Chumpman

hey guys!

ever since i got my sound setup, i've never sat in the back of my car til just recently... and DAMN!!! the bass totally drowns EVERYTHING out!!! hahahhaha!

any idea's how i could fix this? my setup is listed in my sig... i've tried playing with some stuff, but it's still pretty bad... currently these are my settings:

HU settings:
HPF 12.5k
LPF 80
treble +5db @ 100
bass +6 db @ 80
time correction +23 forward

amp settings:
level +0dB
subsonic filter 50
LPF 80

any suggestions would be greatly appreciated! the sound is still really clean and i'm getting good sq, just that the bass is way higher than the treble and it sounds like a toilet in the rear! hahahha!

onehawaiian

here's the problem: you are in a car. not the best place for audio, as you have the sounds coming from the wrong places (sub in the back, spkrs on the side). you can get good imaging from the front, and tweak it about as good as possible, but then the rear will be lacking. that's just how it is. the best you could do would maaaybe try an eq. now b4 we go into this, how important are your backseat listeners? do you have ppl in the back a lot? if the rear is not really that important, i say just keep your imaging up front the way it is. optimum imaging would probably be all your sounds (including sub) coming from the front. but as stated earlier, you are in a car. in the meantime, you could lower your sub volume, and fade a little more to the rear... but just remember it's your car and your sounds.

prefecting imaging/sound in a car is not easy nor cheap.

Chumpman

hmm... i c...
dohness! cuz you see, when i was first tuning my system, I was sitting in the driver's seat and reaching in behind the passenger seat (my amp is under it) and making everything just perfect for the front row ppl... the whole reason i checked the rear was one of my chick friends (i was driving 4 girls) said the bass was hurting her ears -- and you NEVER wanna make the chicks uncomfortable! -- so i turned it down... then later that day i sat in the back to see just how bad it was, and yeah... when the front is tuned perfectly the back is just horrible!!!

i was just hoping there'd be a fix for my car... (i've dumped 4x as much cash on my home theater setup and it works just FINE!!! )

onehawaiian

yeah, home theatre is actually the best for consumer audio. all your spkrs can be setup with surround sound, you have a center channel, your sub is usually in front or someplace where imaging is optimized...

but in a car, you only have so much to work with. and yeah, i've had (female) friends complain that the sub was a bit overpowering, but since i don't really need to bump hard, i didn't mind turning down the bass. it affected the front, but the rear passengers seemed a bit more pleased and comfortable. but it's a good thing i don't have those that often.

JDMstuff

First of all, you have the LPF on the headunit and the amp turned on. Use one or the other, but not both, Secondly, why is your HPF at 14.5? It should be at 80 where your subs are cutoff at. You are losing everything from 80-14.5 as they are being filtered out. As far as the sound goes for the rear seat passengers, you will have to play around with the time alignment more. Setting it at +23ms would create an echo in your car. If you can adjust time alignment on the deck, chances are that you can adjust listening position as well. Have it set to "all seats" and tweak from there. You should be able to store presets for each setting depending on your unit.

Chumpman

i put both LPF's on because the bass width didn't quite hit what i wanted... i used to have it on only one LPF but it seemed to make the bass worse... with 2 of em, i can manage to keep mainly the subsonic stuff, meaning i can turn up the volume (which includes the treble) and it doesn't get drowned out as much since i can't actually hear the bass... but i'll try tweaking the HPF frequency more.... thanks for the tip! i just left a gap there cuz my buddy who's in professional home theater design said that it's standard practice to do that since it better matches the human hearing curve... it works really well for my home setup, but dunno bout the car! i'm willing to try anything right now!

time correction isn't 23ms off... it's 23 on alpine's setup which is 23 out of 99 forward... the max time correction is for a distance of 5m i believe so you do the math... the actual time is supposed to be like 0.6ms or sumthin like that...

listening postion? never heard of that... what decks have it?

and do you think amping my speakers will help any? i can get an Alpine MRV-F340 for pretty cheap... stickin to the true class-D's...

JDMstuff

You mean that you are running your satellites off of deck power? An amp would definitely help you out. I'm assuming you have an upper end Alpine deck. In which case, that 14.5k you have the setting at would be the center frequency of the treble adjustment. Your deck should also have the listening position adjustment. The CDA-7995 has these features that I mentioned. If you are running the speakers off the deck, I'm assuming you have the CDA7994 which is basically the same except with a built in amp.

The listening environment is completely different in a car since there is so much cloth and reflective surfaces in such a small area. Techniques that work in home audio may not necessarily work well in a car.

Chumpman

doh! there goes another $490CDN... hahhaha!
hey i tried playing with the HPF and you were right... it sounds better in home theater with a gap there, but it makes the back less drowning and the overall sound better in my car without any gap in frequency! thanks for the tip dude!

I still wanna get my AEM first so the MRV-F340 will hafta wait a bit... i'll tell ya if it helps when i do get it though! in the meantime, any other tips that don't cost over $200?

onehawaiian

1) don't carry too many rear passengers/
2) if you do, turn your bass down.

other than that, it was pretty much covered above. later on tho, if you really wanna maximize your sounds, you may think about getting a center channel. that right there is a whooole different world...

Chumpman

hahahhahaha! yeah... that's pretty much what I've been doing! I've already memorized the "optimal" setting for with rear passengers and without! hahhaha!

Will a center really do a lot to alleviate the bass problem though? because at home my center does mainly vocal and effect stuff... really good on treble/midbass but it doesn't hit anything low... and if i do decide to get one, what do you think of the alpine one that has it's own amp?

onehawaiian

aah, but balancing and fine-tuning your midbass/midrange is really what determines your system. with a center channel, sound doesn't have to travel as far so imaging would be a lot different than having just a left and right. but we're getting into sq which can be quite costly.

for now, i'd just go with what's been working for you so far.