Car audio systems

[BerenTebogo]

I'm super OCD about the quality of my music and I like to listen to it LOUD so I want the quality to remain perfect while I go deaf. This has often led to me constantly tweaking treb/mid/HPFs/etc pretty much any time I change from one type of music to another when driving. It drives me insane.

So, today I decided that even though I'm not very good at it I'd go check out all aspects of the tech I use and try to fiddle a bit with the equipment settings.

I use 4 6022i Infinity 6-1/2" http://www.onlinecarstereo.com/CarAu...nce_6022i.aspx , 2 in front 2 in back

a REF475A http://www.infinitysystems.com/car/p...=US&Region=USA amplifier

and a Kenwood DDX512 http://www.kenwoodusa.com/Car_Entert...e_Video/DDX512 control system

The Kenwood has HPF/LPF settings by speaker and the limitations of the speakers are 52Hz - 21,000Hz so I always have everything below 60Hz filtered on all speakers. I keep Bass/Mid/Treb all at 0 for anything classical or classically influenced (ranging from Nightwish-esque to Maksim Mrvica which is Piano + orchestra + techno dance fusion stuff) and then I tweak it slightly up to 0/1/1 for my Prog. Metal and the highest it ever goes is 1/2/2 for stuff that is just loud and annoying that I love listening to (cradle of filth, etc).

Problem is that I haven't felt for a long time that I'm getting the most out of my speakers. The left front speaker has a small distortion in it that is drowned out by most of my music but is horribly irritating during very light or acoustic stuff. I know volume is probably a part of it, but these are supposed to be quality speakers so I do push them.

For ref. on volume I listen almost 24/7 on volume level 19-21 and, depending on how hot the day has been and the temp in my car, my amp will kick on power saving mode and drop the volume after about 25 minutes on lv20 with metal. This makes me sad.

Coming around finally, to the big question: I think I'm pushing my eq. too hard when maybe I don't really need to? I feel like I'm trying to push a lot of frequencies through speakers when they should be going to a subwoofer (I don't have a subwoofer therefor I really don't give a fuck about those frequencies). I'm also concerned that I'm not using my amp's specs well enough. On the side of the amp it has 2 sections:

|------- --Rear----------------------|
Bassboost Freq dial LPF - Full - HPF
0____________32,80,320____________^
_____________indicated on________switch
_______________ dial

And identical for the front.

Default is bass: 0 Freq. 32Hz and Full for both front and back.

The freq. dial from what I've read of the manual is the crossover point. Which, after reading a bunch of shit like this http://hddaudio.net/viewtopic.php?id=1004 I still don't understand.

It's a very good system and I know it can perform better for me, I just don't want to keep pushing it and pushing it when maybe all I need to do is get it off the default "Nickelback" setting or something

Any help is appreciated. I listen to ~55% power metal ~10% prog. metal ~10% very old, horribly recorded punk and hardcore and ~25% Classical, classical fusion, or classical metal.

I really, really, really don't give a shit about bass. I haven't listened to the radio once in the 4 years I've owned my car. All I want is to be able to go deaf to the sound of violins and french horns without feeling like I'm listening to some kid play on a fucking Casio "My first synthesizer" because my settings are wrong.

Help

[Fr34k]

What exactly do you need help with?

If your amp is going into protect or "power" mode after 20 minutes or so, your gain is too high. Turn it down about 1/8 or 1/16 of a turn.

You said you normally listen to it at volume 20, that doesn't really tell us much. What is the highest volume your deck goes up to? Rule of thumb is to not go past 3/4 volume, but all decks start to clip at a different level. With my EQ flat, my deck doesn't clip until 39/40, so I set all of my gains at volume 38.

You said you have the HPF on your deck set at 60? Normally for 6 1/2's you'll want it set around 100-125. You say you don't care about the bass frequencies, but in reality anything below 250 is pretty much bass. Normally people will let their sub handle the low stuff (depending on tuning, anywhere from 20 or 30 up to 80), some people will then have smaller midbass subs take over from 80-150 or so, and then let their speakers take over from 150 and up.

It sounds to me like you're trying to play your speakers too low and causing distortion, you may have caused damage to the one speaker that is making funny noises. It could be other things (loose RCA, RCA not grounded correctly, loose wires,) or you could have damaged the speaker itself.

My suggestion is take it to a shop and let them check out the speaker for you. If it turns out that the speaker is damaged, look into getting better speakers. Honestly infinity is marketed as a sound quality brand, but most of their speakers are bright as hell like their Kappa's which everyone seems to love.

My suggestion would be a pair of Image Dynamics XS 6.5" speakers. They're a bit pricey, but these speakers sound like just what you're looking for. They sound amazing and they get loud as FUCK. I don't know if you're familiar with some other SQ brands, but the first time I listened to them on a sound board against Rainbow's (Germanium, Profi, SLC) and RE (XXX mainly) and the difference was incredible. The ID's sounded great on all music (rock, instrumentals, MJ, etc) but at the same time they were literally way louder than all of the other speakers on the board. Off only 75 watts they were just ridiculous, enough to pretty much keep up with my 18" sub putting out 147 db.

[BerenTebogo]

What exactly do you need help with?

If your amp is going into protect or "power" mode after 20 minutes or so, your gain is too high. Turn it down about 1/8 or 1/16 of a turn.

You said you normally listen to it at volume 20, that doesn't really tell us much. What is the highest volume your deck goes up to? Rule of thumb is to not go past 3/4 volume, but all decks start to clip at a different level. With my EQ flat, my deck doesn't clip until 39/40, so I set all of my gains at volume 38.

You said you have the HPF on your deck set at 60? Normally for 6 1/2's you'll want it set around 100-125. You say you don't care about the bass frequencies, but in reality anything below 250 is pretty much bass. Normally people will let their sub handle the low stuff (depending on tuning, anywhere from 20 or 30 up to 80), some people will then have smaller midbass subs take over from 80-150 or so, and then let their speakers take over from 150 and up.

It sounds to me like you're trying to play your speakers too low and causing distortion, you may have caused damage to the one speaker that is making funny noises. It could be other things (loose RCA, RCA not grounded correctly, loose wires,) or you could have damaged the speaker itself.

My suggestion is take it to a shop and let them check out the speaker for you. If it turns out that the speaker is damaged, look into getting better speakers. Honestly infinity is marketed as a sound quality brand, but most of their speakers are bright as hell like their Kappa's which everyone seems to love.

My suggestion would be a pair of Image Dynamics XS 6.5" speakers. They're a bit pricey, but these speakers sound like just what you're looking for. They sound amazing and they get loud as FUCK. I don't know if you're familiar with some other SQ brands, but the first time I listened to them on a sound board against Rainbow's (Germanium, Profi, SLC) and RE (XXX mainly) and the difference was incredible. The ID's sounded great on all music (rock, instrumentals, MJ, etc) but at the same time they were literally way louder than all of the other speakers on the board. Off only 75 watts they were just ridiculous, enough to pretty much keep up with my 18" sub putting out 147 db.

This is what I think my problem might be.

After I made the topic I went out into my car and started fiddling around because, honestly, I've never really fucked with the amp after I had it installed in my car. The Best Buy fags had the HPF for front and rear turned off on the amp itself.

I did some driving around with front at ~300 and rear at ~100 and it was a bit flat. ~150 and ~150 sounded pretty good though. Got too used to hearing every fucking thing.

I think you're right about damaging the speaker since it still gets a bit err...tingy? Not really a good adjective to describe it, when it goes from very loud to very soft in a song. I've been running the amp for 1.5ish years now without realizing the thing about the amp. I feel pretty stupid.

Can't afford to do much in the way of fixing it at the moment which is why I was hoping there were efforts I could explore on my own. I'll try bringing it down a bit closer to 125 on front and rear and see how it goes.

I'll keep those other speakers on a bookmark somewhere too, just in case I have the spare money to redo my system in the future.

[Fr34k]

I've blown 2 sets of those speakers so far, first one was my fault second one I'm still trying to figure out what happened. That's 1k down the drain, but I am pushing these speaker really hard. Giving them about 300 watts a piece when they're rated for 125, but they sound amazing and honestly will probably be the last pair of speaker you ever have to buy. My first pair blew because I didn't reset my HPF on my deck after I got everything wired up. Speakers were trying to play bass frequencies, started crackling, and eventually died. Second set I think I just pushed them too hard and they were distorting but I couldn't hear it over the sub. Mids cut out while I was at a competition, so right now I'm only running tweeters in the front.

As far as the HPF on the deck and amp, you can set both if you want, but as long as one of them is set. If you set it from the deck, the amp will never see the signal in the first place but if you ever need to disconnect your battery for any reason make sure to put all the settings on the deck back to normal or you could blow something. If you leave the deck's HPF off and set the one on the amp, you'll never have to worry about the settings being reset. If you set both, you'll just have a steeper cross, won't really hurt anything.

I'd suggest getting a small sub (something like 1 8, 2 8's, or 1 10) just to fill in the low end of songs. Songs that you're used to will start to sound weird when the beat is missing or a lot more faint than it used to be. And asking the speakers to play everything will usually lead to problems. If you have any more questions lmk.

Edit: Oh about the tingy sound, are there adjustments on your deck for the crossovers of the lows / mids / highs? For example my Pioneer will let you cross the lows at 50, 63, 80, 100, and 125. The mids can do 200, 500, 1k and 2k. The Highs can do I think 2, 6, 8k, 10k, and 12k. If you can find a menu like this somewhere, try to adjust these settings. Your tweeters might be playing frequencies that are too high and annoying as fuck. The human ear can hear around 20hz - 20khz, but after 10k it starts getting annoying as a motherfucker. If your highs are playing all the way up to 20k, that could be the problem. If not, try turning the treble down it might help with how bright / harsh the tweeters are.