I am kind of an old school Car Audio enthusiast from the 80's for sure. I got a new Alpine deck for my car and just couldn't stop there when my original CD player stopped working. Picked up a couple of amps and threw a nice set of comps along with a sub. It didn't sound brilliant when I picked it up, but thanks to the 9-band EQ on the Alpine head unit, I am able to sculpt the sound enough so that I can get it loud without hurting my ears. Always the holy grail of audio adjustment....sound quality.
Firstly, I notice that these days....a lot of the new CD's simply do not sound great at high volume. The lack of dynamic range created by brick-walling the levels just really comes out at high volume. You can hear the effects of compressing the bass kick with loud guitars and the whole thing just comes off as pretty messy next to say a pre mid 1990's source. (I was just playing some older Billy Idol Vital Idol remix CD in my car this morning that sounded so damned great by the way....but I digress) I like a lot of heavy metal and hard rock too, so I am up against a really big mess with those genres.
Anyway, so the EQ is kind of an essential piece of the system for me. I was able to take a frequency sweep and adjust down all the ones that sound shrill to the ear and that made a drastic overall improvement to begin with. However all CD's are not created equal for sure...and you still like to adjust on the run. Bringing me to my point of how much I miss a decent tactile EQ on a head unit. In fact, I once had a 9+ band tactile-slider EQ unit mounted below my head-unit back in the days where I could simply reach down and adjust up in a hot second. No more of that. Headunits now have digital EQ's that take no less than 20 clicks to get the adjusting done. Yeah...I am really **** about sound quality and need my hands on it.
The question is, how do I solve my problem? For an EQ geek like myself....how do I get the joy I need in tight control of SQ? I was thinking of getting the Kicker 30 Band EQ to adjust the car flat, and then just using the head unit for the small additional adjustments need for individual CD's with mix deficiencies...but still that is pretty convoluted. Looking for suggestions. Thanks.
Firstly, I notice that these days....a lot of the new CD's simply do not sound great at high volume. The lack of dynamic range created by brick-walling the levels just really comes out at high volume. You can hear the effects of compressing the bass kick with loud guitars and the whole thing just comes off as pretty messy next to say a pre mid 1990's source. (I was just playing some older Billy Idol Vital Idol remix CD in my car this morning that sounded so damned great by the way....but I digress) I like a lot of heavy metal and hard rock too, so I am up against a really big mess with those genres.
Anyway, so the EQ is kind of an essential piece of the system for me. I was able to take a frequency sweep and adjust down all the ones that sound shrill to the ear and that made a drastic overall improvement to begin with. However all CD's are not created equal for sure...and you still like to adjust on the run. Bringing me to my point of how much I miss a decent tactile EQ on a head unit. In fact, I once had a 9+ band tactile-slider EQ unit mounted below my head-unit back in the days where I could simply reach down and adjust up in a hot second. No more of that. Headunits now have digital EQ's that take no less than 20 clicks to get the adjusting done. Yeah...I am really **** about sound quality and need my hands on it.
The question is, how do I solve my problem? For an EQ geek like myself....how do I get the joy I need in tight control of SQ? I was thinking of getting the Kicker 30 Band EQ to adjust the car flat, and then just using the head unit for the small additional adjustments need for individual CD's with mix deficiencies...but still that is pretty convoluted. Looking for suggestions. Thanks.