Car Audio Tuning Help?
If anyone who reads this and knows a bit about audio stuffs (and maybe car audio stuffs) can offer some help with this, I’d greatly appreciate it:
As I mentioned here, I installed two new speakers and an amp / crossover which are part of the Honda accessory known as the Bass System Kit. The instructions for installation stated that one should set both the cut and gain settings to ‘the nine-o’clock position’ for my model car. I’ve found that the gain setting seems a bit high, and turning that down seems to have evened out the bass, but I can’t help but think the cut (crossover) setting just isn’t quite right. It almost seems as if too much mid-range audio is still going to those particular speakers.
What I’m asking is if anyone can give me some tips as to setting the cut (crossover) and gain settings for the amp. Currently I’m going with listening to different things while driving around, listening for any distortion or points which simply sound like they have too much bass then adjusting audio. This is kinda inefficient, though.
Without acquiring a scope, high quality mic, and signal generator (or test CD), how can I best set this up? Tuning car audio is one thing I have very little experience doing, and Google results seem to explain the settings more than explain how to do a good job tuning them.
Thanks!
Your probably not going to like this answer, but…it depends on what genre of music that your listening to and your personal perferences. I’d fuck around with it until it’s pleasing you your ear. They might tell you what the optimum setting is for “normal” music, but in my opinion it’s horse pucky…the peference of sound is relative.
That’s what I was afraid of. :\
The only thing I’m hoping to do thus far is make a test CD which sweeps 10Hz – 500Hz over 60 seconds, and maybe I can hear a point where the crossover needs to be adjusted.
I guess I’m too stuck on the idea of being able to meter things…
The crossover setting is a trade-off between the effective bandwidth of your other speakers in the setup. If you can, look up the frequency +/- 3db for your mid-woofers, and set the crossover to either just above the bottom end of their response curve, or in the middle of the gap between where your midbass drops off and your subwoofer picks up. If the frequency overlap is huge, set it for just below the top end of the subwoofer’s range.
If you don’t have the driver frequency specs, I think I remember seeing pics of an SPL meter you bought. That plus a frequency sweep generator (or CD with repeating frequency sweeps) ought to give you an accurate enough reading for car audio.