I am debating wether or not to buy the kenwood graphic EQ. Looks alone have almost sold me on it.

I have a clarion amp that controls output to 4 speakers.. my 2 front fosgate seperates and my 2 rear vega's. It has x-over points that are set at 200hz for the front and about 600hz for the rear.

My 2 fosgate 12's are pushed by a fosgate amp that is set at 200 hz.

I listen to alot of burned cd's. Burned from MP3 to cd-r. I wish i could fine tune them a little more. My music is techno/drum and bass/rap/r&b/jazz

Another problem I am having is a hard time getting a good balance of ALL my speakers at low volumes. More subs than anything and more front speakers than rear.

Ok enough babble from me. Any suggestions?

Oh yeah. can anyone recommend a good tuning CD.. for balance and such.. thanks

 

I used to have a Pioneer DEQ-7600 which I believe is similar to the model you are looking at. For me it worked great, it provide a lot more control than my head unit/amps could provide plus as you said looks great mounted in a double din. If you are debating the Kenwood or nothing, it is probably worth it. There are better eq's out there with more features and fine tuning (and less showy). But for decent features and a pretty show, the Kenwood will probably work out fine. As far as test/tuning cds, Parts Express has several choices. Hope this helps.

Brett

 

You listen to the same music format as I do. So, I can give you a hand. You are going to need a equalizer and a passave/active crossover. But, you can get one now, and the other later. So right now, I'll get the equalizer. The equalizer will fine-tune your system. The crossover on your amplifier gives you course-tune adjustments to your system. The amplifier crossover gives a basis for which you can tune you system. A passive/active crossover bridges the gap between the equalizer and crossovers on your amplifier. The music that you download should be left flat when you burn them, because if you use any sound enhancements your computer has will change the way the music sounds in your system. Adujst your music from your car's system. If you want to adjust from your computer, get musicmatch jukebox plus. It has a 7 to 9 band equalizer you can tune with. I use three amplifiers, one for the front, one for the rear, and one for the subwoofer. Since I sit up front, I use my less powerful amplifier up front, because it doesn't take much power to get the front speaker sound to your ear. The rear comes next with a more powerful amp, then the subwoofer with most powerful amp I have. To solve your problem, if you have a 50w reciever in your car, use your reciever to push your front speaker, then use your amp to power your rear speaker. Turn down the gain of your amp so that it won't overtake your front speaker. You would want to blend in the front and rear speakers. Your amp to your sub should be turned down too, to blend into the front and rear speakers. You can adjust your subs Hz to give you that bass deep vibration without turning up the gain of your amp. That should sovle your balancing problems. Use your Jazz music to tune your system. Jazz carries a full range of sounds to properly tune your systems Highs, Mids, and Lows. All your other music will fall into place without any noticeable adjustments.


That should be enough to get you on the right track. E-mail me a gundamw00@msn.com if you need more help.

 

I have the pioneer DEQ-9200 and absolutely love it.. not a day goes by I'm not using it to tweak the sound for a particular mood/genre/song..

http://images.cardomain.com/installs...592_4_full.jpg

 

GundamWZero, I did not read your whole post, but a certain section caught my eye. You mentioned that since the rear speakers are positioned farther away, you'll need more power to get the sound to you. This is in a way false. (Wow, this may get long, let me sum it up with one word, wavelength). And along with wavelength, is time delay. It doesn't so much bother me that your using your your rears the way you are, (personnal preference), it's just the way you went about explaining WHY you do it that way. Since you brought this up this way, I'm going to take a wild guess that your speakers are in their factory locations? If so, by your description of how to fix the rear speaker problem, could you elaborate on how to overcome the distance from the passenger side speaker to the driver, compared to the drivers side?

Anyways, I've always been the type to leave my rear speakers powered off the HU, and the fronts properly amplified. (But this is my preference, not everyone likes it this way).

Ok, I gonna stop now... it's too early in the morning, and I don't make sense!

 

Well, well now I know why your stereo sounds "not quite right." If you can't get that front/sub crossover point lower, then you need an EQ that can. Crossing 2 12s over at 200Hz when using 6.5s in the front is WAY too high.

You need to get that down to around 100Hz. Then you will have a much better starting point for evaluating your EQ needs.

 

Agreed, but just to add..in most cars the rear speakers are at ear level making them easier to reach your ears, whereas the fronts need to work their way up to your ears and are also often blocked by a knee/leg/foot whatever.

I do not use my rears off of my HU for two reasons one: my HU doesnt have any power and two:because off of my crossovers for the front is a rear output that is adjustable. This gives my car true "rear fill".

--Don

 

YOu need to start by making the crossover points right...Subs around 80 and down...nothing higher than 100...Front mids x'd over at around 100 and up, if you can control you self with the volum take the x over on um even lower...Tweeter x over depends much more on location but anywhere bettewn 3k-7k and up. THe rear...Remove. ONce you got all that done you can see how it sounds and see if you want to make it better. At that point you can see what to get.

 

thanks for all the input...


for the record MZMTG has riddin in my car and he heard my stereo.

ben- I have 6's up front.. I thought they wer 6's.. I have 6 1/2's in the rear.

You were tight I need to "tune" my system... I will be doing that in the near future.. I am gonna build a wall and redo my trunk and maybe an amp rack with fans.

Possibly a bifferent enclosure... Bandpass maybe, depending on what I can get with size... ALL of this depends on what happens in the next 2 months.

Ben- you'll be the first to know

 

A bandpass box isn't really ideal until you have a STRONG front stage. Depending on what type of bandpass box you build, you'll be really limited on the frequency range. Bandpass boxes lose ALOT of SPL and quality outside their tuning frequencies. Do a little research on them before you commit to one.

 

Yeah I have heard some of this... and the sizes I have seen are BIG.

I have not commited to anything... the money it takes for all of this is commited else where.. I may just build a wall and amp rack and get the EQ and go from there... BUT I need to adjust my x-overs first..

thanks for the input

 

You seem way to comited to getting an Eq...Many other things need to be worked out first. DOn't discount kickpanels either. Start by adjusting the x overs to proper areas...Then condsider an active x over and it's slope...Then maybe kicks...Then a good 30 band eq. 7 bands to me is just a waste...So is 15...30 is all it's worth..>And no matter which company you go with figure to spend a G on a good 30 band eq.

 

Okay Gentelmen,

We pretty much got it down now that it is the position of the front/rear speakers, the wavelength that the rear speakers produce, so on and so forth. I have tried all that in the past and where that get me; distortion at high volumes. The object to creating the "perfect" system is being able to have it perform at high volumes and have near-perfect clarity. Running your speakers off your headunit (either front or rear) will not get you the clarity that you need at higher volumes, no matter how much tuning you do. Okay: let me put it this way- a long while back, I was tring to get that "sweetspot", where you can hear the low-to-mid range sound from the rear deck and the midrange-to-highs that my front speaker put out.
I couldn't get it through my headunit because one part of the system will distort at high volume. I later began using multiple amps pared with a crossover network to finally nail that "sweetspot". However, I still neeed a seperate equalizer to truly fine tune my system, and that was what I was trying go tell him. You can't get the sound quality you are looking for by just using the built-in crossovers and the gain **** of your amplifier. It is just a foundation for which you start tuning your car. 2nd Gen Maximas are notorious for imaging sound because the front speakers are nearly on the floor. That is why I put more amplified power to the front speakers than the rear deck speakers, to bring the sound up from the floor. I later switched to a less powerful amp when I installed my Inifity tweeters. I no longer need to have that much power at the front to reach that "sweetspot" in the middle of the car. You would want to have the highs coming from the front sound like they are coming from the back when you are sitting in the back seat, and the mid bass sound like they are coming from the front when they are actually coming from the back when you are sitting in the front seat. I have a neighbor who used to compete in Texas who thinks that my present setup will net me at least 2nd or 3rd place in a SQ beginner competitions. He said I might can get 1st if I add that equalizer.

However, I am just starting out too, so what I said is based on the two years I have been working on the sound system of my Maxima.

 

How can you talk about 'proper' soundstage and imaging when your admiting to us that your drawing the stage back. This is just your opinion, such that I posted mine. Don't try and make yourself sound 'right' in all cases. Cause you never will be! I personally, like to have my subs crossed over REALLY low, in the 60Hz range, you'll find an 8in mid in my front door, and a 6.5" and a 1.5" tweet in the kicks. I give a good amount of power to my front end, the rear isn't really needed. I like keeping all the sound in front of me. My first analogy brought up to me when I was starting out awhile back, was: if you were going to a concert, would you turn around and face the wall to listen to the music? I said 'no'... the guy smiled at me, then explained to me why rear fill isn't horribly important. Yes, you need it for ambience, but it should not at all dominate any part of your soundstage! (This is all an opinion, which originally wasn't mine, but now it is! ) Low freqs: with no rattles in the car, are omni-directional. Mids-highs: placed up front facing the drive will sound like they are in front of you (such that youd hear it in a concert!)

Anyways, I'm not trying to push my views onto you, my point was that people have different opinions about how they like their music, none are right!

 

Okay........yah got me . Good point.

 

how can you use an EQ if you don't have a meter to test it with? I know some speakers come in packaging that show the freq reponse and range. That's good to start with. But i'm sure HU are not totally smooth across the range and interior acoustics influence response. I liked Infiniti's idea of putting 200some lil microphones over the cabin to figure out how to properly EQ. W/o some kinda meter, how do you know what's "right" and what's not?

In addition, I wouldn't use a test cd based on mp3 files. There's no good information about 16kHz...it's just how mp3 encoding is done. It doesn't matter what bitrate you use, everything after 16kHz is dropped. To see for yourself, upgrade to the newest Windows Media Player 7 and watch the eq visualization. Some people can't hear over 16kHz, but usually I can...annoying, but it does affect the sound quality.

Jae

 

Your talking about an RTA...How can it be done, well most competitors only use it as a reference, and those that really know what they are doing , do it all by ear. It's not what shows up via LED's but the proper sound that you should here.