Car Stereo technical question

[lschwart]

While getting used to a new pair of speakers in the car I've gotten interested in just what the controls for Bass Frequency, Bass Band Width, and Treble Frequency, are actually supposed to do to the sound.

I can hear subtle differences as I move through the 8 settings my player offers for the bass (60hz, 80hz, 100hz, and 200hz for the bass frequency and simply four settings from narrow to wide for the bass frequency). I notice less difference with the treble settings (10kHz, 12.5kHz, 15kHz, and 17.5kHz). The problem is that there are an awful lot of possible combinations here. It would be very helpful to me to have a little bit of a grasp on what these numbers actually mean in terms of sound. Then I feel I can more fruitfully use my ears to determine a good set of settings for general listening.

Any help from some of you out there would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!!

L.

[lschwart]

No replies yet. Hmmmm....

Does anyone know where I might begin poking around on the internet or in books to find a good layman's explanation of these things?

Thanks.

L.

[Sckott]

This is just me talkin', so...IMHO:

Car stereo can be a mess because of one big thing: You car provides a tight listening space with environmental differences that could mean a big deal, much more than common space in a living room with a few plants, rugs and curtains.

Drop the window of the car, and the low frequencies loosen. On a foggy or humid/rainy day, the midrange and bass frequencies get fast and easy to listen to. Really! I've gone driving on a rainy day noticing a HUGE difference in the sound with the windows rolled UP. Air pressure. Enemy or friend??

The other difference is, most speakers that FIT in these cars do not allow for the splatter of a full range of sound. In fact, some foreign and US cars must conform to a tighter than average space, so those cones going in 3 1/2 areas aren't going to push good air at all, just a very narrow frequency band that you can fit a few playing cards between. Once more, even the door provides a non-conforming baffle to enhance or decrease speaker performance.

So, that's why I have a bazooka tube. I'd rather not have it, but there's NO speakers on the auto market of any brand using coils and cones that can reproduce a good sound of a small enclosure usually less than 6" and a depth of less than 4". I've owned a Saturn, Mustang and Honda with basically the same philosophy... Use appropriate cones, but adjust a subwoofer to simulate a bass frequency that makes sense.

You can't be an audiophile in a car unless you spend a lot of time or money, and you have to be soft about certain details, or you will go mad.

Along with that, most settings in head units like your's are using simple EQ bends that are boosting signals usually more than 1-2db at a time. That's just stoopid. IMHO, if you want to know the full potential of a head unit, play it flat. Don't boost ****. My JVC unit has something called BBE on it. It seems to only provide the equivalent of a loudness button to the midrange and the low frequencies. Makes MFSL discs sound like elephant feet! Head units are not made for audiophile nuts (Unless...I think McIntosh makes head units?) they are made for bass lusty 19 year old kids with an empty Visa card, boom box experience and they want the back seat to sound like a rap concert. Those buttons are not seriously helpful unless the car sounds sweeter with it OR has a lot of amplification to aid. Those cones won't show you amazing differences in the sound, but the head unit is trying to give you those things. Again, seems like an amp will make a bigger difference.

You're going to be a tad neurotic with settings like these, but they do not provide EQ curves that make any sense for the most part, unless you like em'. Now, people have bought amps and sometimes EQ's for the car, which work very well, but you'll find you're driving less and futzing more.

This is what works to advantage: Above average cone fits, from Pioneer and Sony for instance, tailored to your sound likings, a sub for the trunk and try to go for an amp. Even 45 watts may sound like plenty, but you'll find that adding an amp will give you a much better picture of sound at low levels.

You may go for more explanation than this, but like I said before, your car is a sonic nightmare. Those who have convertibles have it even WORSE. Use what works for you, but for me, putting strength in most every corner of the vehicle makes a HUGE difference and will give you a sound most comfortable. It can be expensive. Like anything audio, the rabbit hole is as deep as you like it to be....

[lschwart]

Sckott,

Thanks for your reply. I've basically given up on trying for really great sound in the car. The old Alpine speakers I put in recently are pretty good given the constraints you describe very well, and I'm going to just stick with them for now. I play the unit flat and keep the BBE off (I hate the sort of exaggeration it gives the sound). What I'd like to understand better are what exactly those settings I mentioned are actually supposed affect. I can hear subtle differences in the character of the bass, but I feel if I understood better what the controls do, I'd be able to pick a particular combination of seetings and leave it at that.

Thanks again,by the way for the recommendation on the Neil Young CD's I'm quite happy with the sound of EKTIN. Especially on headphones, it has a lot of very nice detail, and it's not at all harsh-sounding.

L.

[Sckott]

I hope the Neil Young CDs never change. People should pay attention to just how good those CDs sound. I was listening to the 1st America CD (WB) and that CD seems to give a very amazing performance just about anywhere. Seems to be recorded really well, and the effects they used were simple, like chamber echo and mic placements inside the guitars.

EKTIN is really a sonic loophole. It was meant to sound raw and edgy, but the vocals and compression is what we're used to, so a good mastering of that record means lots even still!

Another annoying phenomena is the fact that recently mastered CDs, as scorched as they are MAY sound 100% better in the car at first. Try it!

This is another fact of life in the mastering stage of the labels. They certainly DO cater to the sound approval in a car. It's like trying to improve the pitching arm of someone while they're drunk. How the hell can you tailor a sound for the car and STILL make it listen-able somewhere else? Actually, you cannot. But the cheap and scary ways they market electronics on the market like car and home speakers (boom boxes) tend to go hand in hand with poor mastering.

We on SHF trash the hell out of the engineers that make a mess out of the sound, but the reason it's done is actually both valid and sad at the same time. Much like a cheap RKO movie, we're reduced to what Zappa once called "Cheapness".

Yes, so those controls on the head unit may not effect ANYTHING. The confined "actual" frequency response of those cones may not give you any leverage or difference. If you like it, leave it, but like we all know some CDs are tailored so extremely different, trying to have LOUDNESS settings to correct it is much LIKE trying to pitch over the plate while you're wasted. You're most likely to hit the fence! :)

So work with what you want to. Believe me, it can get bananas. I have a head unit with a bad output cap in it, and the sound in the right channel is driving me nutty. Oh, like I wanna tear apart my car on my vacation time! Lemmie tell ya!

[MMM]

I'm guessing, but I get the impression you're talking about an electronic tone control and crossover built into your head unit. If so, the "Bass Frequency" would be the center point of whatever boost or cut (if any) you may add or subtract, and the "Bass Bandwidth" would be a control to select the frequency that the high-pass filter starts cutting off frequencies below (ex. if you select 60hz, frequencies below that with be rolled off, the extent of how much depends on how steep the slope of the crossover is) - it would be used to filter frequencies out of the signal being directed to smallish drivers that can't handle certain frequencies without noticeable distortion, and is often used if you have a seperate woofer in your car where these frequencies could hopefully be more faithfully reproduced. Also, sometimes people have seperate electronic crossovers (either in their head unit, built into a seperate amplifier, or stand alone units) for each speaker or for the seperate for the front and rear pairs, and if one set of speakers is smaller than the other and can't handle lower frequencies so well, they may engage the high pass filter only on the smaller speakers (likely in the front), and let the larger ones (usually in the rear) run full range, especially if there is no seperate woofer in the car.

Like Scott said above - these controls may or may not be useful. Just try to get the overall most natural sound you can out of it, even if it's not entirely ideal.