The Audiophile's BS Thread

I was going to do the same with my two 8's when I get my Alpine in just for fun.

 

I can run the mids all the way up to 12.5hz/24 slope. Scott B. told me to run them that way and adjust from there. To my ears 12.5hz was to much and the overlap sounds the best.

 

From what I have read you want to get the mids as low as you can without distortion. Scott B. told me to run them at 63hz/24 slope, so I am for sure going to take his advice.

 

Not to threadjack, fellas, but one must ALWAYS CONSIDER THE SOURCE MATERIAL, IMHO, which is to say, download your tunes at the highest quality settings, regardless of bandwidth, and purchase unfettered, remastered latest-gen CD's. Having been an ardent fan of high-end home audiophile systems (B&W, Thiel, Mcintosh and a myriad of tube amp manufacturers) then delving into car audio (ADS, MBquart, and the ever-present Alpine), have learned the quality of one's recordings must remain paramount as well as the electronics which drive them. just sayin....

 

That's why I keep myself loaded up with some FLAC's of Hans Zimmer.

 

Cannot agree with this more. A few months ago I decided to delete my entire library of music and start from scratch to build a new library which is 100% lossless. Finding the music I want in lossless format is much more difficult than it should be, since the new standard for music is 256kb mp3's (thanks Apple). More often than not, I actually end up having to torrent my lossless music! Even when I am willing to pay for lossless formats, they are rarely available for purchase online, and anyone who shares this struggle with me knows how few and far between record stores have become. Some of the sites that I have found to sell lossless formats charge out the ass for them too! JunoDownload is the primary site that I use to find lossless electronic music, and I end up paying $2.75 per track for .WAV. Making the extra effort to find lossless recordings is definitely worth the time and money, though. It is a night and day difference between 320 mp3 and lossless, especially when listened to on an audiophile grade stereo.

 

That's the one nice main feature of the 80PRS that a few of us have. My 320kbps MP3s are extremely crisp. Very impressive. I didn't realize until after I bought it that (that) was the whole purpose of the deck, to improve the sou d quality of MP3s. It can play WAV but not FLAC and ALAC

 

I might add...I can still play FLAC thru my phone though...into the deck

 

Brian, I've not done it in the car. I do very odd things in the car when it comes to subwoofers. Hence the underseat subs in the Taco and the four 6.5" subs in the Lexus IS300 I had. I do think that type of quarter wave design is quite neat. That and horns are just the best way to get great efficiency out of a woofer. There is certainly a premium to pay in terms of space though.

So in the end you could certainly do it but it will take a lot of space and all you'll get in the end is the "cool" factor. Which I for one, think is neat. That's why I did the underseat subs. Not because it was optimal but because fuck yeah it's awesome. What IS optimal though would be two beefy tens ported with plenty of power behind them.

I recently stumbled on 4 of the CSS Trio 8's. I used to sell them (I'm a dealer for CSS) but I never owned any of my own. We quit selling them a long time ago and I was pissed because I never ended up getting any. So about a month ago I find these and IMMEDIATELY bought the remaining stock. I'm thinking I might revamp my underseat setup with two ported Trio 8's if I can figure out the port system. That's if everything else on my priority list gets finished.....which isn't likely

 

Quarter wave box puts out a lot better and louder clean bass tho right? The way I understood it is...its THE way to go for sound quality.

 

I'm probably gonna solve this problem by buying a new battery tommorow, but has anyone seen a bad ground on a class A/B amp cause a class D amp to go on low voltage cutoff.

My 250/1 is cutting out at higher volumes. I've never done it until about a month or two ago. I'm pretty sure its my battery, its still original and 100k miles, but the kids down at Vato zone load test it for me and its fine. I think the load tester only draws like 20 amps though. My head unit shows my voltage all over the place, when I start I'm at about 14-14.4v, when I drive normal with normal easy volume I'm about 13.6v Crank it up and you can watch the voltage drop to around 13.4 to 13.2, but this should still not cause a LVC. I don't have an analog meter to measure the transient drop, but thats my only guess is that the transient drop is below 11V, but thats a huge drop. I will note that I saw it come down to 12.8v last night while driving, but it was at idle and didn't stay there long.

REALLY think its the battery but just wanted to double check before for anyones experience with this.

 

Scott is a sharp guy and has the trophies to prove it. However, I think that 12,500hz for a midbass driver is downright laughable. It's not on axis so you're not getting much of that frequency range unless it's a reflection. The driver rolls off well before then anyway.

Rule #1 is to always do what sounds best to YOU. If you like it but I tell you different pay no attention to me (or anyone else).

What frequencies do you have available for the crossover? It's ok to leave a little bit of a gap and run a slope that's a bit more shallow. That helps blend the mids and tweeters together. You just don't want the gap too big.

The amp only has 250watts? Are you sure it's not clipping when it does that? I think that amp has a clip light on it. Maybe check it when it's cutting out to see if it lights up?

 

Apples lossless should be everyone's default setting, imho. while not perfect, it's the best they offer if one uses itunes, which i do. incidentally, i have cd's from the mid-eighties which sound better than music released now due , i believe, to the artists insistence on obtaining the best producers (and often musicians) and the equiptment those producers used in their given studios. certain artists like steve winwood, bob dylan, and robbie robertson understood the actual recording of and production of their music affected the end-result. sorry for the diatribe, but this is an audiophiles thread p.s. good luck, Shane, with the new library

 

Its only has green for go and red for protect. I know these amps pretty well. I'm not nearly enough volume for clipping. On top of that I've had this thing pumping much much harder.

 

I rip as wav if the recording calls for it. Most music won't sound much better than a 320kbps MP3 rip honestly. 320 is my go to unless the recording is great. Stuff I consider great would be Pink Floyd - The Wall or Dire Straits - Sultans of Swing. The Adele 19 album is a modern day album that's worthy of WAV for sure.

I hate apple formats because they try and lock in your media. I like to OWN my music which is why I choose non proprietary formats. But again, that's just what works best for me.

Weird man. If it's not clipping or going into protect (which with the cooler weather I'd suspect it's not) then I have no idea. Maybe find a friend who has a relatively new car battery that you could use for testing purposes. That way you don't have to buy a new one to determine if that's the problem?

 

Meh, 07 with the original battery still, 105k miles later. Paydays tommorow.... think I'll just do it. I'm about 90% positive but that 10% of doubt kills me. I noticed this morning though that my lights actually dim a pretty good amount during starting, I think that was a good indicator. The fluid levels looked good on the battery last night, but the electrodes really look like crap. Alotta buildup between the fins, easy to see.

 

Well shit, if it's nearly 6 years old just replace it. Consider it preventative maintenance. I replaced the battery in my 09 this summer because the truck (only time ever) didn't start. The heat is murder on the batteries here.

 

Yea thats probably why mine is failing, two years in Sacramento heat is more than likely taking its toll. I've only ran it dead once, that was my first cue it was doing out but that was a year and a half ago Only 30 mins on acc and it was dead.

VatoZone here has duralast, they're a JC battery so I may go with that unless the stealership here has em for cheaper. I think they actually do. Probably set myself u p for a dual battery system here soon.

 

We've always used Duralast in our trucks and it out lived 2 systems, both under 500 watts, and am going to run the PDX-V9 on it I'm sure it'll keep up.