Need advice
09-22-2010, 12:48 PM
#1
Need advice
so i did the most SQ thing i have ever done to any car i've ever owned.
and that is replacing all factory speakers with half decent stuff. i also run alpine 9886. no impring, and no external amp. everything is ran off the deck.
so before i did this, all music sounded of about the same quality, i am talking about MP3's ofcourse. now that i have done this, some music sounds amazing and some actually sounds worse.
when i say amazing, i mean i can hear stuff that i didnt hear before. and when i say worse, i can hear a distortion of sort.
now the question - is the distortion i hear due to low quality recording? and the aftermarket speakers/deck are now able to reproduce all the imperfections in quality of recording that i was not able to hear before?
what's like the lowest quality MP3 one should be downloading/playing in order to avoid something like this?
and that is replacing all factory speakers with half decent stuff. i also run alpine 9886. no impring, and no external amp. everything is ran off the deck.
so before i did this, all music sounded of about the same quality, i am talking about MP3's ofcourse. now that i have done this, some music sounds amazing and some actually sounds worse.
when i say amazing, i mean i can hear stuff that i didnt hear before. and when i say worse, i can hear a distortion of sort.
now the question - is the distortion i hear due to low quality recording? and the aftermarket speakers/deck are now able to reproduce all the imperfections in quality of recording that i was not able to hear before?
what's like the lowest quality MP3 one should be downloading/playing in order to avoid something like this?
09-22-2010, 02:04 PM
#8
The same thing happened when I bought Grado SR80 head-phones. When powered by a computer with a customizable equalizer (itunes), I could hear everything, even the "hssshhh" sound at the beginning of a song, quite clearly. When powered by an ipod, they aren't much better than $5 in-ears, even when equalized. Drivers with that much SQ potential are meant to be amped & equalized, and they don't come alive without the other.
You must have really good SQ. The higher quality the driver, the clearer *everything* becomes, and poor-quality recordings sound even worse. It's better, because you get more equalization customization, without losing SQ. If you don't want the high-quality "hssh"-sounds, equalize it to flat on the deck, but that might not work - my $1000 7" flip-out touch-screen deck couldn't equalize my stock fronts, they just wouldn't change their sound at all. If I had amped the stock fronts than they'd have responded to the equalizer. When using an ipod, keep that equalizer flat, and use the one on the deck, just so you aren't equalizing sound that's already equalized - you'd get an exponential increase in frequency difference when using both.
Download 128 when 192 is too high-pitched or if the mp3 is a bad recording - you won't hear as much non-musical background fill, it's a flatter sound. This is the least kbps that you want to download.
Download 192's for clarity without screetching highs, and don't go much past that. If I listen to anything past 192 on high-quality head-phones, it's way too high-pitched, and it interferes with the lower-octave richness.
You must have really good SQ. The higher quality the driver, the clearer *everything* becomes, and poor-quality recordings sound even worse. It's better, because you get more equalization customization, without losing SQ. If you don't want the high-quality "hssh"-sounds, equalize it to flat on the deck, but that might not work - my $1000 7" flip-out touch-screen deck couldn't equalize my stock fronts, they just wouldn't change their sound at all. If I had amped the stock fronts than they'd have responded to the equalizer. When using an ipod, keep that equalizer flat, and use the one on the deck, just so you aren't equalizing sound that's already equalized - you'd get an exponential increase in frequency difference when using both.
Download 128 when 192 is too high-pitched or if the mp3 is a bad recording - you won't hear as much non-musical background fill, it's a flatter sound. This is the least kbps that you want to download.
Download 192's for clarity without screetching highs, and don't go much past that. If I listen to anything past 192 on high-quality head-phones, it's way too high-pitched, and it interferes with the lower-octave richness.
Last edited by Lord Huggington; 09-22-2010 at 02:15 PM.
09-22-2010, 02:26 PM
#9
!!!!AWAITING CONFIRMATION!!!!!!
Join Date: Nov 2008
Posts: 152
I was always using lossless files on my ipod (.alac files). But I was downloading Windows Lossless or FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec) then itunes will import and convert to ALAC. That was a bit of a pain in the *** and big files, about 1100 songs used up 30gb of my 60gb ipod, so I now download 320kbs MP3 files.
I don't win sq comps (or compete) but this sounds good in my car. I also import as low as 192kbs but if it's 128kbs I'll spend days trying to find a higher quallity MP3.
I think we have a similar HU, I mean bypassing ipod DAC and using alpines 24bit Burrbrown DAC.
I don't win sq comps (or compete) but this sounds good in my car. I also import as low as 192kbs but if it's 128kbs I'll spend days trying to find a higher quallity MP3.
I think we have a similar HU, I mean bypassing ipod DAC and using alpines 24bit Burrbrown DAC.
09-22-2010, 02:44 PM
#10
