Car Sound Adivce

[BEEJ]

vividjazz said:

jazzie said:

vivid is onto something.

Alpine is good at HU and the digital stuff eg sound processing but certainly not speakers.

in fact, i will go as far as no Japanese brands are any good with speakers.

car speaker isn't something u need to replace all the time. i still have my infinity splits in my car which i bought about 7 years ago and it's been in 2 previous cars. a good speakers will always be a good speaker and they don't wear much if u look after them. so i'd spend a little bit more on them.

Phass (Japanese) are supposed to be good but very expensive and ultra light speakers.

One set of speakers that last a long time work out less than a lot of cheaper sets that wear out. Definitely worth spending a little more on the speaker part of the setup but that's not to say a $7,000 set of spilts are necessarily going to sound 7 times better than a $1,000 set of splits.

That's the brand of audio I had in my car..
It's just awesome quality and awesome for SQ!

At the moment I'm looking towards the BOSTON gear..
They're stuff is mint!!!!!

I do all my custom installs @ AUDIO FX Camberwell

Audio FX in Camberwell

1382 Toorak Road, Camberwell
T [phone]
F [phone]

It's near the corner of Toorak Road and Warrigal Road intersection..

Ask for Jon, let him know Beej referred you.. Cheers!

E-mail:
[e-mail]

Opening hours:
08:30 AM - 05:30 PM (Mon - Fri)
09:00 AM - 01:30 PM (Sat)



just picked my car up from there two days ago..
great bunch of guys and provide awesome service.
if jon isn't there, ask for johan (pronounced yo-han)
they know everything there is about car audio setups..
they've won competitions everywhere.

[thachng]

Thanks Vivid

But that place is in the gold coast not brissie, however I decided to go alpine and will have it installed this friday .

[vividjazz]

thachng said:

Thanks Vivid

But that place is in the gold coast not brissie, however I decided to go alpine and will have it installed this friday .

I used to live on the Gold Coast and remember it was just sooo far to Brisbane when everything else was 5 mins away. Then moved to Sydney and it takes over 2 hours from one side of Sydney to the other and 45 mins to get just about anywhere so your perspective of distance totally changes.

Well the Alpine gear will last. Nothing wrong with its quality but its a shame that you haven't even listened to anything else (real speaker brands). I had 4 x S-series Alpine 6.5" in my ute with the stock Ford 6 stacker head unit and they were fine. Still running the special edition hand build monoblock Alpine amp out of the GTi before that to run my sub at the moment but boy is it underpowered compared to anything from Crossfire.

Well I cooked my little 8" sub today so I'm going to be looking for a replacement in the new year. Might have to toss the Alpine amp too if it hasn't got the guts to run a real sub even though its supposedly a 2x100W monoblock.

[thachng]

I was checking jb hifi today and the guy recommended jl audio to me and they were quite expensive in fact his quote was 1500 but the splits were 400. there was also a cute 6 inch round tube sub which looked nice but the guy told me its better to get a 12 inch one as 6 inches have no power is that true as that sub looked nice and cute.

But they offered me 270 install which seemed reasonable and I asked about sound proofing and they all told me its quite dear, northfield charged me 250 for it and jb hifi said that its gonna blow my budget so no point asking about it.

[ahcash]

From what I see .. there are 2 different classes.. (same goes to home audio...which I used to be a hi-fi freak.. Not anymore.. sold all the gears..)

1 = aiming at normal consumers.. such as myself, perhaps thachng.. brands like Sony, Pioneer, Alphine.. etc (in the home audio, brands like sony, pioneer etc)

2 = aiming at higher end consumers.. such as vividjazz and beej.. brands like phass, response etc (home audio end.. arcam, quad, mission etc)

Is is fair to say that? I am very new to car audio world.. so, if you give me he good stuff.. I cannot even tell the difference.. I reckon.. stick with what you budget allow and when you are ready to take on the higher end stuff.. then go for it at a later stage...

[vividjazz]

The big difference I find between home audio and car audio is the price. You can actually get great splits in car audio for $300 and $400 where as in home audio that wouldn't buy you much more than the speaker stand. The Bostons, Crossfires, JL, Focal, etc don't cost anymore in fact sometimes less than the Alpine and Pioneers just that they aren't for sale on every street corner and installed by guys with electrical tape in one hand and an angle grinder in the other.

The price difference between the Daewoos (rebadged as Holdens) and the Rolls Royces is very little now in car audio so I'll take the Rolls for only a tiny bit more.

Soundproofing is not expensive. If you just soundproof around the speakers themselves rather than the whole door you can get out of if for like $50. Whole front doors around $300. Dynamat has a great demo of some garbage cans which sound great just with a bit of sound proofing. A cars doors without soundproofing are just like a metal garbage can. An instant sign of an installer worth spit is there attitude to soundproofing. You wouldn't go to a cinema without soundproofing. Noone would use a recording studio that wasn't soundproofed. Theres good reason why serious home cinemas have those heavy curtains. You could blow $1,000 on a set of splits and a $200 set of speakers with sound proofing will sound significantly better.

If I was working to a budget and I couldn't get all the components I wanted into that budget I would cut down the number of components and do things in stages with each stage done the way I want it so it only has to be done the 1st time. When I put together my current system I couldn't afford to buy a new sub amp and sub so used what I had for the moment but got the splits and amp I wanted as a priority. I could have left the sub and sub amp out all together and done it as a seperate stage. I might well have given that my make shift sub bought the bullet. The sub was definitely not up to the standard of the splits. Increasing the bass through my splits doesn't actually sound that much less than when I had the sub but then my splits are bassy anyway.

If you can't hear the difference between Sony and Eton and I'm sure there are people out there who can't then spending on one over the other would be a waste. In fact changing the factory setup would be probably be an unnecessary expense. Different people have different priorities with cars. One person won't hesitate to blow $2,000 on rims but wouldn't spend $200 on the sound system while others will spend as much as our cars on a system.

The setup you can do today for $2,000 wouldn't have been possible for even $10,000 just a decade ago.

[thachng]

everything nicely installed the amp is on the back of the rear seats, and the tweeters are were vivd jazzes are near speakers.

but one thing there is a hiss noise when no music is playing is that a problem with install, speakers or stock headunit?

also the speakers are so loud that i can only turn it to 15 b4 it starts to hurt ears, is that normal? I think they might turn on amp too loud?

[vividjazz]

Sounds like the gains on the amp are not set correctly re volume. The speaker gains are not to be treated as a volume control but unfortunately sooo many places just crank them up to the detrement of the whole system. In a properly setup system you can turn the system to maximum volume without hurting the amps or speakers.

As for hiss could be gains or earthing (did they upgrade the factory earthing at the battery) or noise introduced by not running power cabling seperately (far enough apart) to other cables ie. down each side of the car. Did they do seperate earthing near the amp? They showed you over the whole install afterwards? They then should have left you to test the new system (go for a drive as you need to test the impact of road and engine noise) and then made adjustments based on your feedback afterwards and make sure there is absolutely no vibrations or resonance?

A great test of speakers is the tiresome test. Bose home speakers often fail this test. People will listen to them for a period of time and then turn them off as they have had enough but thinking they have had a good experience. Great speakers absorb the listener to the extent that they just want to listen to them forever and not turn them off. Often for this to occur the speakers need to produce a warm natural sound. Its not uncommon for people to go for an 8 hour drive after picking up a car from an excellent system install. They can't leave the car because the sound is just so fantastic. This absolute euphoria has got to rank up there as one of the best feelings in life.

[thachng]

lol I just opened the box for the speakers and found that alot comes with the speakers.

There are 3 different spacersa and 2 stands for the tweeters. I really like how they did it as an all in one. There is no need to buy spacers or even make them.

Also how do you turn the amp down there are no buttons on it.

[vividjazz]

Should be a little gain wheel on the amp. Alot of the Alpine amps have got a flip cover with the controls underneath.

When setting gain you should start on the lowest setting, zero. Then crank the volume on the head unit to about 85% of maximum then slowly bring up the gain on the amp until you notice distortion and then turn it back a little bit from there. What's the point of having a head unit that goes to 40 if you can only use 0 to 15? You set the gains so you get full volume range and match the amp to the head unit properly.

If they left the tweeter in the center of the midbass like a co-axial it was a lot less work for the installer but not necesarily the optimal setup for sound.

In order to maximise profits most shops are forced to do installs in minimal time. Conversely most customers aren't prepared to pay for the time needed to cross the tees and dot the eyes. This is one reason why alot of shops steer away from sound proofing because it takes time to install.

I'm going to audition some Vibe gear to replace my sub.

[thachng]

Thanks vividjazz you have been very helpful so far

ok I took off the face which you had to unscrew and I wasn't happy with that lol.

first thing i played with was frequency im not sure what to do there but i put the sub only at first notch any higher and it the sub seems to get very loud. the speakers i put half way as if i put it too high it seems treble dominates and everything sounds metalic and bad.

Secondly i looked for gain and it had two gains one for sub and one for speakers. I couldn't find 0 but it did go from .2v to 4 volts. Also i noticed if i put it to 4v its the softest and i can get max volume range also the hiss is almost gone unless i put my ear near the speaker i cant hear it which im glad to have resolved.

Also what is the volts? is it bad am i pushing more power through? the initial settings were about .8v but that had the loud hissing. also if i put it at .2v all i get is static and no music.

I think those settings gave me better music then the ones made by the installer but I am open to more advice if anyone has it

[vividjazz]

You want the sub to play all the really low notes. Probably everything below about 50Hz but you don't want it playing the high notes even though its seems as if Alpine subs can play treble (must be the only manufacturer that can make treble come out of a sub).

Likewise you want the speakers to play everything down to when the sub crosses over. Since you can't control this from the head unit (as its the stocker) you can do it via those controls on the amp.

Did you get the book with the amp? Probably worth having a read of that since some of the markings seem to be very uniquely Alpine.

The remaining hiss is probably a consequence of the conversion of the speaker inputs to RCAs and might not be able to be elimiated further without a head unit with native RCA outputs. You don't want to go down the noise filter road as they tend to filter a lot more than noise.

The treble dominance you describe and the metalic sound is so very very Alpine and what we mean by unnatural sounding speakers. A $12,000 Alpine system exhibits the same characteristics. You've done the right thing by trying to tune it out but it shouldn't be there in the first place to tune out as it doesn't exist from other manufacturers. When Alpine systems go loud this is what they seem to always produce. It rates up there with broken nails down a chalk board. As long as you don't push the volume I'm sure it will sound fine.

Don't worry about hurting your amp. From what you describe your doing the opposite and making the amp not work as hard and consequently cooler. I'm sure when they set it up for you they just left the settings as they were out of the box from the factory so you need not worry about messing with the settings they didn't bother to set.