Xrc6

I'll use REW on my laptop. My question is can I use the omni directional microphone that came with my Kicker keysmart amp that is used to auto tweak it's built in DSP? My second question. I've never used REW before. Any tips/suggestions for the best settings/methods to measure my car's accoustics? Also should I turn off my Keysmart amp's DSP features first or will it matter? I just want a graph to see where the peaks and dips are in my frequency response. Final question. Can I measure for cancellation issues using REW?

I just wanted a graph to see the frequency peaks and dips so I know if there is a range of frequencies that are too low that I'm missing. That and maybe to see if my setup has any cancellation or not but unsure how to do that. *edit: Also I don't know what a calibration file is but I doubt the mic has one. Not sure if I want to spend $50 + bucks just to use a mic once. However I like the keysmart amp though and it sounds great but I'm sure my sub has some cancellation due to the side firing port and bottom firing subs. And I'm sure there are some frequencies that are too low that I'm missing out on

I have a small car and having a family and all that am currently trying to use smaller and smaller audio solutions to maximize space to the point where I really don't even want a subwoofer in my trunk anymore. I really don't need very much bass, just something to fill out the lower end but I want an all in one sub so that I don't have to use anymore space for an amp, etc. So I know under-seat subs are not discussed nor recommended here but I was about to pull the trigger on one and then noticed that the Pioneer TS-WX70DA is now under $200 and it's a loaded horn design. But what interested me in this particular one is the below picture showing how thin it is and that you can stow your stuff on top of it. So I know it's gonna sound weak compared to a hand built setup but what I wanted to know is would it likely sound better than any of the under-seat subs on the market or has anyone here heard this thing in person? I just need a little something to fill out the bottom end but not sound muddy which is how I'm afraid an under-seat sub will sound. I'm thinking maybe with it being a loaded horn design that it might be efficient enough. .

*silence. Well that's pretty much what I figured.

Already have everything else I need. New HU, 4 ch amp, speakers, sound deadening, baffle kit, DSP, all new wiring. Now I just need something that doesn't take up any use able room to fill out the lower frequencies. Hence the reason I asked about this Pioneer in comparison to an under-seat sub.

$178 in Honda Fit. I already have C5 component so what do you suggest to reap me way better rewards?

Lol what? What did that have to do with physics? I said I could not find the correct woofers with the right depth and T/S parameters to build a similar setup that would be as efficient with a low power amp. Where a company like Pioneer can actually design their own speakers for a specific design in mind. Plus the materials to construct a solid structure on top of the nearest 6.5" shallow put me at over 6 inches thick and about 98 spl @ 1 watt according to bassbox pro. Again that's just using a ported box. Now maybe if I could design a similar rear horn but even then it'll be no different and probably cost just as much. Dude it's two 6.5 inch woofers on 100 watts. What kind of expectations do you have in mind? This isn't about pounding 40 hz into a heart attack.

It's also 33 inches long and 12 inches wide and is a Horn, not a ported enclosure. But the reason why I can't build such an enclosure because none of them will be near this efficient. Using a port or PR with an 86 db @1 watt woofer for a less than 200 watt amp will still cost me about as much to build and I'll have issues with Vent velocity and Group Delay is way too high and that's at these same dimensions. I already tried to simulate it and I certainly can't design a horn enclosure with BB Pro anyway nor am I that skilled at such. Then I had the problem of finding a shallow 6.5" woofer with high sensitivity so that I could use it for a low power amp along with the other T/S specs that will work for a similar sized ported box is another matter and having a final design where I achieve 110 db's in car sensitivity is unlikely unless I just go with some 500 watts of power and a sealed box but remember I drive a Honda with a 96 Amp Alt and a lawnmower battery. Where a company like Pioneer can actually design their own speakers for a specific design in mind and use dense resin wood materials and testing that would be more expensive and time consuming for me providing I can even find it in a store. Plus I assume they have experts that can design a higher efficient horn loaded enclosure and they do have Andrew Jones on staff so that amounts to something of their expertise vs mine. Besides I don't know who you think I am but I'm no basshead. I don't need to thump or flex panels I just want to fill out the frequency range that the components in my doors aren't very good at and figured this can't be worse. All I know is that it has excellent reviews on Amazon so it's worthwhile to some and I'm probably the type that's one of them since I don't care that much about audio while driving down the road. However your suggestion of designing "Monster" mid-bass in a Honda fit made me laugh though. I have JL Audio C5's and sound deadner and that's about as Monster as any mid-bass is likely to get in the doors of a Honda.

Yeah it's probably no Cornu CS but follows the rear horn loaded concept all the same. Can't be worse than an 8 inch sub inside a . 0.094 ft3 sealed box under the seat. The only physical attraction to this particular one is that it's thin and you can put stuff on top of it without losing any real actual floor space. Everything else I looked at or even calculated in Bass Box Pro will be too thick to be very useful for loading stuff in and out of my trunk. Now I used to have a Sundown setup that I built myself and my attempt there was to create my own custom method of quick removal. The idea was that if I needed to use the trunk I could just pull a plug and set the box in my garage then put it back later. So I used a 220 volt Male/Femal plug that accepted 4 guage wire and used that as my quick release plug along with quick release pins holding the box down and an MTX Elite amplifier built inside the box. I even added handles to the sides however the damn thing was so heavy that pulling it out required me to do some stretching and pump some weights first to psych myself out for what was practically a max deadlift competition. So I pitched that. I then tried desiging the thinnest enclosure I could out of BB Pro but it was still 6 inches thick with the wood and even 1/2" birch wasn't going to make enough difference. So then I just got a Bazooka tube and actually was really happy with it. It sounds pretty damn good for $99 but I can't stack anything on it and have to be somewhat careful when lugging in the kids sports junk or a stroller or the wife's crap....you get what I mean. But this Pioneer is under 4 inches thick and broad enough that laying stuff on it won't be an issue since that's what it's designed for. I worry any 8" inch under-seat sub directly under my seat will sound too muddy. I'm sure that the design and marketing of this system was directly intended for us middle aged mom's and dad's out there that no longer put audio first.

Ok thanks. Yeah I figured with it being a horn enclosure that the sound quality is likely pretty good but ya never know. But it's the 110db@1 watt efficiency over a typical under-seat sub that peaks my interest. That's usually getting into dual chamber bandpass territory. I'm pretty sure that if Pioneer released this with a $200 price tag to begin with then they probably would have sold a lot better than they did. I don't get why companies make these unique types of products but price them out of the range that people would want to try it out and within a couple of years they are forced to discontinue them.

Whatever the case, outside of competing, I fail to see the point for turning audio in a car to rocket science. You're listening to music you enjoy while driving A to B and all the basic information from gauge of wire to buy to the use of fast rings is shoved in your face before you even enter your credit card info anyway . Why anyone would max out their volume and push every watt they can I don't give a crap to know but for whatever it's worth, I have a cheap $50 O-scope and 10x probes. Aside from the millions of other handy uses such a thing has, I use -5 db 1000khz tone for fronts and -10 db 40hz tone for subs to use as a foundation to start with. Find the distortion level on my HU which becomes my max volume, set gains on amp then adjust by ear listening to my loudest music tracks. Top it off with a little time alignment, a sprinkle of EQ adjustment and ending it with a f***it by keeping my volume within moderate levels, loud enough to drown out traffic but not so loud that I can't hear EMS/Cop vehicles and turning it down when I"m at a stop light or in my neighborhood. Basically just common sense use of music listening without being a douschebag. I further that by not showing off my system or telling anyone I have anything. I added Clark Synthesis tactile transducers attached to my front seats just to augment my subwoofer so I don't feel the need to push my subs so deep that everyone within sight can spot me out but I can reap the benefits of feeling it more with less SPL. The fewer people that know I have something expensive in my car, the longer I get to keep it because it's for my audio pleasure only. But it sounds really nice inside the car without having to reverse engineer sound waves and attempt to bend the laws of physics to achieve it.

I normalized my entire music library for my car to -5db's using Platinum Notes and used -5db test tone and bought the DSO 112A and some better leads for $70. Worked out great. That way I had a more predominant means to prevent clipping than using my 41 year old ears, especially if I ever decided to indulge in Bandpass for kicks. I also went to a website that tests your hearing so I can make a make a graph to illustrate where my hearing starts to roll off and which frequencies that I perceived as being the loudest or to say that I'm most sensitive to. I think that plays a big role in ones audio bias. After I measured my car's acoustics I focused more on the frequencies I'm most sensitive to using my DSP and adjusted frequencies I'm least sensitive to and cut off the ones I can't hear anyway....then I readjusted my gains since I had to raise a number of frequencies. That helped tremendously for me fine tuning a sound signature that I prefer the most. A lot of audio knobs like to talk about how they only want to hear it as the artist intended..etc imo is nonsense when you consider that a lot of audio engineers in the studio don't have golden ears, some aren't very good at their job and how much $ a studio wants to invest is a major part of how the end result is going to be. That plus given the environment of a vehicle is why I personally process all my music to make it easier to have my entire collection cater to my individual taste.

I have 360.3. Personally never had any issues with it, worked perfectly.

Recently got the 360.3. I was reading some older threads found on google and I noticed a couple of posts mentioned that once you get the 360 setup and tweaked that your supposed to keep your amp gain down and you don't have to do any further adjustments. I think because of the 360's output somehow?....I just wanted some clarification on this.

So when M5 said it's just the tip of the iceberg he meant it's the whole iceberg. Lol, that's pretty much what I thought.

Because I had a limited question which was answered in first response. Thanks. Then what's the lower 3/4's of the iceberg that apparently doesn't involve tuning individual channels for better imaging?

Not sure I understand your comment. I know what the DSP is and what the 360 can do, that is why I bought it. What I am doing is of course tuning my audio system to my vehicles acoustics from a factory unit and tuning to my sound bias (preference) using TA and phasing for each channel to create a better front stage...what else would anyone do with a DSP? My question was in regards to some posts I read stating you don't adjust the gain on the amp. Having Output gain explains what they were meaning.

I know what the gain is and how to set it. I didn't know it had output gain, as I said I just bought it.

I still can't quite get my subs to sound more up front. My fronts just lack any kind of punch though they seem to be able to handle bass if I toy with boost or loud modes but they don't really have that punch that some OEM speakers without any amp have. I'm sure you know what I mean, like the mid bass region isn't tight despite the door is all sealed up and I use time alignment. Here is what I have and what I have done. Pioneer avx-3700bh JL Audio C5 component speakers up front. woofer is in door and tweeter is up far corner of dash where default tweeters were. JL Audio XD 3 channel amp Silver cladded OFC RCA wires and Knuconceptz power JL Audio w3v3 soon to be replaced with two 12's. So far I have purchased proper door mounting plate and foam rings that go between the speaker and the outer door panel. I have sealed up the entire door with Fatmat sound deadner...neither didn't really seem to do much. My HU has time alignment and 13 band EQ. Time alignment is set to proper distances from the speakers to my head. Everything actually sounds really good except that I can tell that the bass is behind me. Rear speakers not in use btw. I have been considering something like the Audio Control EQS 6 channel to give me more control over the frequencies..would this help or is it just the speakers? The sub sounds best out of phase but I can still tell where it's coming from. My amp has Xover over lapped with the sub at 80hz and fronts at 60hz...changing this really doesn't seem to be very noticeable, it actually sounds better with the subwoofer crossed at 60hz but obviously my fronts can't go that deep, I doubt much is happening under 100 hz on the fronts but they don't distort if I use bass boost but just sound boomy

I already mentioned what I changed as well as toyed with which is what my HU has. I already have the phase angles lined up, I mentioned I did the phasing in the last post. Again I have the crossover overlapped at 80hz, I toyed with all the variations and EQ was to flatten it all out as best I can but that EQ controls both sub and fronts. At least I never knew of a HU that offered seperate EQ for each output. No disrespect but your post sounds like you're giving me the run around while going nowhere other than you now mention about getting new drivers. The C5's weren't the cheapest on the market but what model from what brand would you recommend that would offer better mid bass while maintaining the same good sound quality throughout the rest of the spectrum? Again they do sound really good but just lack the mid bass to blend in with the sub or to say that the sub 50-80hz is too loud/over bearing to de-localize You can see my cabin gain graph. That's why I thought more frequency control individually between the mid and subs from something like that Audiocontrol would allow me to flatten out the severe slopes between the 2 better...if the 80 hz is way too loud from my subwoofer while my mid bass at 80hz is too low and my HU EQ is controlling both, then wouldn't I need to seperate the EQ between the 2? As I see it since I already did everything I'm supposed to with what I have... less you can explain something I missed, then the mid bass from both mid and sub need to better align so my sub is not so loud at the upper frequencies. I'm assuming that's why I can localize it...or I need to gain those frequencies from the mids. But you're telling me the Audiocontrol won't do any good but if I have the same issue with the next components then I'm not achieving anything so what component set would you recommend?...I mean the C5's are like $500 retail so I'm a little Leary to spend that much or more for another set without some reason as to why the JL's are not cutting it...like do they have too high of an FS? I don't think the specs mentioned but JL usually does good with their T/S in regards to SQ.

Well that would be a lengthy post. I'll try to be very short and keep in mind since I don't have a processor like some do, I'm more limited in what I can tune. I always start with the fronts alone. Set amp gain to my music's -12db's (I normalize my music in audio editing so there is less discrepancy between albums allowing me to make better use of the wattage since 0db tracks would yield far different output than -9db tracks for example. Then I adjust dynamics...etc all in batch audio editing. This way my gain is more fully utilized across my entire collection.) I then adjust crossover to a basic 80hz or 100hz overlap and readjust it later after I turn my subwoofer on. I move to EQ which for the HU is 13 band. I start flat and will readjust to match my vehicles acoustics as close as it'll allow later. I then move to the Time alignment, I first allow the HU and microphone to automatically do it, then I manually tweak it using a measuring tape and comparing differences using my ears to well known music. Once I get the front stage high enough to where it's all coming from head level in front of me. Then I'll toy with phasing some more and adjust my EQ cutting where necessary and comparing with my ears and my RTA...once I get the RTA pretty flat I'll adjust the EQ some more. I then bring in my subwoofer, readjust crossover if necessary and been trying to bring it up front. I have toyed with everything listed yet again with mediocre results. Here is when I played with boosting mid bass levels up front but again it just sounds boomy and really does nothing to bring the sub 50hz bass up to the front stage. I've done experiements with other features on my HU like Loudness, phases for each speaker, even volume normalizing....I can get it to where it all sounds really crisp, clear and tight punch from subwoofer but again I just can't seem to delocalize the bass, it still sounds behind me. I have also used other source material such as CD and radio along with test sweeps and pink noise when tuning. Of course I do adjust sub output so it's not too pronounced and try to make it where it still sounds good without losing presence...and that may be a problem with wattage at a given volume. However you mention hardware is not important. I disagree since for example using something like $20 Boss coaxials is not going to be very good for SQ so I don't understand your meaning there. Time alignment again is important for staging and full band EQ would be important for discrepancies in vehicle acoustics....perhaps you can clarify your meaning. As noted in my previous acoustic graph, it's a Honda Fit which is a hatchback. facing the sub to the side, up, back or to front doesn't make any noticeable changes at all. Probably because it's a hatch and pretty open, flat area throughout the entire cab. Yes HU has full time alignment. The subwoofer is adjusted for the distance but no amount of delay seems to bring the sub up front...I can always tell it's coming from the back. Now today I did swap subwoofers to an Earthquake which is better at the deeper frequencies (louder) using same size sealed enclosure and according to Bassbox Pro, this box yields a flatter response than my W3v3 sub...I think that did help delocalize it better since the lowest frequencies were louder than the 50-80hz unlike the W3...but my new theory is that perhaps the issue is the entire cab itself...it's a hatch and very rectangular like inside, this might have some issue in localization. OR it could be a power issue, even though I only ever listen at only half volume when driving, my fronts (75 watts) may not have enough headroom for mid bass? and perhaps why it sounds pronounced and sloppy if I boost those frequencies?

Did a side by side listening test comparison of these today, all else being equal, even using the same 1.25 ft3 sealed enclosure. This is a space size comparison in the same trunk between an 8 inch with 2 passive radiators and a 12 inch ported. An old setup of mine.

I don't really want to take the panel off just to show a pic, not sure what you expect to see since the entire door is sealed up using Fatmat with just the mounting clip holes exposed so that the panel clips can go in. It's done the same way all proper installs are done except the fact that I probably put more sound damping on the door than most typically do and I did not make my own spacer and foam rings, I bought them aftermarket and I used 14 gauge OFC speaker wire, gold terminals, heat shrink around the ends and contact grease to ensure full contact on all contact points. This is far from my first rodeo but rather it's the first time I've ever had time alignment and ever tried to delocalize my subs. The install itself is top shelf without going so far as to modify door panels, things like that. As far as how it sounds, I thought I already explained that. if I try to boost the mid bass regions like 80hz, 100hz or 120hz, the mid bass can sound boomy like there is high group delay ...in other words it's not resonating with the chest cavity, it's not tight and you can't feel that little kick like you can with some OEM systems I've experienced. With subs off, it sounds like there is no sub bass. Not sure what your asking. phasing is just part of tuning a system. I don't have an expensive processor to completely tune it of course so I'm working with what I have. Like I said before, it all sounds really good except that I can tell where the bass is coming from...not sure I can be any more clear than that. I have a measurement of my vehicle as you can see here, there is a sharp drop off at 70hz and I tried to fix that using boost at 80hz which is as close on my EQ I can get but noticed no difference that seemed significant to me anyway.