what do you think the most important component to an SQ application is..?

[adam71 5,000+ posts]

This is a laughable statement. You sit in a car with two sets of wire run to the speakers on a switch, run one pair of monster cables 16g 9.9% oxygen free copper wire and a second set of Audio Quest Type 6 cables to the same speakers or if you want to get crazy run some pure silver wire in Teflon tubing as a third run. Now sit in the vehicle and listen to the monster cable. Sound will be what you know and love. Switch to the audioquest and you notice a huge gain in bass and in transient sounds (If you have a class A amp that will produce the transient noise) the mids and trebles will come alive with the music, then switch to the silver, It will be a whole different world with gains in all of the same area. If you doubt this find a good high end home audio shop that carries brands like B&W, Paradigm, McIntosh and ask them to demo some high end cables in this fashion on a very high end home audio system and the differences will be amazing! These differences alone in a stranded wire vs. a solid core wire are huge. You should understand the physics and qualities of something before you make a blanket statement like all wire is the same. This is uneducated, inexperienced thinking and results in second place at best.

I agree, the same goes for interconnects. While not one pair can always be said to be better but they DO sound different than one another. Different brands of cables leave different sonic signatures on the signal.

Adam

 

[vurtrider 10+ year member]

I think people aren't quite thinking this through...
The head unit is just a signal source.

The difference between a "high-end" HU and even a stock HU, in terms of basic "read the CD, and turn it into a line-level signal" are very small, if there is even a difference at all.

This is why this logic doesn't make sense, declaring it #1...

Put it into objective terms - what do you expect to gain - in terms of sound quality - from changing your head unit?

And what percentage of improvement do you expect you'll get from that change?

Or, do you understand what's truly changing? Replacing a stock head unit with one that's got a more powerful amplifier section... OK, what was the improvement... the HU, or the increase in power? //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/wink.gif.608e3ea05f1a9f98611af0861652f8fb.gif

Not to mention, consider newer Chrysler HU's -

DLC of Detroit (home of DUMAX) has been working with Chrysler, using a proprietary transfer function measurement device to program EQ curves into a device that is built into new Chryslers... which is designed to optimize that particular signal chain.

Replacing that head unit (or any component in the audio system, for that matter), regardless of quality, is much more likely to degrade the sound quality than improve it.

Oops! "

Ok here you are missing the basic idea of the components in the HU its self. Your head unit takes the digital signal on the CD and runs the signal through components convert the signal to analog i.e. a DAC digital to analog converter. Most decks have a basic 1-bit DAC and a built in amplifier. The amplifier will cause heat in the unit and degrade the signal. The chase on the HU its self will (Depending on the material it is made out of) have a tendency to pick up electric noise in your system. And of course the quality of every component in the HU will have an affect on the signal either through coloration or adding noise.

That said, the SQ HU will have a chasse made of copper to make it impervious to electric noise in the car, it will have 20bit or higher Brown Burr DACs (the best on the market not by opinion but by technical fact!) It will not have a built in amp at all and most of the time the DAC will not even be on board but separate and the signal will be sent digitally. This accounts for all of the problems with adding processors if you can add them in line while the signal is still digital with out converting it until you are ready for the amp. For example you can use a deck with Digital outs to go to an Orion Deq-30 digitally and from there to your DAC then to your amp and you will have no loss of signal or degradation of quality.

As for my last few posts, I am sorry if I come off and an ***, I just have a lot of experience with SQ set ups and know that 99% of car stereo shops are staffed by people who know nothing and will fill your head with it to sell you a product, If you look at the American market for car stereo you rarely see any thing in the 2000$ range because there isn’t a market for quality here, in Japan the people are willing to pay for a nice HU and sound processor to feed a clean signal to the amps so the market if filled with high quality decks and amps that we never see. We apparently would rather bump at 140 db with subs that produce one single note really loud than hear the bass clean and clear. If you want the truth about High-end car audio you have to take the time to find it!

 

[mattj 5,000+ posts]

You are comparing oxygen free copper, to pure silver. Thats like comparing a pair of high end components to some stock speakers. Take a roll of "high end" monster cable speaker wire and run all your audio tests, sit on the RTA, and all that fun stuff then swap your speaker wire with some "low end" OFC wire and tell me that you not only hear a difference in quality, but in loudness as well. Most people cant hear the difference of 3db, and you surely wont hear the difference from wire, considering its both OFC and it suits the application correctly.

 

[maylar 10+ year member]

You should understand the physics and qualities of something before you make a blanket statement like all wire is the same. This is uneducated, inexperienced thinking and results in second place at best.

Please, please explain the physics of one piece of wire to the next and how it relates to what you will hear. Specifically, oxygen free copper and silver vs "regular" wire.

 

[vurtrider 10+ year member]

Please, please explain the physics of one piece of wire to the next and how it relates to what you will hear. Specifically, oxygen free copper and silver vs "regular" wire.

Ok, first you have to understand that the signal when going through a stranded piece of wire will break apart in to each individual strand of copper and travel the length of the wire, then again at the end when it reaches the speaker it has to come back together to create one signal again. During this process transient noise and separation are degraded and the signal becomes “muddy” this is a minimal effect but if your looking to win a comp it can make all of the difference in the world. Transient noise and separation of the signal are what make the music feel live! But the most important aspect of speaker cable is this. Resistance in the speaker circuit is the key factor determining loudspeaker performance. This circuit included the connecting wire between the amplifier terminals and the speaker terminals, the amplifier internal impedance and the impedance of the speaker system. (Also contact resistance at the connecting terminals of the amplifier and speaker system) the DC resistance of a typical 4-ohm four-layer voice coil is around 2.8 ohms and the voice coil contains about 120 feet of number 28 solid copper wire. The wire you add to this will determine you end resistance. Simply put, solid copper wire has less resistance than stranded wire, and silver has less resistance yet. If you want the complete truth, you might not hear the difference if you use 8g. Stranded wire because the resistance is so low. But the standard 20 AWG just will not cut it for any run longer than 5 feet. So I guess I am saying that you need to have the correct size of wire for the run length you intend to make in order to get the full sound, solid copper and silver make this a simpler task!

 

[vurtrider 10+ year member]

You are comparing oxygen free copper, to pure silver. Thats like comparing a pair of high end components to some stock speakers. Take a roll of "high end" monster cable speaker wire and run all your audio tests, sit on the RTA, and all that fun stuff then swap your speaker wire with some "low end" OFC wire and tell me that you not only hear a difference in quality, but in loudness as well. Most people cant hear the difference of 3db, and you surely wont hear the difference from wire, considering its both OFC and it suits the application correctly.

You do realize that 3 db is the half power point. If you cant hear the difference in 3 db then you have been listing to your system too loud and lost your hearing sensitivity.

 

[vurtrider 10+ year member]

Hey all, I just want to say that my comments are all geared toward creating the highest end of car audio systems and do not apply to the average system. after all i thought this threed was about SQ. so don't take offence to what I say. For the average listener none of the statements about wire will make any difference at all but to the SQ set up it will make the difference between night and day. take it easy all and have fun with car audio don't make it life or death. We can all learn from eachother and teach eachother. My replies are only to help point out some of the SQ misconceptions that are being posted on this thread and to post the truth of the matter as it pertains to SQ!

 

[dbhittin 5,000+ posts]

The only copper deck i saw was this custom rockford fosgate deck my neighbor got for his demo truck

 

[vurtrider 10+ year member]

yeah the fosgate ti 2250 made by dennon. it is a nice deck and has good DAC's others would be McItosh MX5000 (japanese market) Sony CDX-C90, some Nac's, Pioneere P9, ect. there are a few of them out there but they are few and far between.

 

[adam71 5,000+ posts]

The only copper deck i saw was this custom rockford fosgate deck my neighbor got for his demo truck

Pioneer (Premier)'s DEX-P9 and Clarion's DRZ-9255 both have a copper-plated chassis.

//content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/biggrin.gif.d71a5d36fcbab170f2364c9f2e3946cb.gif

 

[mattj 5,000+ posts]

You do realize that 3 db is the half power point. If you cant hear the difference in 3 db then you have been listing to your system too loud and lost your hearing sensitivity.

Most people cant hear the difference of 3db

This would be from sitting in someone elses vehicle and trying to determine. Most of the people who have been in car audio for a long time, usually, will have a trained ear which is still a small portion of those not included.

 

[Mark_ab 5,000+ posts]

This is a laughable statement. You sit in a car with two sets of wire run to the speakers on a switch, run one pair of monster cables 16g 9.9% oxygen free copper wire and a second set of Audio Quest Type 6 cables to the same speakers or if you want to get crazy run some pure silver wire in Teflon tubing as a third run. Now sit in the vehicle and listen to the monster cable. Sound will be what you know and love. Switch to the audioquest and you notice a huge gain in bass and in transient sounds (If you have a class A amp that will produce the transient noise) the mids and trebles will come alive with the music, then switch to the silver, It will be a whole different world with gains in all of the same area. If you doubt this find a good high end home audio shop that carries brands like B&W, Paradigm, McIntosh and ask them to demo some high end cables in this fashion on a very high end home audio system and the differences will be amazing! These differences alone in a stranded wire vs. a solid core wire are huge. You should understand the physics and qualities of something before you make a blanket statement like all wire is the same. This is uneducated, inexperienced thinking and results in second place at best.

Weird...I didn't know my 110V and 12V car stereo were the same.

 

[Mark_ab 5,000+ posts]

Resistance in the speaker circuit is the key factor determining loudspeaker performance.

And all this time the rest of the world thought that loudspeaker performance was based upon the driver itself. How foolish.

This circuit included the connecting wire between the amplifier terminals and the speaker terminals, the amplifier internal impedance and the impedance of the speaker system. (Also contact resistance at the connecting terminals of the amplifier and speaker system) the DC resistance of a typical 4-ohm four-layer voice coil is around 2.8 ohms and the voice coil contains about 120 feet of number 28 solid copper wire. The wire you add to this will determine you end resistance.

Ah, nothing like enormously broad sweeping generalizations about the VC configurations of every loudspeaker out there.

Simply put, solid copper wire has less resistance than stranded wire, and silver has less resistance yet. If you want the complete truth, you might not hear the difference if you use 8g. Stranded wire because the resistance is so low. But the standard 20 AWG just will not cut it for any run longer than 5 feet. So I guess I am saying that you need to have the correct size of wire for the run length you intend to make in order to get the full sound, solid copper and silver make this a simpler task!

Who uses 20awg wire in aftermarket setups?

And what of the Skin Effect?

*yawn* //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/rolleyes.gif.c1fef805e9d1464d377451cd5bc18bfb.gif

 

[Mark_ab 5,000+ posts]

Oh! I almost forgot about a SQ source unit requiring 20 bit Burr Brown DAC's. Do you know how much those cost? Piddly. You know how much companies make promoting the name Burr Brown to people when the difference is inaudible? More money than I have in all my mayonaise jars. I didn't know there were so many things "necessary" in order to have a good, clean source unit. Here I thought that someone with quad 24 bit DACs would have the same end result as someone with a single 20bit Burr Brown and single generic 1bit. Again, how foolish.

 

[Mark_ab 5,000+ posts]

Ok here you are missing the basic idea of the components in the HU its self.

Hilarious...Geolemon not grasping the basic idea

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