequencies appearing/disappearing. You want the least cancellation as possible. You can do this for sub to midbass as well. Make sure you don't lose yourself and start adjusting phase of speakers on the side without confirming that your not ending up with each midbass or each tweeter out of phase from each other. Thatll cause even worse problems than what you have now.

Also, did you have a 3 way setup before? what happened to that? why are you purposely spending time to downgrade your system?

 

[ThxOne Premium Member]

Yes, crossovers effect phase

RANE Commercial - Knowledge Base

Rane Commercial

www.ranecommercial.com

Do NOT play a 4khz sine wave. Do not play ANY sine wave with your speakers attached/unmuted. TBH, im not really going to get into this since you are still learning the basics. To much info at once is going to just frustrate you. At this point, just try playing pink noise with left mid and left tweeter playing and flip polarity on the tweeter or mid. pay attention to certain frequencies appearing/disappearing. You want the least cancellation as possible. You can do this for sub to midbass as well. Make sure you don't lose yourself and start adjusting phase of speakers on the side without confirming that your not ending up with each midbass or each tweeter out of phase from each other. Thatll cause even worse problems than what you have now.

Also, did you have a 3 way setup before? what happened to that? why are you purposely spending time to downgrade your system?

Yeah... Had the sub - Silverflutes as midbass on their own rear channels of the 4 channel amp - then had DD 2.75" mids and various brands of tweeters off the front channels of the 4 channel amp... which is why I was also running a 2-way passive crossover to the mids and tweeters since I didn't have dedicated amplifier power for the tweeters. I crossed over the the signal INTO the passive crossover and let it's internal components split the signal to the mids and highs. 65hz sub - 80 to 350hz midbass - 350hz and up into the 2-way passive crossovers. 4 Channel amp, 6 speakers.

Right now I am running the Sub - Mids (6.5") and Arc 1.0 Tweeters.

To answer your question... I don't have a six channel amp. I would rather replace the 4 channel with a 6 channels then add another 2 channel amp. If I had a six channel amp I would be running the DD 2.75" mids again for sure. When they were in the doors the left side sounded like it was coming from my left mirror. I didn't mind that.

 

[ThxOne Premium Member]

That RANE link is interesting reading. It explains a few things and gives me a better understanding of what I am hearing from the left and right sides of the car.

I measured today and I was dead on. The tweeter is exactly 12 inches above the midrange in the lower door. The tweeter is flush mounted to the door panel however the VC of the Silverflute is easily 4 inches behind the panel. If I am comprehending what I have read, I need to make the delay of the midrange and the tweeter to my ears about as dead on as I can... another words, measure as precisely as I can, the distances of those door speakers and re-enter them into the DSP and switch to a Linkwitz-Riley crossover at 24db. Because the distances to the speakers in the right door have less of a deviation in distance to my ears, I am hearing less separation of the speakers... meaning they sound more like one speaker and image is higher because the tweeter dominates. This should get better once I re-measure and set the delays and change the crossover.

I am guessing I will have to measure with the MIC again and re-EQ as there will be some change in the dips and peaks. I have to say, currently, it is LOUD in the car, the right side is out there and vocals land just to the slight right of the center of the steering wheel. Ref. Dwight Yoakam, Radiohead, Inya, and a few others. I haven't finished reading the whole link but I will. I am tired at the moment. I will post what the re-measurment and crossover change if anything tomorrow before I go to work.

Thanks SkizeR

 

[ThxOne Premium Member]

I re-measured all the speakers and I also confirmed the distance of the mids behind the door panels. 3 inches. The left mid was off by a good amount... I don't know where I originally measured that speaker to, it was dark outside. This time I measured to the center of the grill and added 3 inches to the measurements for the mids.

I changed the crossover types to Linkwitz-Riley @ 24db slopes.

I then put in my IASCA tracks and verified (Left, Center, Right, In phase/out of phase) I then played the 7 snare drum track where it pans 7 snares from left to right 2x in a row. Height is flat now at the tops of the door panels and across the dash with the single snare drum hits. I don't know if this was supposed to happen but the tweeters sound brighter. I played track 7 "Gavotte in D Minor" and it sounded GREAT! It is a very wide stereo image track with drums, piano and other instruments. I will test it out more at work whilst I deliver the pizza.

 

[YourNameHere 10+ year member]

where does a guy get the IASCA disc/DL

 

[ThxOne Premium Member]

where does a guy get the IASCA disc/DL

I got mine on eBay, it is an older one... however, the current disc is here at this link

IASCA Disc