Thread: Who here tunes their car audio? Software for Time Alignment, EQ, Crossovers?

White Rabbit...you make very good points and provide alot of useful information but please tell me how to check phasing. Phasing changes for the xover and then can change again from speaker location. I remember Rockford Fosgate had a tool available that told phasing and I think Autosound 2000 also had one. But I have never used it or seen anyone that has.

When setting up a car for SQ there are three things to keep in mind from the start...speaker position, speaker position, and speaker position. Speaker position will make or break a system in an instant. Speaker placement has an effect on staging, sound quality, and how much adjustement will need to be made in the EQ. Properly placed speakers will need very little adjustements in the EQ or TA. Here is a little story about speaker placement. Around 10 years ago I was working at shop that had several IASCA competion vehicles to our credit. My job was make sure they all sounded good first and looked good second. After spending three hours doing speaker location set up I handed the car over to the other installer at the shop to make the kick panels. The car was near perfect, a little tweaking and it was on the money. The installer building the kick panels decided the speaker on the passenger side was not attractive or linear to the driver's so he moved it. Needless to say the car lost it's next competetion and the installer almost got canned. On the flip side not everyone or every car can have excellent speaker locations so we must rely on adjustements through EQ, xover, and gain.

Accent...I do agree with you on auto EQ's but not on RTA's. It is IMPOSSIBLE to fully tweak a system without a RTA. The RTA gives you a base line ... a starting position. Then it goes to ear. When I tune I switch back and forth between ear and RTA many times. Making a car sound good is not all that difficult....making it win is a different story. Ofcourse very few of will ever compete to that level but it is always a good idea to approach the project as if the car is going to IASCA finals.

Im not sure how to measure phase. the tracks you are referring to are a general test for left versus right phase, and only compare fully in phase to fully out of phase. not the best tool in the shed! but important none the less. I usually employ that track to make sure I am on the right track, rather than actual reference material. sounds like you dont need it as a reference, either

and there were several vehicles that went to world finals from team lotus, most tuned by the man Dingaling, all by ear, no RTA, no computer. Team Lotus did very well this year, too.

the only thing RTA gives you is a good score on the RTA. Everyone I've ever talked to agrees that a flat frequency response in the car sounds like poop, and I've seen the same myself.

Speaker positioning affects unmeasurables, such as depth, height, and width, much much moreso than tonality or image. And I absolutley think its paramount to a competiton car. There will always be something lacking in a car that has crystal clear imaging, but no depth. Or a car always sounds tinny to me when the stage is super narrow. even if the tonality of individual voices are rock solid.

and certianly no EQ can compensate for poor positions.

But at the same time, RJ took a wrx sti to world finals, with his 2 way mids in the doors, and his large format tweeters midway up the pillars (talk about an aesthetic nightmare!) and took second place. His car sounded amazing. so it CAN be done, and I would hate to suggest to everyone here that it is abolutely neccesary to run kickpanels and have their speakers meticulously aimed OR ELSE its gonna be a poopy sound!

Originally Posted by azzurro

Guys, thank you very much!

I now have a lot of excellent info to work with when beginning my tuning adventures I have no experience yet so I can't really contribute to the discussion in any way.

Because we all have computers in our cars, I thought it would be very natural to use to your computer's processor to do all the DSP work (TA, XOver, EQ).

What would you recommend? Scott_fx recommended kxdrivers, but these will not work with my external sound card.

Has no one written any software that will work well for this? I'm pretty sure that I can find quality filters and EQ with a bit of digging, but what about time alignment?

Will I need to use an external processor?

I was kind of hoping that there would be some quality free (or even pay) software available. I've got the computer in there... might as well use it. I'm adding a sub soon, which means another amp, and not a whole lot of space for an external processor.

Personally I use external eq's and generally stick with the passive crossovers the speakers come with. I am goint to use an Alpine PXA H701 in my car and use the digital output from my external sound card. For me it is easier to stick with what I know. But I do find it a bit strange there is not alot of software available to do the same thing. I have meet people in the music industry that have software based eq's but I have never seen the software for sale. I would like to find something I can edit MP3's with. Please post up if you find something.

Thanks for the links. I have some MP3s that have extra sounds in them and I would like to be able to remove the sounds. It is not critical or something I can't live without, I just thought it would be neat if I could do it. Thanks