Leaderboard

Clipping indicators are in general a joke AND unnecessary. What part of if you don't hear it, it doesn't matter don't you get? You keep trying to come up with ways to make your system better than your ears. Why? In particular when you won't like better since it will sound worse to you. Completely bassakwards. I used to carry around a binaural head and torso simulator. $30k for the body, $5k worth of mics. Even using that with a stellar analyzer is not going to gain YOU anything. Stop using other peoples goals and things you read on the internet as something YOU want and instead use your ears and decide what could be better. If you never take the time to train your ears, then you will never appreciate anything anyways. Training your hearing is the best and worst thing you can do. Best in that it is a stellar skill and gives enjoyment worst because it makes other things sound like shit. I've taken 16yrs of classical guitar lessons, 4 years of upright bass lessons, 6 years of voice lessons, 16 years of piano lessons, 4 years of jazz piano lessons (from Ray Charles pianist ), played in countless cover bands ranging from Reggae to Metallica, orchestra's (including the MN state orchestra), jazz bands and ran a sound board in a club for 4 years. I can whistle 1kHz nearly dead nuts with no reference, tune a guitar closer than any electronic tuner I've used by ear, and yes it makes what I do discerning. That is an education that will do more for you than reading ANY book or time on the internet. Stop avoiding letting your ears grow up and start embracing it.

After some unplanned decisions(buying my Avalanche) and some other unexpected events. i finally paid off my subs. I am too excited for them to get here.(gonna be a long 3 weeks). I would like to sincerely thank Q for being awesome to deal with. Always replies to Questions, Helped me decide on the correct enclosure for my goals, and worked with me on the timeline. You sir, are top notch in my book.

Just bought 60lbs of coffee, lol

You'd probably be very surprised. I currently have the HU running an active setup with 3" full range drivers on the dash, 6.5" dedicated midbass in the doors and the sub in the rear. Band 1 is set to 40hz and is down -6dB and Band 2 is set to 125hz and is down -2dB and the rest of the bands are flat. I have it set that way to keep the bass/midbass from the 6.5's super clean.

We decided on these wheels and this stance! This is the color we are doing too so was stoked when I found this pic.

Trick is to make a lifestyle change. That is the hard part. This whole loose weight in a month shit is so stupid. I am lucky, my parents were both athletes. I was raised strictly with eating and excersise. I didn't even know my father was a alcoholic and IV drug user until way later in life when I he told me about his past. So I basically went from super healthy household straight into the military 17 years ago. I tried smoking a little, but that was about it. I don't drink much either. But one of the things I have done over the last decade is help people in the military that need to get their physical life sorted so they don't die when they are 50. I know it is tough, but everyone can do it, I have at least seen that... But you can't do it all at once, takes time... blah blah blah...

I worked both my days off. It paid off. By my math I should be getting 167% of my bonus.

Likewise there's no point in asking questions if you aren't going to listen, either. You asked what we thought of your planned setup. We told you. Your response was essentially "I'm doing it anyways". Been down that path many times with people, no point in wasting time answering questions if they aren't going to listen to reasonable advice. You are severely underestimating the complexity of a 3 way front stage with a digital processor that has a wide range of features. Your experience with the KX3 isn't even relevant. Not only is it not in the same ballpark, it's in an entirely different zip code. What you aren't grasping is that if you ACTUALLY wanted to learn, you would cut your teeth on a high quality 2-way active front stage with a digital processor that offers a wide range of features. If you want a stereo that you can never get to sound right and confuses the hell out of you, stay the course with your plan.

Too late, see the Matthew Broderick version

The mirror is not low enough either.

i'll work on getting a few for you guys...

Its almost as if he's saying a 3 way front stage is the pinnacle of SQ. Why not a 4 way? What about a center channel or rear fill? I don't understand the fixation. A single driver (point source) that could reproduce the entire spectrum accurately would be the most ideal driver ever.

Dude M5 can seem like a dick but he knows his shit, inside out, backwards and forwards. I'd listen up. Three way is a whole 'nother level, start simple, save money, enjoy it for a while and then decide if you want to progress. You should take some advice, or admit that you have no reason to ask questions when you ignore all answers. Wasting people's time they are generously giving to you. You wanna burn up money and hate the result? Go do it quietly....

You have them, listen to one in your shop and tell us. No. There is no difference in signal response. Frequency response sure. They crop things significantly depending on the compression but this doesn't intrinsically mean it is lopping off harmonics. ie, if you have a 25Hz note, harmonics of 50Hz, 75Hz, 100Hz, etc... It'll take a rather high order of harmonics if the compression lops things off at 10kHz. Of course the first harmonic of 5kHz is 10kHz so there the effect is different. And please, stop believing in garbage and use your damn ears. I don't understand why this is so hard. Google blind A/B testing. Then setup a jury test for yourself where you DO NOT KNOW anything about when what will be played. Let your ears decide. I guarantee one thing here, when you do the test right you will be shocked at how much compression can occur before you notice. And please do cheat. Use some expensive headphones for the test.

I have no knowledge of car stereos. Competed briefly in the late 80's early 90's, but am a Physicist with a concentration in Acoustics. For the past 15 years I've done Acoustic & Vibration consulting and sales. And now you understand my frustration with the car audio scene here. Everything you have heard from ANYONE working near you is wrong. Your post is so full of confused information it is scary. I am not writing another book. Let's take one topic at a time. We will help, but this is crazy. As for the analyzer, it won't show you shit. There are so many variables in the measurement it is bound to fail. I have a $100k acoustic analyzer sitting on my desk at the moment and all it would do for you is make you draw the wrong conclusions. You will seriously have confused measurements and come up with other ridiculous responses using something, in particular when it is that piece of shit. You want to scream by using your ears, but what do you listen to your music with? Why would you want to do anything that you can't hear? What will you do when the analyzer tells you to make changes that you don't like? And yes, that will happen guaranteed. Even if I brought a real analyzer over and measured you'd still not like what it tells you. Add to that the error and confusion in understanding windows, aliasing, impulse, fft, phase response, discerning reflections, standing waves and measurement positioning, compensating for standing waves on the diaphragm, direction, and I could go on and measuring will only net you a false security in something that isn't real. Not a good idea.

Speakers don't have a signal to noise ratio, so not even sure what you are referring to there. Signal to noise ratio for electronics is exactly what it says....it's the ratio of the signal to the noise, typically expressed in decibels. Divide the level of the signal by the level of the noise and then convert that to decibels. So if an amp,has a SNR of 90db, then the signal is 90db louder than the noise. Noise in an amplifier is typically a fairly constant level independent of the level of the signal. Which means by default the signal to noise ratio will get worse as the level so the signal decreases. You can see this in most THD+N graphs for an amplifier, at low power levels the THD+N is typically worse because the noise constitutes a higher percentage compared to the level of the signal. It also means it's very easy to fudge SNR.....just increase the level of the signal, and magically the SNR gets much better. An amp might be rated for 100w, but if the manufacturer wanted to fudge the SNR they would increase the power beyond 100w so the SNR looked better or that particular measurement. NOW HERE'S HE REALLY IMPORTANT PART.....any amplifier you would purchase has a high enough SNR to not matter. Literally it doesn't matter. You WILL NOT hear a difference between them. The SNR of the amp just has to be better than the SNR of the environment, and our environment sucks. Ignore SNR completely. The numbers are easily fudged, and even if they weren't modern electronics are good enough that SNR simply does not matter. A gain control is used to adjust the input sensitivity so that he amplifier will provide full power without clipping. Don't make it any more complicated than that. The gain control doesn't increases the output of the amp. It basically allows more (turning it up) or less (turning it down) of the input voltage to pass through to the amplification stage so that full power is provided without clipping. Don't worry about it beyond that. Yes allowing more or less input signal voltage to pass will affect the amplifiers output, but don't think of it like that.... I think it's confusing you. You are overthinking it. The gain ratio of an amplifier is fixed...I.e. the amplifier provides 20db of gain. The gain knob is there to adjust the level of the input signal so after 20db of gain is applied the amplifier is producing full power without clipping. Your installer is an idiot. Ok, fair enough a high gain setting resulting from low voltage might allow thermal noise to creep in. Everything else he said about "high fidelity sound" and "provides a better voltage to amplify from" is nonsense. Utter fucking nonsense. Aside from the potential for thermal noise preamp voltage has ABSO-FICKING-LUTELY NOTHING to do with "fidelity", "better for the amplifier", "sound quality"' etc. NOTHTING. That AC unit is extremely limited in usefulness, and not much use if you don't understand what it's telling you in it's usefulness.

Land of educated people and culture and no car stereo shops, lol

Louder than justins 4 18 evils? Do you know how many decibelz its doing im curious? Well, idk. It was extremely low, I will say that. On the meter, 6 ft away, he was doing a 130.x but at like, 25hz. Its not sealed from the rear, so, just imagine, a astro van, with a wall, but feeling all this pressure coming from the sides of the wall. Plus, no power. rumor is to be 16bc5500s and 40batts when its all said and done. His goal is to take down Steve Mick. So your saying my truck was 5db louder 6ft away with only 3 subs and half his power? And he wants to be louder than Mick? LOL Thats 12db he has to make up for. Sounds to me like Justins Blazer with the Evils would shit all over this build. Not hating on it..... just saying Zach has plenty of experience, not to mention numerous Bass Boxing records/titles.

ferris wheel of alternators sticking out the hood?

Grab some ZCONS man, or ethos.