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Pardon the absence, been heads down in development. And found out what's going on with your scar stereo.
Great news for all those who just wanted a cheap and dirty fix. $1 may solve the specific complaint you have.
My specific complaints were; atrocious highs, lack of midrange, and not enough midbass.
The problem: tweeter is not in phase. Makes it overpoweringly prominent. Thereby killing the midrange.
Test and Solution for some: cover the tweeter (see photo below I used 3m clear paint protection film). Instantly the problem is gone. Naturally the 3 midrange drivers upfront do not have adequate highs nor midbass to work perfectly. So in the short term, turn the treble and bass up to your preference. NOTE: B&W the folks who put their name on your door, consider the sound we make to be the absolute last word in performance, and by my standards, this setup sounds good enough for car stereo.
Listen to something like Dire Straits (money for nothing) at volume knob turned up all the way, things sound as they should, remove the plastic and its ear-bleed bright tinny and the soundstage collapses!!
For the advanced: You can experiment with adding resistance to the tweeter and reduce its output. However, acoustically speaking its an insurmountable without tremendous amounts of DSP- which will induce phase shifts. Replacing the mid drivers to more efficient ones might be the way to go- more work to be done here.
Regarding DSP we were working on; its now available nationwide, not cheap (made in Italy) The path the industry decided to take was to use DSP to remove (negate) the factory DSP. The other path is still fraught with perils. What this solution further allows you to do is run a connector to the headphone out of your phone or use Bluetooth for lower quality. (reason explained in next paragraph)
Source Quality: I started with mistrusting the source quality, i.e. the d-to-a converter in the car (which is quite antiquated) indeed the higher the quality the better things sound- However; even with superb quality, the sound from the speakers was bad until the tweeter was deleted.
After you do this test with the tweeter (and do use a good quality CD) you will want to focus your attention on changing the subwoofer driver. Which is my next focus. After the sound is as good as a Toyota I will fool with DSP and alternative input methods, as they would be wasted now. BTW the MQA files played back through a LG phone sound incredible.
Cambo, special thanks mate.
I would have been completely turned around had you not provided a vital clue, the tweeter was being fed full range- i.e. there is no signal processing on it. Which is such a ridiculous misstep given that they have a dsp, no one would think to look there.
No tweeter can work in that location without significant digital phase correction. Goes against the laws of physics.
You solved my sound problem.
Last edited by Queen and Country; May 1, 2018 at 02:30 PM.
Reason: omission
Settings I could finally live with after tweeter delete:
3 channel stereo
Treble all the way up
Center channel slightly hot- those who want a diffused sound will want to do the inverse.
Bass slightly up
Sub slightly up- will vary by content.
When I did the Premium Sound retrofit in the X-Type, I used some highly reputable aftermarket splits, and the sound was pretty disappointing if i'm honest.
Later on I helped another X-Type owner with the same retrofit, he bought the same speakers, and he was also disappointed. Later on he got a full set of the blue Alpine door speakers, and matching tweeters out of a wreck, and put them in. It sounded a lot better.
So after that, I developed a theory, that OEM speakers sound better with OEM amps, aftermarket speakers sound better with aftermarket amps. Another friend of mine who is a car audio installer, has said the same thing (he'd never put it in writing though, his livelyhood depends on selling aftermarket speakers...)
@Cambo I believe your theory is correct. Too many people just throw in aftermarket speakers without other changes and are disappointed in the results. It's happened to me in the past. I think it comes down to 2 different theories of Car Audio.
The manufacturers use extremely efficient speakers that can be driven loudly by low power. They mask the limitations of these OEM speakers with DSP. Obviously, the driving force behind this is that it can be done cheap. That being said, sometimes these OEM systems can sound really good (or at least a lot better than you would expect.)
The aftermarket car audio industry sells based on power. They use relatively insensitive speakers designed to be driven loud by a much larger expenditure of power. They are usually better made, they are made to look cool (since you actually see the aftermarket speakers when buying) and they have a pretty flat frequency response.
There are problems whenever these two systems are mixed together. Just throwing new aftermarket speakers into matching holes without thought to depth of mounting, and usually not paying attention to sensitivity ratings can cause a couple of bad reactions. First, these aftermarket speakers aren't powered high enough from the factory system to sound their best. This can be seen in a large drop in volume and often the cost of bass. In short, they usually sound anemic. Second, being basically capable of flat production of music, aftermarket speakers "show off" the DSP that was used to give the factory speakers as good a sound as they could. This will cause large variations in frequency response that won't be flattering when not used with the DSP's designated speakers.
This is why our pioneer forefathers always advised switching out headunits and adding amps along with speaker additions. With the ubiquitous introduction and dominance of "Infotainment Systems" replacing the head unit is often not a realistic proposition as the infotainment system controls a whole bunch of other stuff too. Thus, the rise of "CleanSweep" type products that de-DSP the sound so you can use your infotainment system with aftermarket components. These have their own level of difficulties because mixing the 2 types of car audio always does.
Please let me know if I am understanding this basically correctly.
Sorry. What I meant was, what happened to the amazing CES product Q+C was talking about, which was supposedly just like those units?
Also, now I see that unit is for getting audio in, not out like a fancy LOC.
I'll just get an audiocontrol LC2i and call it a day.
It has not worked out.
There have been unwanted side-effects.
Thats why you see only 'sketchy' companies peddling a MOST take-off, it may work some of the times on some of the cars.
Not reliable enough for any mainstream company to get involved and assume liability.
For my car I'm going to start with an LC2i, 500W amp and a 8-10" sub.
Where would the best place to get the signal for the LC2i from, at the factory sub in the footwell? (Alpine system). Also I saw pics of how small and unimpressive the factory sub is, and how there's not much room in there. Would this Tang Band be a decent upgrade in the factory enclosure? It's 4 ohms, I have no idea what the factory sub impedance is. Just spitballin here.
If this car works like the XF and XE and other recent JLR vehicles, the only place to intervene to get a signal will be *after* the factory amp. The "upgraded" stereos tend to have the software to decode the head unit signal located in the factory amp. The output of the head unit is proprietary. If Q&C with a lot of industry engineers and the backing of major companies couldn't crack the nut, I doubt any of these boxes are legit.
Since the MOST boxes are admittedly sketchy, the only likely successful alternative is to tap into the speaker level outputs of the factory amp, run into the DSP of your choice to clean up the signal and remove the factory DSP to flatten response. After this, if the aftermarket DSP you chose has onboard amp capabilities run the speakers from it (like the discontinued but still popular JBL MS-8), if the DSP you choose doesn't have onboard amps, use the line level outputs to a multichannel amp, to power the speakers. You will be faced with a lot of channels to power since these units tend to have a separate amp for each tweeter, mid, midbass etc. From there you will have to decide which kind of crossover you want, active or passive.
I don't yet know how it will sound. Using a high level input is never the preferred way to go, and it will impact the signal negatively in the signal to noise ratio. I think this may be a bit worse due to coming after the signal is amplified as it may be "hotter" than a CleanSweep or a MS-8 is expecting. At the moment, this is the plan for my XE. I actually want to try out a surround sound protocol and want my soundstage properly balanced with a DTA. I've looked at other options, but haven't found any.
I've looked at other options, but haven't found any.
You nailed it across the board.
For a guy like you that knows what he is doing, the drawbacks of manipulating amplified sound and wanting the ultimate in fidelity...there is another way.!
This evening I will post when I have some thinking time and not just farting around.
How do we get to a formula one car, by eliminating all the wrong choices, like putting the engine upfront so as to have room for passengers and golf clubs.
Put a switch in the speaker wiring that allows you to switch between system A and B.
Do a completely separate second system using the existing speakers (which are quite good)
The reasons:
1. The source is very bad. A phone, music player, or computer will be vastly superior, so we pick up 30% here.
2. The DAC section is garbage- pick up 40%+ here plus you get dsp capabilities.
3. The amp section of the head unit is way inferior to a cheap digital amp. So you will gain about 20% here.
All this will be much higher fidelity than taking the amplified signal and reworking it. (which to some degree is a sham as you cannot add whats not there). And less money than an amp.
The 5% of the time when you actually need to listen to radio or the navigation voice commands just flip the switch.
Arnold Schwarzenegger never had the buns with his burgers, just the meat.
When asked he said "what would you rather have Mr.Olympia and Universe title or a hamburger bun"
Some folks cant get past the compromise.
BTW, you gain voice control, so why even use the steering wheel controls. And flipping the switch restores steering wheel controls.
Last edited by Queen and Country; May 1, 2019 at 02:24 PM.
I bet you could custom map an ASWC-1 somehow with enough effort. That's the thing with these, it takes so much effort to get anywhere at all.
I agree ditching the factory system would be preferable.
In fact, if I could get a small display for climate controls and get rid of the stereo completely that would be ideal.
It wouldn't even need to be touchscreen. Just two digital displays to show the temp settings, and wire up physical buttons for the heated seats / heated steering wheel.
......................
In fact, if I could get a small display for climate controls and get rid of the stereo completely that would be ideal.
It wouldn't even need to be touchscreen. Just two digital displays to show the temp settings, and wire up physical buttons for the heated seats / heated steering wheel..........
