Why Processing is ESSENTIAL To Sound Quality

[Agent 86]

Originally Posted by TOOSTUBBORN2FAIL

It wouldn't be considered dsp, but yes the sound your are experiencing is due to the recording itself. It generally means it was recorded very well. I'll try to check out those tracks tomorrow, and will post a list of my own.

What most people don't realize, is almost all mainstream music now days is recorded without concern for imaging or staging. I partly blame this for the decline in stereo quality. Why create good stereos when music is mastered poorly?

That said, dsp won't cause poorly mastered music to image better. It basically will maximize what's there. If no imaging cues are there, they still wont be. But if they are, it can maximize them. I've heard some cars where sound seems to be coming from the front of the hood and from beyond the a-pillars in width.

Interesting. I have often thought about how some tracks can sound pretty sweet in my BRZ, while other's sound horrible.

Considering the car's environment (noisy), is the OEM system that bad, or is the problem the source? Does DSP actually "color" the recordings? In home audio we look for components (speakers, amps etc.) that are as neutral as possible. Is DSP a good thing, or just necessary in the car?

In my Home Theater, I simply run Audyssey then maybe tweak the subs or speaker distances a bit and a great sound experience happens. Processing Good!!!

I'm rambling now.



I created a really short playlist for the car that includes only the music that sound best in my car.

I would love to see a list of music that you think sound's good in your car. I'm always looking for great music. I'm not a music snob. As I mentioned, I love good sounding music from across the music spectrum. List what you like.

Here are some of my favorites.

#41 (Live) - Dave Matthews Band
Up on the Roof - The Drifters
Hurt So Bad - Little Anthony & The Imperials
Safe and Sound Dub - Rebelution
Stolen Moments - Oliver Nelson
The Hunter Gets Captured By the Game - The Marvelettes
Aja - Steely Dan
Time After Time - Tuck & Patti
Early Bird - Billy Taylor
She's Not There (Stereo Mix) - The Zombies

[Chimera]

Originally Posted by sly

You can actually run a pretty good car stereo with only a head unit and no EQ. I did this in my WRX before I built a dedicated system.


Using JRiver, you can add EQ, time delay, compression, convolution (linear phase FIR filters) and more. It records the corrected music onto a CD or digital media device. Then when your head unit plays it back, all of the correction has been done without having to purchase any equipment.


JRiver can actually re-master the music and add any EQ, etc. directly to the track. When you play the file, it is corrected to your car. Play the same file in someone else' car and it will sound pretty bad, though, as it's not been corrected to their car.


I already have a calibrated measurement microphone. If you don't have one, get one if you are going to be serious about sound. MiniDSP sells one for under $100 and so does Dayton Audio. Download Room Equalization Wizard (REW). It's free. Hook a laptop up to your AUX input on the head unit and take some measurements. EQ the system using REW. Export the corrected impulse file as a stereo .wav. Load this .wav into JRiver under dsp>convolution. JRiver will apply the correction to the music in real time. Then burn the music to a CD. Play it in your car and you will have an equalized system without having to actually install an EQ. There's a lot more JRiver can do. But these are the basics. Time alignment requires a loopback measurement and speaker phase linearization takes another program called rePhase. You can do all this through JRiver for a simple stereo setup. It's good to play around with until you get serious and build a fully DSP system.

So.. I'm hearing that I can make an impulse response file for my car.. Now I need Viper4android again on my new phone.

[TOOSTUBBORN2FAIL]

Originally Posted by Agent 86

Interesting. I have often thought about how some tracks can sound pretty sweet in my BRZ, while other's sound horrible.

Considering the car's environment (noisy), is the OEM system that bad, or is the problem the source? Does DSP actually "color" the recordings? In home audio we look for components (speakers, amps etc.) that are as neutral as possible. Is DSP a good thing, or just necessary in the car?

In my Home Theater, I simply run Audyssey then maybe tweak the subs or speaker distances a bit and a great sound experience happens. Processing Good!!!

I'm rambling now.



I created a really short playlist for the car that includes only the music that sound best in my car.

I would love to see a list of music that you think sound's good in your car. I'm always looking for great music. I'm not a music snob. As I mentioned, I love good sounding music from across the music spectrum. List what you like.

Here are some of my favorites.

#41 (Live) - Dave Matthews Band
Up on the Roof - The Drifters
Hurt So Bad - Little Anthony & The Imperials
Safe and Sound Dub - Rebelution
Stolen Moments - Oliver Nelson
The Hunter Gets Captured By the Game - The Marvelettes
Aja - Steely Dan
Time After Time - Tuck & Patti
Early Bird - Billy Taylor
She's Not There (Stereo Mix) - The Zombies

Dsp is a good thing in a car, due to the fact that we can't control things like where we sit (off center) and things like reflections and room modes.

So in the car, those of us who are really into it still look for equipment that is as neutral as possible, knowing that it gives us the best starting point. Many of us go to great lengths even to modify the car for sound, although that's not nessasary to get better sound than most people think can come in a car.

In my home system, I also ran Audyssey, and tweaked a couple of things. I'm running 7.1 in the bedroom, and 2.2 in the living room. In the bedroom, Audyssey works pretty well. In the living room, it works well for everything but the subwoofers. I really need more processing power to control a large resonant mode right at 43hz. So in home, there are some cases where you don't need processing, but some where you do. If you could build a room from scratch, you could avoid any processing, but in a car, you'll always need it unless you sit in the center of the car. (And on that note Google Chris Pate civic).


I'll get a list together when I get home today. I must warn you, I'm a metal head, but I listen to wide variety as well, including a good amount of orchestral music.

[cjd]

Note to the silly: you could fix things with a passive circuit if that makes you feel like you no longer have signal processing... But you'll have signal processing. huge time delay can be tough without some active control.

I only use DSP in my home theater for the bass... It's a treated room and custom 7.2 setup that had flat response to 16Hz +/-2dB but it started with over 30dB peaks. There was a bad null resolved with adding the second sub and room treatments. The physics is weird if you don't know it, and youth can do some crazy things with just good stereo speakers.

Happy tuning

[TOOSTUBBORN2FAIL]

I wish I was able to treat the room my 2 channel is in, but no go. That said, I'm glad I have a peak instead of a null, a little easier to deal with using peq vs having to add additional subs to fill in to nulls.

[paiceyfan]

I have noticed that modern compressed music sounds much better with the OEM Audio Plus system than older music with a high dynamic range. I discussed this with the manufacturer. This is the complete opposite to my home system.

[TOOSTUBBORN2FAIL]

Could be a couple things, either tuning related, or simply not enough headroom.

Headroom is a big deal when listening to dynamic material. I have one song in my library that has 48db of dynamic range, from the very quietest part, to the very loudest part. That very song has been the death of many, many systems since that song came out. In fact, the cd case it comes in warns to be careful with the volume.

Telarc - 1812 Overture - Directed by Erich Kunzel

[TOOSTUBBORN2FAIL]

I just wanted to add this, as I just found out.

At the Relaxing in Socal Meca sound quality competition, an infinity suv with a premium bose system was entered in street class. Street class allows sound deadening, replacing speakers as long as they are in the stock locations, aftermarket amps, aftermarket processing, and additional subwoofers to be added.

This infinity had the dead stock bose speakers and sub, dead stock bose amp. He took the signal from the head unit and ran it to an alpine H800, and ran the outputs from that to the stock amplifier. And he tuned it. He scored 82 points. That is almost as high as the extreme class cars score, which have no limitations on their modifications.

Just a little reminder of the power of proper processing.

[YW-Slayer]

Originally Posted by TOOSTUBBORN2FAIL

Could be a couple things, either tuning related, or simply not enough headroom.

Headroom is a big deal when listening to dynamic material. I have one song in my library that has 48db of dynamic range, from the very quietest part, to the very loudest part. That very song has been the death of many, many systems since that song came out. In fact, the cd case it comes in warns to be careful with the volume.

Telarc - 1812 Overture - Directed by Erich Kunzel

Heh, my dad has the same CD and hence I, er, can play the track back anytime. It's still my favourite recording.

[MJones_RB]

My old Alpine head unit, from my Integra, included DSP functions like spatial delay for each speaker, sub phase correction, eqs for each channel, fully adjustable crossovers for front / back / sub. Not sure if the newer units still include those functions but they were very intuitive.

[TOOSTUBBORN2FAIL]

They didn't for a long time, but they are slowly starting to again. Then again for serious builds, stand alone processors are the way to go now. Some of them can even do fir correction filters, which in layman's terms means no phase shifts from eq and crossovers.