Deck recommendations?

So after waiting 6 months for warranty repair on my amps, it turns out my deck was shot, too.


Its been a long time since I've shopped for a deck, so I was hoping maybe some of you have researched recently or work in the car audio field and can steer me the right way.


Usually, I just look at Pioneer's and Alpine's. Any other brands I should be considering?


I don't care a lick for DVD playing and flip-out screens and junk. I do care about sound quality and volume.

I prefer a deck with a parametric eq built in - one that allows adjustment of the center frequency and width, as well as a +/- level adjustment. 3 bands would be acceptable. More is, of course, better.

I also need front, rear, and sub outputs - no speakers will be driven from the deck, so the deck's internal amp power/quality is of no concern at all - in fact, I wish they made deck's without them!


Also, the only music I listen to is wma's from my computer (no radio, no CD's, etc). This is where things have changed a lot since I last shopped. Last time I shopped for a deck, the ability to play mp3 CD's was quite new, lolz.

Ideally, I'd find a deck that allowed integration with a hard drive - or maybe even had internal storage (if such things exist yet?).

At the least, it should be good at playing off of USB thumb drives. To put it in perspective, I have been using an 8GB iAudio player and it is WAY NOT ENOUGH capacity for songs. Plus, I hate using a little mp3 device - I want the track titles on the deck - it's dangerous when I go flipping through the little screen on the portable player. Oh - and I do not, nor do I ever plan on owning an i-Pod. So I could care less about iPod/iPhone controls on a deck.


Any advice is greatly appreciated. Thanks.

 

http://www.alpine-usa.com/US-en/products/product.php?model=iDA-X305

I have the older ver of this deck and I would buy it again. My wife loved it so much that she also bought it. Well worth the price.

 

I just finished reading about that about an hour ago.

I feel like the EQ settings are a little lacking without the additional sound processor, which I don't want to have to deal with.

And I wish they gave more info on the USB device control capabilities. Alpine says something about 8 deep folders (which is plenty - I do: Genre/Artist/Album - but I need support for TONS of files). And some give some limits on the number of files (like 99,999 is one number I've seen - can't recall the deck).


I was also looking at the Pioneer DEH-P800PRS, but that's spendy and needs a spendy adapter for USB, but it comes with all the sound imprinting stuff (which I doubt I'd use anyway).

The DEH-P710BT looks great, but its not out yet. So I'm also looking at the DEH-P700BT, which compared to the rest of Pioneer's lineup matches most of my requirements quite well.

But I haven't found anything very specific on file/folder limits for the USB. I want to see that, first, since the plan is to throw a portable USB HD in the car.

I'm glad the tech is at this level finally.

 

Is it common for people with HD installs to have reliability problems?

I mean, I understand why HD's are sensitive to shock, but they've been in portable devices a while now and I guess I'm not aware of people having issues with rattling and shaking causing premature failure.

But I don't keep up on something like that. Do they have problems?

 

I have had 1 HDD failure since 2004 when I first started running Carputers. It does happen, but it's not all that common.

Now if the HDD has fluid filled bearings (like most do) then you'll hate the damn thing in the winter when it won't work for the first 20 minutes until it warms up enough to fully spin up.


As for the fully parametric you're looking for, 3 bands should be more than plenty for an environment like a car. The q adjustment is the big deal, and with it (which you're already looking for) you can create an amazing response with just the 3 bands.

Getting beyond 3 PEQ bands serves no purpose IMO in a car. Since the nature of the listening environment is poor, room modes and comb filters will abound no matter what. Trying to correct these with EQ doesn't work, so the extra bands become basically useless.

Just my $0.23

 

Didn't think about the cold. I may look for a larger solid-state device now that I think about it.

3 PEQ has always served me well, and been the main reason I've bought more Pioneer decks than Alpine decks (and liked them better, too) in my life.

 

For Pioneer:

http://www.pioneerelectronics.com/StaticFiles/Manuals/Car/DEH-P700BT_OperationManual0227.pdf


My main music folder is 51.6GB, 11932 Files, 937 Folders. So I'd like considerably more headroom than that for files and obviously folders, but .... I guess it doesn't ALL have to be in the car.

I'll have to look up what Alpine's exact specs are, if they say.

 

Alpine:

http://support.alpine-usa.com/products/documents/OM_iDA-X305_EN.pdf


Hmmm ... tradeoffs. Why so many arbitrary not-high-enough limits?

 

Build a carputer

 

I happen to agree with the main point of this post, although I don't adhere to it since I have a carputer.

But the +5V is plenty to run most 2.5" or 1.8" hdd's

 

lol. I just like a big variety. My travel playlist is already over 10GB. I just random forward until I get a song I care to hear and repeat.

If I did an HD I'd power it separately, not off the USB.

But I think flash storage is going to be easier, and 32GB should hold me long enough to be worth the $50.

I think I'll see if any local stores have that Pioneer 700 and the Alpine 303 (I like the look better than the 305, and I think it has the same functionality where it matters), so I can play with them first hand - maybe bring a flash drive in and see how it does with that.

 

I will second the front USB port. I love it.

 

I just went and grabbed a Pioneer DEH-P7000BT (its the non-Premier 700) so I can try it for a few weeks and see if I can live with the stupid one-button interface. It seems a bit wobbly (button is too stiff so the whole face moves around when you use it - plus its WAY too easy to rotate the dial when trying to push it left or right).

If I like it, I'll be swapping it out for a 700 (no one had any in stock, only 7000's).

 

I am going to say +1 to this.

You can get one of the solid state hard drives so you dont have to worry about vibrations or cold weather. Also you can probably get a card or I/O device that will have outputs for your F/R/Sub amps and there are tons of EQ programs out there. It will display full song names and all that jazz.

skip a deck and get something that does exactly what you want.

 

Is there any like how to guides online for this? I can build computers fairly easy and I would love to try to do something crazy like this.

 

Nope. :biggrin:

Just tried running my external 2.5" off our 2010 RX350 out in the showroom. Not enough to spin it.

 

^----What he said.

-Steve

 

I know, I know.... Every deck looks like a compromise. But, I'm impatient, and the only thing I'm missing right now is a head unit. So, for now, its going to be a standard deck.

But the carputer is DEFINITELY going on my project list.


On another note - this Pioneer deck is COMPLETE ABSOLUTE GARBAGE WORST DESIGNED INTERFACE EVER!!!!

Yes, its so bad I had to scream it.


Sounds great. Really. Very good.

But, the whole one-button thing - well, that button is HORRID to use while driving. And, yes, skipping to the next song while on random is not at all what-so-ever random. Next song in the same folder.


Sorry, but I'm on my way back right now to swap this deck for something else. Its so bad I cannot wait 24 hours with it. Maybe another Pioneer - saw a 5100 in the store that felt much better (different kind of button). But probably I'll try an Alpine.

 

I tried a couple Alpine's out briefly - the iDA-X200 and the X100. No 300's were available, though. Hated both, and unfortunately couldn't test the USB on either without putting one in my car.

I'm picky with decks.

 

I've got a zune (microsofts version of the ipod) and want a basic deck that will work in my 03 wrx. Will this increase sound quality w/o upgrading the stock speakers? I just wanna be able to play my zune and am not too worried about the a grade sound that $300 speakers would give me, I just want a little extra. What are some good decks with the front usb port?

 

If you're playing off a USB stick, and its on random and you hit the track forward button does it skip to a random track??


Cause none of the Pioneers will work for me - they all have the "joystick" - which is worthless for me, and at least half of them have a broken random feature. The only one that might work is the PRS800 - but with a USB cable its like $550 and its older gen, so probably glitchy and/or featureless USB.

I do like the volume button with big center ok button on the Alpine, and the forward track button is in an okay spot. They just are pretty lacking on audio tweaking ability, and I'm not so sure about their whole "Imprint" system.

Anybody every used the Alpine Imprint? Looking at the docs, it seems maybe okay. I get how it fits into the Alpine controls now after playing with one in the store, so that might be okay.


But then I found this review on Crutchfield's site. Guy sounds half reasonable, so I don't really doubt this:

 

Well getting a new deck probably wont improve your sound quality. You might be able to push more watts/channel and drive the stock speakers harder making them seem better (maybe) but it wont last.

Subaru decks used to be made by Clarion (not sure any more) but they were very good decks and had good SQ. If I were you I would look at getting a new set of speakers. The stockers are pretty bad last I checked. I bet that you could get some decent speakers for ~$150, nothing insane but enough to notice an improvement.

There is someone out there who makes a thingy so you can connect your ipod to the stock deck. might be of interest.

 

What about drives larger than 4GB? That's the possible issue I see. That review makes it sound like you can only play from 4GB at a time, and have to switch manually from one bank to another?

Any chance of trying that out?


Cause I actually kinda like the 303, and the more I read about the imprint the more I think it might be okay (appears to allow manual control of either a 5-band graphic or 7-band parametric. Plus of course the whole automatic setting mode thing (with the extra $75 kit )


If I knew the USB play worked well enough I'd be quite likely to go that route.



Otherwise, I'm also now looking at a JVC that seems decent, but isn't out yet. And a Kenwood, but I'm weary of the sound quality - and one review said the file/folder limit was 255/255 - unnacceptable.

 

I have the pioneer 700BT and I love it. It doesn't have front USB but you can run a USB cable to your glove box easy enough. What it does have though is a SDHC memory card slot right on the front. That may not cover ALL your music on one card, but it's not too far off. Anyway, the rear usb port would handle a 32gb flash drive and it's just a matter of time before you can get 64gb ones dirt cheap to house your entire collection.

The only real problem with the 700BT is that the voice activation button is the pressing of a directional pad. This leads to some bothersome input when you're trying to depress it while driving and end up pressing a direction arrow instead. Annoying and cheap, should just use a ****ing button.

Other things you may not find in the specs:
-The 2.0 firmware is NESSISARY. The previous firmware was crap. If you buy one, don't get pissed at it until you've updated.
-The EQ is rather limited and you can not set the sliders individually. I essentially wanted a pre-amp because some of my MP3s are overly quiet but the EQ is a pain to set up like that. Oh well, turn the nob.
-The voice activation doesn't do half of what they say it does. "Play artist: This feature doesn't do ****". However, "change source to CD/FM/SD" and "Call Home" work well enough.
-The bluetooth sync code is 1111. You need that and they don't tell you anywhere.

As for the random function, did you have the 2.0 firmware? Also, you have to set it to "media" rather than "folder". Anyway, user error.

 

That'd be cool. I just got back from playing with the x100 more (nobody's got the 305 locally. erg.).

Here's what I noticed. Random appears to be that "M.I.X." in the Function menu. Is that what it is on yours?

First, it locked out all song navigation control except track forward. Ideally, there would be an easy way to navigate within the same folder when random playing (for those, "oh, let's listen to this other song by the same person" moments). But even the OK button to go to folder list is locked out in M.I.X. mode, as is the push-in wheel thingy. I couldn't even reverse to the last played track in that "M.I.X." mode. Maybe not a complete deal-breaker, but that will annoy me often.

Second, it was only choosing songs from a couple of folders on the drive. FAR from everything. I don't what the deal is with that. I'd have to check the number of files or size on the folder or two it seemed to be stuck in. It was random within the couple of folders - but it was playing the same songs over and over and over again - like the random was only out of about 20 songs or so.



Could you say a little more about how this may be the same or different on your x305?



I will say, initially I thought I'd like the text display of the 303 better, but now I'm not so sure. That x100's display, like the 305 should be, displayed plenty of characters and it was big enough to read at a glance. Love the clock display. And while I don't like having to buy an add-on EQ, well, if I have to.

I also didn't see any indication of this "banking", so maybe that's something with the newer models, and not in the x100?

The more I played with it, the more I liked everything, except the random USB play. Of course, my #1 feature.

Absolutely hated the 7000BT - which as the non-Premiere version of the 700BT should act nearly identically.

Tell me this: If you put it on random and hit the track forward button, what happens?

It goes to the next song in the same folder, doesn't it? That's a deal-breaker right there. That is how I listen to my music, period. Random skip til I find one I wanna hear.

 

Just caught that last bit. I'll check into the firmware update. And yes, I know the difference between folder and media/all or whatever it may be labeled. I'm pretty certain I have it on all, but I'll double check that.

I tried one of Pioneer's big DVD decks today, too - and it has the same random play behavior. It will only do a random skip when it plays through the end of a song. Skipping forward only takes you to the next song in the same folder. Fast-forwarding it to the end of the song and letting it play the last 5 seconds it will jump randomly into an entirely different folder, as it should.

 

I have a 7000BT in my car, I found a really good deal on it I think I paid $400 shipped. It's a good deck in my opinion, I don't use the voice activation so I can't comment on how good that is. Some guy on AVIC411 makes larger volume knobs which make it much easier to use apparently. I use the stock one, it works fine for me.

 

Decided to go ahead with the Alpine iDA-x305 with the Imprint processor and tuning kit.


I did finally find buried in a footnote in the x305 manual that searching (listing the folders/files) is disabled while in M.I.X. mode. Sigh, time correction better improve my staging or I'm going to be quite disappointed.


The Alpine's sound quality better be up to par, too. After listening to the Pioneer 7000BT for a week I'm past the "direct off USB sounds so much better" and on to the "holy crap this deck is clipping mid-frequencies like an SOB". Seriously, if you enjoy quality sound at high volume, the Pioneer is not the right deck. Makes me wonder if the Premiere one is much better. One would hope.... but I am so woefully unimpressed by retail name brand car audio these days.

 

(note: Phase is defined as Frequency Dependent Time Delay. Polarity is a reference to a 180 degree change in phase)

Are you running separates? If so then your staging will never be what you want it to be unless you're bi-amping. Personally, I wouldn't waste money on the imprint processor. It looks to just be a glorified version of the controls Alpine already puts into its head units.

It is impossible to align a system to multiple locations simultaneously. It's like all-season tires. OK at everything, but not good at anything. It basically just sets everything as a compromise between listening positions.

Any reasonable deck should allow to adjust all aspects of the sound, including mid-range frequencies. If it's clipping in the mids there are a few possible reasons. One is improper gain structure (the most common) another is that the deck has some of its own internal processing active. OR, and I have had this problem with my carputer, your mp3's are clipping internally. Try a problem like mp3gain and set them down to 89dB. Because of the obscene amounts of compression used in today’s music, almost everything is created to be as close to clipping as possible, or above it since most MP3 encoders suck. This is just how modern music is done, with no dynamic range at all.

Back to the staging thing... Did the Pioneer have time correction settings? Get a deck that allows for manual time correction and you'll be much better off than letting a machine do it for you. Staging in a car will never be as good as it will be in more of a "far field" experience.

Since the Inverse Square Law says that every time you double the distance to a point source (doesn't really exist, but speaker is close enough for government work) you lose 6dB. And every time you cut that distance in half you gain 6dB. Small movements in a larger room are negligible, but small movements so close to the speakers create a much more dramatic effect. So moving your head a couple of inches will make a noticeable difference in amplitude between speakers.

I'm sure you're aware of the two primary functions of time correction. They are basically the same, but on the large and small scales. First is as a delay unit. To make the farthest speaker fire first, followed by the next closest and so on. So the sound waves hit you at roughly the same time.
Second, and the more important IMO is the small scale. And that is to setup phase alignment. This is very hard to do without some specialized tools, but possible to get it close using the good old measuring tape, pink noise, and ears method. Unfortunately even getting it spot on you will still have ****ty phase alignment due to all of the reflections in the environment.

The idea that room problems can be corrected with processing is a joke. It's akin to saying that changing your steering wheel will change the handling of your car. Yes, they are related, but not in a way that matters. Room problems can only be truly corrected by fixing the room... which isn't an option in a car. Also, because different frequencies travel at different speeds, you have to get into bi or tri-amping a system to get enough control to bring them all in line with each other. On top of that, altitude, humidity, and temperature all affect the speed at which individual frequencies travel. So even if you dialed it in perfectly today it would be off on a hot clear summer day.

Back to my point at the top about separates. If you have them then unless you are bi-amping you have no control whatsoever. Since there is a ~6dB increase AND a major time/phase shift from the drivers side, and a ~3dB increase and a mild time/phase shift from the passenger side just because of the locations. You need to be able to control each mid-bass driver and each tweeter individually to have any chance of bringing things in line.

Back to the phase thing, I didn’t want to put these in the middle of the post, so they’re here. Disregard the cabinets they came from listed at the bottom because it’s not important and the point still works. The first picture is a picture of what I’ve been talking about. It shows a very well behaved phase curve and a nice even/flat frequency response ready for tweaking. We’re only concerned with the top box, the phase curve. Don’t be fooled by the vertical line in the middle, that is just wrapping. It means the curve drops below the resolution of the window so it moves it up to the top for ease of reading. This is a very well behaved phase curve. It’s smooth and represents a complete 360 degrees of a sine wave cycle. (this is always measured using pink noise. It’s done using dual fast fourier transforms.)

In case you were curious, the red line represents coherence of the signal being measured.
This picture on the other hand is very much what you’d see in a car. Erratic, and lacking all cohesion. It doesn’t matter how much adjusting you do, this type of problem can only be fixed by changing the room…


Since this picture is actually of a sub without a low-pass filter (aka high-cut) it also can be used to show what happens when you try and make a speaker do something it wasn't designed for It's got a reasonably nice phase curve until it gets out of it's primary operating frequencies, then all hell breaks loose.

The end result of the ****ty environment is that you will have comb filters, nodes, and anti-nodes all over the place. And since a comb filter is a 50/50 problem of phase and amplitude no amount of EQing will ever get rid of it. You can only fix it by altering either phase or amplitude.

here's what a comb filter looks like



I hope this made some sense, let me know if anything needs clarifying.

 

Not sure exactly what you mean by separates and bi-amping? Every speaker has it's own channel on an amp (have a 4ch & a 1ch) and an individual channel from the deck - so time delays should be settable on each speaker. Bi-amping, are you talking about running a single driver with multiple amps??

That's the problem - Alpine has stripped all the features out of the head unit and moved them all into the Imprint. The Imprint is what the deck should, and in fact used to (to a degree), have.

I don't recall any decks that had time-correction in them, except IIRC a really high-end Pioneer or two (and that may even have been an add-on unit) and of course the Imprint.

Most deck's even had really, really subpar "eq" controls - and a lot of those had the horrid joystick control and lame USB file/folder limits (some were REALLY small).

The Alpine had a decent set of file/folder limits, no joystick, some USB quirks but better than the Pioneer, my favorite display, good brand history (expected SQ), output voltage/impedance matches my amps (can't say I really understand this entirely, but JVC decks, for example, rated their outputs at 600 ohm, whereas the Alpine was 10k, Pioneer was 20k, and my amps are both 10k inputs - my simplistic view from Ohm's law is that the JVC deck wouldn't maintain its rated output voltage feeding a higher impedance input, but I don't really know and wasn't finding much googling - trying not to get sucked into marketing hype and all, you know ...).

The only thing significantly lacking was EQ settings, which the Imprint provides (can be used fully manual - the whole automatic thing is an option - also, it pipes all the additional manual settings through the deck interface, almost like they put it in their to begin with like they should've).

The music's for me. I could care less about a passenger's view of it. For all I care, everything could arrive perfectly canceled so the passenger hears nothing but silence. Actually, that'd be a pretty cool feature.

Unfortunately, I already know that time correction is a losing battle in an auto.

The deck seems to be doing something to the audio that's garbling it bad around the 500-1500Hz range (guesstimate). The raw files sound fine on other setups, but what I'm experiencing is coming through even at lower volumes.

I set my amp gains using a 50Hz (sub) and 1000Hz (4ch) 0db sine wave. Both of my amps have birth sheets giving the "real" (versus advertised) rms wattage rating - so I assume that's correct and was properly determined with fixed voltage supply, etc.

I then use a DMM on AC and v=sqrt(watts*ohms) to measure the output voltage and set the gains. I then adjust downwards as necessary to balance the subs against the interior spks.

Lastly, I play with the PEQ center freq's and width for a little more balance. I almost always go down a step or two, but I sometimes find it sounds better if I bring a band up +1.

No, the Pioneer did not have any time correction. I believe the PRS880 might have, but with a USB cable add-on that's pushing $550.

Yeah, I'm wondering how much improvement I can get with a little time correction, and I know the environment is going to kill me always.

But, I'm thinking if I aim, for example, at improving the frequency range for certain vocals I may have some success bringing some "life" back to the music that is totally lost at this point. FWIW - all my music are WMA's from Napster. I have to look what they record them at, but I think its a VBR that hits around 192k.

Also, I feel like there's some major problem with my setup, like some major sound waves canceling each other out. I've had quite less impressive systems (on paper) in the past that totally blow this one out of the water in every respect. I'm actually to the point of being pretty upset about it. I thought I had picked pretty decent components - I sure as **** spent enough money on them - and this seems to be a big step down in both quality and loudness.

Yeah, link me to some decent info on whats available for software & hardware to do analysis like those graphs.

I've got some tone & noise generator stuff, but nothing to record sound and plot it.

I could really use stuff like that, since as of now its impossible for me to objectively compare changes.

 

Bi-Amping means that each driver in the speaker is powered by it's own amp channel. So if you have a tweeter and a mid-bass driver in one "speaker" then you use two amp channels for that one speaker. It allows for precise control over each driver instead of the speaker as a whole. This becomes more important when you have the tweeter located someplace other than coaxially inside the mid-bass.

Tri-amping is the same thing, only dealing with a low, mid, and high driver all inside the same speaker.

That's a shame. Look into an older deck. I've got an old Alpine 9855 that has amazing time corr and x-over settings.

You are correct about the marketing hype. While impedance matching does play a role in things, it's basically a big marketing scam to say "Only our amps are properly matched for our head units. So you should only buy our stuff"

The same can be said about the voltage bull****. Standard consumer audio (home theatre, etc...) line level is -.316 Volts RMS. I've heard some very good sound come from those systems. When you get into Pro audio (not pro-sumer guitar center crap) you move up to a standard line level voltage of 1.228VRms. If 1.228 is good enough for million dollar plus systems, it's sure as hell good enough for a car. But the marketing people decided that upping the voltages made things seem better, and now it's one of those stupid things that people make a huge deal about, but really means nothing.

Again, that's a real shame.

My guess is that you would see major improvements by normalizing all of your mp3's to 89dB. The CD player does this by default, but I think most MP3 players just pass the sound on and leave it alone.

Proper gain structure is ususally just making sure that all of your components hit their clip point at exactly the same time. If you clip the deck and the amp still has headroom, that's bad. Same in reverse. If the amp, processors, and head unit all clip at exactly the same point, you have the most PAG (Potential Acoustic Gain) available to you.

Personally I'm a fan of subtractive EQing. I find that it maintains the most available gain and is the least destructive. I also do Additive EQing, but try hard to avoid it.

Time correction doesn't really have anything to do with this. What it will do is to create a virtual image somewhere in front of you when you line things up properly, which actually "narrows" the soundstage in a sense, but is much more pleasing. Time/Phase alignment doesn't have any real bearing on frequency response unless it's in relation to a node/anti-node or comb filter.

IMO this is probably operator error (Don't take this as an insult). As more and more features are added, it becomes harder and harder to set things up properly. It used to be that most systems just did all this stuff internally and didn't care what you actually wanted. The same is true now with home audio. The receivers have gotten to the point where you almost need a degree to program them.

I can almost promise you that it's not worth it. The program those were taken from was called SMAART (Formerly owned by SIA, now owned by EAW). HERE is a link to the page. SMAART costs $872 for just the software, but there is a 30 day free trial.
Unfortunately you really need training to have any idea WTF you're doing with the software.
Also, you need a proper measurement microphone, appropriate sound car (like the USB-Pre) and a computer.

Meyer Sound also makes a unit called Meyer SIM. It is a fully contained system, but costs somewhere between $8,000 and $10,000. Again, specialized training is really required.

There is another unit called TEF which is even more compicated, and I think around the $6,000 mark although I may be wrong about that one. Yet again, lots of training required.

There's also a new kid on the block called EASERA SysTune. It's a sister program to one called EASE that is a high end acoustical prediction program. The software starts out at about $750, but depending on the modules, etc... you get with it can go up to $4,000. This still requires a measurement mic, computer, and sound card. As well, training is also needed.

 

Gotchya. Yeah - front's are component, passively crossed-over, not bi-amped (obviously). Rear's are coaxial, again not bi-amped.

Ain't it, though. I read through specs on EVERY pioneer, alpine, jvc, and kenwood on their home sites plus a number of notable older models.

I was like, wtf?

Except that USB play is important, and its still an area being developed, so there actually is a fair bit to be said for getting the latest models with their newer firmware and displays (cause I just LOVE waiting to read a scrolling text display that takes ALL my attention off the road while hurtling down the interstate - navigating folders is downright dangerous). I really considered some 98xx series Alpine's, but had to pass.

I'll test that.

Is there any way I can really determine where the deck starts to clip short of scoping its outputs? Cause I don't have a good scope these days.

I just set the amp gains with the deck at 80% volume right now, and with real music I can almost never turn it back up that high without serious audible distortion (the test tones do not sound distorted at that level, however)

ditto.

I can accept that, but it leaves me at a loss for how to "fix" my errors, or discover what they are. ?? It certainly doesn't seem like my current setup is any more feature-laden than ones past.

 

The reason you clip on music and not the test tones is that the music has a higher overall level than the test tone. I'm not sure how exactly to find out the clip level of the deck, unless it's listed in the specs. When I did mine on my old system I used an o-scope and looked for the square waves, then matched that to the clip light on the amp (which is usually 1-3dB below actual clipping)


I'm not really sure I can give you the answers on how to fix things, besides just tinker and futz around. As much as I hate to use it, I have become a fan of Alpines Media Expander. At least that's what it's called on my deck. I know it's taking things into it's own hands, but it does a very good job of warming things up. I still control everything else, and I would be shot in some circles for saying I use it...but oh well.

 

Tinkering is spendy. Next may be a new enclosure for the subs, since I've read these particular ones don't particularly like sealed enclosures. And then I'm wondering how much of a mistake I made going to the PDX 4ch. amp, with its class D layout. I'm also very unimpressed with the Type-R interior speakers, but again - trying something different is more $$$$. And those "sound rooms" are completely useless for evaluating speakers. Like they'll sound anything like that in a vehicle, much less in my vehicle. Wonder how many returns I can make before these retail people start getting pissed, lol.

 

I agree it's spendy. I was talking more about tinkering with settings. While a class AB amp is better for the fronts I don't think the difference is all that noticeable. I've got an old Kicker 4 channel class A/B amp (300 or 350 watt IIRC) that had been running my old subs. let me know if you had any interest @ $120.

It's been my experience that proper setup can make poor components sound pretty good. I would just stick with it until you get what you want.

 

Grabbed an "eval" copy of that Smaart today. Says the requirements for hardware are:

That doesn't seem like the whole picture. I'll have to look into it to see if I can even figure out what I'd need to just play with it.


Also grabbed an "eval" copy of some software called LEAP - enclosure modeling.


Even with subjects I think I know I little about, there's just so, so, so much more to learn. Cripes, I feel like I spend my whole life just reading and learning.

 

Like I said, SMAART uses dual FFT's to figure out its information. To use it to its fullest you need to have a sound card that has two outs and two inputs.

One input needs to be able to provide +48V phantom power to a measurement microphone, and accept mic level in.
The other input comes right back out from the mixer, or in this case the deck, but could also be looped right out and back into the computer, but that won't give accurate readings for anything involving delay because it's not factoring in propagation delay of the equipment.

It works by listening to a baseline measurement and then a real world measurement and then the result on the screen is the the difference between the two, NOT the actual reading from the room.

For Impulse Responses it plays pink noise, but can somehow figure out timing and will show you the delay between the signal coming back directly to the computer and the signal coming in through the microphone. IIRC, you can run impulse responses with only one input and it just calculates the delay back to when it sent the timing signals out. But as I said, that will tell you total system delay, but not speaker delay since there is propagation delay in every piece of equipment.

You can make it make pretty colors quite easily, but it's somewhat of an ordeal to have it mean anything.


EASERA SysTune has the neat trick that it can measure actual source material (music) on the fly and does not need to generate it's own test signals.

 

Sounds like it.


Nice to see that there are "eval" copies of such esoteric programs floating around, though. lolz.

 

By all means, play around with it. It's a fun program, but once your 30 days is up the only way I (and others) have found to reinstall it is to format.

 

yeah. .... um. .... about that ..... check your PM's