[Almaretto]

Originally Posted by enjoythemusic

Almaretto, thx and will get a 2.5 SSD with USB as listen to FLAC and hi-res stuff so have TBs here of stuff.

[Kid Red]

@HKD126 I have a amp that drives the underseats and a 10" subwoofer. Would your settings still apply to y setup, or would they be different since you'd be adjusting because you wouldn't have to compensate for lack of sub?

The reason I ask is that after applying your settings my sub/underseats were extremely loud and overpowering. I've turned down my inputs to try and balance the sound and it sounds good now, but I'm curious.

[HKD126]

They would not apply, no.

[Kid Red]

Originally Posted by HKD126

They would not apply, no.

I actually tuned the sub/underseats somewhat to better match the stock speakers and and it sounds really good.

[HKD126]

Glad it worked out.

[GCinFLA]

HKD126

Your photos in post 1 are history.

Need to repost using forum uploads.

[Billfitz]

Originally Posted by GCinFLA

Your photos in post 1 are history.

Photobucket is no longer free. They now want $400 a year to link to other websites.
https://www.theverge.com/2017/7/4/15...sy-paid-update

A good time to walk away, especially as you can have your own website for $3 a month.

[Almaretto]

Originally Posted by Billfitz

Photobucket is no longer free. They now want $400 a year to link to other websites.
https://www.theverge.com/2017/7/4/15...sy-paid-update

A good time to walk away, especially as you can have your own website for $3 a month.

There are plenty of sites for free.

[GCinFLA]

Originally Posted by Billfitz

Photobucket is no longer free. They now want $400 a year to link to other websites.
https://www.theverge.com/2017/7/4/15...sy-paid-update

A good time to walk away, especially as you can have your own website for $3 a month.

Well aware. Making OP aware.

[GCinFLA]

Originally Posted by Almaretto

There are plenty of sites for free.

They might do same thing down the road.

Better to use forum attachments that will be around as long as the forum is.

Now it's a historical mess.

[HKD126]

Wow. That sucks. I'll find a different site to upload them to as I don't think uploading then to the forum will let me arrange them all how they need to be...

[Almaretto]

Originally Posted by GCinFLA

They might do same thing down the road.

Better to use forum attachments that will be around as long as the forum is.

Now it's a historical mess.

I just wish you could attach to forum, like on other sites, rather than paste huge image in thread. That is why I use site like imgur.

[///Mangler]

Did you ever take measurements while moving? This is where the toad noise and speed volume compensate. Would be interested to test a nice curve found while at speed on the interstate.

T

[THEX5BEAST]

Originally Posted by HKD126

Ever since I bought my 2014 335i over a year ago I've always wanted to take one of my Smaart rigs out to take some measurements/tune my car. Well I've been on tour now stop in this last year and never really had the time. Today I got bored and I decided to go out to my car take some quick measurements and see what's really going on...

Equipment used:

Lenovo x230t running windows 7
Smaart 8
Smaart iO
Isemcon EMX-7150 mic with calibration file

Car volume at half.

Mic was put in a clip and attached to the headrest approximately wear my head would be. Pink noise was generated from Smaart to use as a reference, split and fed into the car's stereo via the aux 3.5mm input.

Here is a trace with the EQ flat and L7 on. If you ever wondered why it sounded phasey, thin and odd... It's because it's exactly that. It's a great example of what happens and the challenges faced when adding more speakers into the mix.



Here is a trace with L7 turned off and the EQ still flat. I had it overlap the L7 trace so you can compare the difference. As you can see phase is improved and so is frequency response as a result. No, I'm not digging any deeper here as to what exactly L7 is doing, so deal with it. Frankly, I just don't have that kind of control over the factory system. The green line is L7 off and pink is L7 on.



Now here is the trace of the system with the limited EQ that is available on the F30 335i SEDAN HK system. Keep in mind, this is about the response I am going for with subwoofers in a large format concert PA system. The low mid 100-250hz region is really content and mix dependent. I will probably mess with the 200hz a bit as I listen to it more. That being said, I will probably adjust the "bass" a bit as well.



To achieve all of this my settings were as follows: (Newest settings at bottom of post)

Bass +5
Treble +2

100hz +3
200hz -3
500hz -4
1khz +4
2khz -4
5khz +3
10khz -2




I listened to a variety of music from CD after to verify. The CD's ranged from:

Jennifer Warnes - "The Hunter"
Norah Jones - "Come Away With Me"
Gojira - "l'Enfant Sauvage"
Modest Mouse - "We Were Dead Before The Ship Even Sank"

I found myself adjusting the bass for each, but will finally settle on something I'm sure.

**EDITED**

Went back out to the car today and took some better measurements and have a few more things to share. I ended up listening to about 20 more CD's as well and think I've settled on some settings. I'm sure I will end up constantly adjusting things though... All measurements and EQ'ing done today were with the car's volume 1/2 way up (THIS IS IPORTANT). I generally listen to my stereo at 1/2 so that's why I chose this volume. I also discovered there is about 34ms of delay in the stereo from input to microphone. I don't know whats going on under the hood but that is a ton.

Here we have a new trace of the EQ flat and L7 on.



Here is the new trace with EQ flat and L7 off. As you can see, the phase response is greatly improved.



Now the two overlaying one another. L7 on being red and L7 off being blue.



Here are is the new tune with the old. New being blue and old being red.



Now with some smoothing applied. New is blue and old is red.

]

Have you ever wondered why the stereo seems like it sounds completely different at different volumes? It's because it actually does. These next measurements were taken at 1/4, 1/2 and 3/4 volume. The phase shift from the different volumes/EQ is pretty normal.

**EDITED**
Apparently BMW does use their own sort of loudness curve for the different volumes. This feature drives me a little crazy. I find myself constantly grabbing the bass knob and turning it down at lower listening levels. Personally I think it still does a pretty poor job... Thank you to Integral Audio for clarifying this!

The orange is 1/4 and blue is 1/2.



Now here is 1/2 compared to 3/4. 1/2 is blue and 3/4 green.



All three.



All three with some smoothing.



**MORE EDITS**

Because Integra Audio brought some very good points to the table I felt like going back out to the car for more measurements...

Due to the simplistic nature of what I am doing, the lack of any sort of jig to hold mics (for consistency) and being limited to only a quad matched set of microphones, everything done below are single microphone measurements for demonstration. If I were to actually be designing a system for the vehicle, I do not believe I could get away with anything less than 4-8 microphones. I would essentially position them 2-4 per a side of the headrest, simulation where the ears would be located and at different heights for different listening levels for people of varying heights. Where you actually place this as far as distance from the steering wheel is a whole other decision. I feel as though with a set up as such you would be able to make more educated decisions as to phase, timing, delay, EQ, etc. Making these decisions inside of a vehicle is nothing but give and take and compromise. I do not envy anyone who wants to design car audio systems for a living. For everything I did above, I centered the microphone about where the center of my head would be to give me some sort of balance between what is happening on the left side of my head to the right. If I had any more control of or had anything other than the simple EQ available to me in the car, I would done multiple measurements and averaging to start. For my purposes, I did not deem it necessary.

Here we have 6 measurements of the HK system FLAT with no EQ and L7 OFF. 3 of which were done at the bottom of my headrest, left, center and right, and 3 were done at the top of my headrest, left, center and right. All of these measurements were done only a few inches from one another, but look at how different they vary!!! Time was reset for each measurement, of course, and smoothing is at 1/12 Octave.



Below is an average of the result of the above with 1/3 octave smoothing.



Here is an overlap of the initial measurement in blue and our new average in yellow. As you can see they are very similar, but definitely do differ! This is exactly why Integra Audio is 100% correct in saying that a measurement that is corrected in one particular area, will be very wrong in another. 1/3 octave smoothing has been applied here.



A comparison between the initial in blue and the new in yellow with octave smoothing applied.



Here we have the same 6 measurements, but with the tune I applied to the system. 1/12 octave smoothing here.



Now here is the tuned average with 1/3 octave smoothing.



A comparison of the initial tune measurement in blue and the new average in green. Again, looking similar, but they definitely differ! 1/3 octave smoothing here.



Here are the same to compare, but with octave smoothing applied.



Here is a comparison of the two new averages we just did. The factory HK system FLAT with no EQ is yellow and the new tuned version is green. 1/3 octave smoothing.



Here are the same two with octave smoothing.



Just for fun, here is a comparison of a target curve for an engineer I work with regularly in the concert world. Now his curve is just that of a 3 system with low, mids and highs, but no subwoofers. Very similar and it is no accident that my ears wanted to hear same 18dB difference between 60hz and 1khz here. Also of mention you'll notice his curve has quite a bit less, 200-500hz in it. This target curve is dedicated for arenas and in such a reverberant space, a lot of that body that is missing comes from the room. Quite different from what's happening inside of our cars. Dealing with ~80 open microphones on stage presents another set of challenges as well.



**EDITED**

Now some of you may ask, "what about with L7 on?". Here you go!

L7 on with no EQ is purple while the EQ I applied is green. There's a touch more low end in it than I wanted, but with the car'a factory EQ, I compromised.



Smoothed out.



Here are both of my tunes on top of one another. L7 ON is green while L7 OFF is yellow.



Smoothed out.



That's all for now. Thanks for taking a look!

My newest Logic 7 OFF EQ settings are:

Bass +2
Treble +1

100hz +4
200hz -2
500hz -4
1khz +5
2khz -5
5khz +3
10khz -1

My newest Logic 7 ON EQ settings are:

Bass flat
Treble +1

100 +7
200 -6
500 -4
1k +5
2k -4
5k +2
10k -1

The fun part about this is, sound is VERY subjective. Just because one person finds one setting pleasing, the very setting can be overwhelming for another. In no way shape or form am I saying this is the end all be all. Have fun with it and mess around. See what works best for you!

Comments are welcome. Thanks.

Adjusted my HK to the EQ above. Much improved. Thanks

[Billfitz]

I didn't notice you mention it, but where the target curve is concerned road noise is a significant element. I haven't bothered to measure it, but if I did I'm confident that it peaks in the vicinity of 50Hz, the same region where the system peak response is for masking purposes. The target curve in a home, where there is no road noise to mask, wouldn't have a peak that high in the low end. Even in a concert situation an 18dB spread would be unusual. I have some 300 RTAs of major acts from when I oversaw the FOH at a major concert venue. None had that much spread. 15dB was about the highest I saw, that with The Wailers, which is about as bottom heavy an act as there is. On average the spread was 10dB.

[HKD126]

Originally Posted by Billfitz

I didn't notice you mention it, but where the target curve is concerned road noise is a significant element. I haven't bothered to measure it, but if I did I'm confident that it peaks in the vicinity of 50Hz, the same region where the system peak response is for masking purposes. The target curve in a home, where there is no road noise to mask, wouldn't have a peak that high in the low end. Even in a concert situation an 18dB spread would be unusual. I have some 300 RTAs of major acts from when I oversaw the FOH at a major concert venue. None had that much spread. 15dB was about the highest I saw, that with The Wailers, which is about as bottom heavy an act as there is. On average the spread was 10dB.

Bill, road noise is unfortunately something I could not account for. There are far too many variables. Tires alone sound wildly different. This was just something fun to do one day while being bored and off tour.

I’m also not doubting your experience, but the 18db target (with subs) variance between 60-1khz seems to be a happy median for most genres of music these days from pop, hip hop, rock, edm, etc. It’s all subjective. However, from your experience at a major concert venue as FOH you should know that most of the major line arrays these days from VTX, A12, K1, K12, J12, GSL, KSL, Lyon, etc, all right out of the box (before any tuning occurs) have a variance between 10-16db before subs are even turned on. I tour with these systems every day, work with some large artists on some of the biggest tours and some of the most talented engineers in the industry. From my experience, most of these engineers are looking for 12-15db out of the L/R and in some cases 18-23db with L/R/S. The latter being too much for me. I’m happy in the 15-18db range, but hey, I’ll tune however the engineer wishes as that is my job.

I never meant for this to be a pissing match, but only a fun experiment. I’ve since sold this car and moved on to something else. Hopefully a few people enjoyed this thread and caused them to go play around with their settings. There is no right or wrong answer, what sounds good to one may not to another.

*Edit*

Bill, out of curiosity, what venue did you work at and when? I’d be surprised if we haven’t crossed paths at one time or another. There aren’t very many venues left in this country I haven’t been to yet. Big world, but very small industry

[Billfitz]

I probably should have qualified my comment to say that 15dB of spread is the most I've heard that sounded good. I've measured as much as 25dB. I once saw Greg Lake, as part of Ringo's All Star Band, where the low end mix was so bad that when he played anything below D2 it drowned out the entire band, but when he went above that his playing disappeared entirely. If Greg knew how bad it was that FOH engineer would have been sent packing.
I was the dB Cop at Bank of NH Pavilion for three years. The hired me when noise complaints from the neighbors threatened to cause them to be shut down. One of the reasons was that Ringo concert, but it wasn't an isolated incident.

[HKD126]

When did Greg Lake tour with Ringo? Interesting. Last I worked with them, I can’t remember the engineer’s name, was a guy out of Detroit, but the mix was great.

Oh man, the last time I was in that venue I was with Steve Miller Band years ago. That venue... Less than ideal. Ha.

[Billfitz]

It was 2001. Other members included Rodger Hodgson and Ian Hunter. Shiela E was the drummer. At that time the seating was folding chairs on the bare ground. The stage was in place, but the roof over the primary seating area wasn't. I remember it was gosh awful hot, and with the unpaved seating area it was extremely dusty. I felt like I was on a cattle drive. Every year since there's been improvements. They're now up to 9,000 seats. It's now a perennial top ten rated venue. I did a Steve Miller gig there in 2006.

[janea1207]

what is mean " bass flat"? 0 or maximum?

[Billfitz]

O is nominally flat, but only with respect to that filter's effect. The system has pre-shape EQ that's not flat, so having the tone or EQ controls at 0 isn't flat system response.

[janea1207]

Originally Posted by Billfitz

O is nominally flat, but only with respect to that filter's effect. The system has pre-shape EQ that's not flat, so having the tone or EQ controls at 0 isn't flat system response.

Sorry but i didn't understand. In wich position should i put the bass in this case? 0? -5? +5?