Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Stereo Better Car Audio

On the way over to the two stores visited I tried to quantify what I didn't like a little more. I think its all in the upper bass. I listen to a lot of talk radio and even on female voices I notice that boomy/muddy quality creeping in.

A quick search shows that the vocal range is 80Hz to 1000Hz and that the female voice fundamental is somewhere in the 150Hz - 250Hz range.

From that I gather my primary issue is in the sub 500Hz region. I am willing to bet that the speakers in my Escort had a fairly high roll off that eliminated this region so I perceived better quality. I was getting all my bass information from the harmonics.

I think that stock head units are notorious for crappy power output, but I am not sure how much is gained with a replacement head unit

Out of curiosity, have any of you sat in the drivers seat, played tones, and metered the response?

I haven't been "into" car audio for many years, but I've owned SPL meters forever and never attempted to plot a cars' system...

I remember when a 20 watt car amp was considered quite healthy. Of course that was 30 years ago.AACK!
He's right about deck power- depending on speaker sensitivity, a stock deck can sound good, it just wont be loud. I feel this is an exception to my "front stage only" prefrence. If you only have deck power you're gonna need all 4 speakers running for volume reinforcement. I've read that a decent stock deck is equivilent to a mid-line aftermarket. There was a guy on a car audio forum I used to frequent who built a competition winning system using a stock deck and a small 20 watt amp on eack channel. It wasn't loud, but played within it's limits the sq was fantastic.
If you get component speakers they will come with crossovers which will need to be mounted somewhere dry.

Thats the point. What I was describing was not the amps being driven to distortion.

Mark. I've been wondering how I can get my computer next to my car so I can run REW sweeps.

I actually started to do this with my wifes car but gave up when I had a hard time getting the real traps tones to play through the usb drive I was using.

They were in the $400 dollar range but that was Canadian and some of it was install. I had alot of gear put in I think I got a good deal.

Any secondary amp should make a huge differance over the stock head unit. I put a 70W x4Ch sony xplode into a friends work truck with some Alpin speakers I had and he thinks is absoultly rocks.

Later
Phil

cool. Id be interested to hear how they compare with the energy line. They must sound great because I am more than happy with our speakers (they are no m80's but sound pretty stinkin' good)

Yeah they are very nice sounding, my objective was quality not quanity. But to get quality at a high volume range you need huge wattage increases hence the HP4. The single sub in the custom box sounds good too. I think I will go get a meter this weekend and see the db on them LOL now I am currious. I do know I can flex my door pannles

Later
Phil

Oh I am running a Kenwood KDC-X792 with a 24 bit D/A converter and 8 times over sampling. 0.008 THD at 1KHz it sounds pretty good with a good recording.