Low frequencies produce distortion (especially at higher volumes) on speakers. Only give your speakers highs and mids.

Ideas: In stead of adjusting your cd player eq, adjust the component sets crossover. Tune your stereo without the subwoofer. Then add it back in. gl

http://mobile.jlaudio.com/prod...id=30

Pretty well everything you need to know, with step by step instructions 94

You get what you pay for.

Nothing is impossible, the impossible takes longer and costs more money.

Have you set a delay via the time-alignment on your deck to you left speakers? I've got a .8 millisecond delay on lefts and effect is drastic.

Depending on the level of addiction to car audio consider picking up a tuning disk....you can pick up the autosound2000 set of discs from Crutchfield or the IASCA tuning disk. If you can place each drum in the 7-drums track on the IASCA disk you're well on your way to a top-quality system.

Try and pick tracks that isolate or have a focus on particular instruments as well as both female and male vocals. If you're into hip-hop I'm trying to think of tracks/CD's I'd use to tune

Female vocal: Mary J. Blige "Everything".....may not be your taste but female vocals will give you a great indication of sound quality. Male vocals.....I'm not sure I can think of a track that's particular good. I know there's some but just can't think of anything.

Low end frequencies: Run DMC 'dumb girl' or Adam Freeland Live On Tour (breakbeat if you're not familiar with Freeland) is a sub-fest. I'm a bit old-skool

Listen to the point as mentioned by another poster when the music starts to sound harsh and unnatural. Every so often I think to myself "this doesn't sound right", turn down the volume and instruments and vocals start to sound more natural. Is this the volume I'd like to be listening to the song at? Sometimes 'no'

And for the discs that really put a smile on your face.....it could be quite possible that tuning for each disc is sometimes your best route. Listening via radio.....bass boost is generally 'on' in my system. CDs.....rarely.

I'm not sure how well your ear is trained but first and foremost....forget theory and tune based on what sounds good to you. If you want to see what's possible find a high-end home audio store and audition their reference system. My reference (although it's starting to get hard to recollect) is a set of B&W Nautilus speakers....the salesman asked my sister and I to close our eyes, played the track and afterwards asked how far from 'live' did we think it was. It sounded like she was about 10' feet from us with no amplification. Amazing.

Once you tune and are interested to see if maybe someone can modify settings and provide you an even better impression of sound quality/SPL, find a shop with an RTA and measure the frequency response to see if any major issues show up.

You get what you pay for.

Nothing is impossible, the impossible takes longer and costs more money.

Time-alignment has been around for a while and when I started hearing about delays in sound measured in milliseconds was silly. What this does though is puts you in the middle of the concert rather than on the left wall. It goes back to path lengths of sound. You're left speakers only need about 2' to reach your ears.....however, the distance between you and right speakers is maybe 4-5 feet depending on your vehicle. The difference in time that it takes for sound to reach your left ear or right ear in such a situation is noticeable and measured in milliseconds.

What happened to me is that with a delay on left channel the sound appeared to be coming from the front of my hood which is exactly what you want.

The 7-drums track.....there's 7 drums each playing a single frequency....a tap on the drum basically. The track was recorded live and I'd expect there's only a few feet between each drum since there's 7 of them and within the width of your windshield you'll be able to locate the exact location of each drum. One starts in your a-pillar, next maybe sounds like it's coming from a foot or so from side-mirror, next sounds like it's coming from front fender, next one left side of hood, center of hood....so on and so forth.

If you want to eliminate any bias on your part.....grab your g-friend or buddy or whoever and show them how to set the delay......close your eyes and let them turn it off, set a .5 millisecond delay, 8 second, 1.5 second, etc. You'll more than likely hear a shift in where the instruments are coming from. And it's sometimes helpful to start with extremes.....set a delay so everything sounds to be coming from left channel....then set a delay so that everything sounds to be coming from right channel. Tell your buddy where you hear the sound and what you like...have him/her randomly select delays and select what sounds best to you.

I had to go through 2 salesman to even find one that knew what an RTA was....make sure they use one else it's just their ears vs your ears.

This is what I did to tune my system.....I picked sound mods that I thought were beneficial; however, for a 2nd opinion I asked my installer to hook up an RTA.....you know what though.....we basically changed no settings other than a peak in the midrange region.

Walk into the stereo shop of choice and bring your own CDs though......the low-end output of a system when going to a club to see a DJ may sound very bass-heavy to those who've never been to a club to listen to tracks remixed 'live'. Would, for instance those tuning your system never heard a wide variety of club systems or been to a variety of hip-hop concerts to see how the music sounds live? Maybe/maybe not.