Fade and/or Balance will do nothing but move the stage, creating the stage is all about placement and install.

 

I will agree that having speakers in the right location makes staging easier, nothing can make truly bad driver locations accurately stage... everything else is a band-aid. A window reflection, or a refection off a hard piece of plastic could damage or lock in your imaging.

Time alignment if done correctly 'should not' collapse the stage but every one likes to fiddle with TA (me too, I am my own worse enemy) and they fiddle and they fiddle till they butcher the sound (so many want to make the human voice come from a golf ball sized area at the rear view mirror). TA should enhance locations not collapse them.

Once you have found the optimum driver location (THIS MAY NOT BE SYMETRICAL but it often is) you have use your balance control (or DSP) to equalize L and R volume. Does it sound right? you can try phase swapping and stuff like that to open up the stage. This is also the point where you have to verify the X-over point, as you change locations of your drivers the xover point may change too. The tweeter location is probably the most important for spacial reproduction (depth, layering, wall reflections, musician locations in the recording) but the mid and midbass carry a lot of information as well so dont be afraid to fiddle with driver angles.

Then give the TA a whack, you dont have to like it and if it isn't better than it was... dont use it! Just remember the point of TA is to essentially equalize the distance between the drivers by electronic trickery. Nothing beats actual path length distances being equal

 

I had a MAJOR problem with the front right side, in general, being louder than the left and I tried everything all the way down to rewiring the car, to no avail. Then I just did basic time alignment and BAM, it's all good now. So... yeah.

 

when i was at a show last yr up there i saw 2 mr2's i know there is more up there but i know the 2 i saw and a mr2 is harder for spl so i would think that the 2 would be in sq
i too need to fix this in my set up .just do not get to it ,it is on the list ,you know how that is

 

Well, I've been playing around with some stuff and have come to an interesting compromise...

I don't know if you have a 2 or 3 way front stage, but here's what I did with my 3-way.

I've got midbass in the doors, midrange in kickpanels and tweeters in the a-pillars. So, what I did was raise the LPF point from my mids from 2.8khz to 7.1khz. And, the tweeters' HPF was lowered from 2.8khz to 2.5khz. And, I applied a small amount of T/A to tweeters and midbass, but symetrically. Everything is identical for left and right channels.

The results so far are as follows, when playing the 7 drum beats from the IASCA CD, the 3 leftmost are rather close to each other, 4th is a tad left of center (around 2~3 inches) and the rest are nicely out. Height of stage has remained high, width has increased dramaticaly. Now, with music, my center for female vocals is pretty close to dead on, with male vocals seems to pull left a bit. But, considering that my stage now extends outside the vehicule, it's still pretty centered. But, this came at the cost of sacrificing focus. Instruments that used to sound very precisely placed on the stage are now a bit wider, but I don't find it dramatic.

Anyways, I hope this gives you an idea to try out, and see what happens.

 

There will realy never be a fix for bad positioning of components. As said before the higher the frequency the more defined the location of the sound. "Bouncing" the tweeter is a chalange for some. Personaly never had any luck with it! Reaiming tweets and changing it's phase can help as with it's frequency. I had lowered the frequency and drove mine a bit harder to bring them into aligynment. Not as in your face but respectable and more pleaseing to the ears.

 

time alignment doesnt alway cut off the stage, in some cases it can.....to make a blanket statement like that is as ignorant as it is incorrect......what if the tweeters are in the sail panel and on axis can you time align them then.............would that be ok with the good judges as well as the bad ones, what about the sorta good ones would that be ok them.....

 

its also interesting to note that noone has yet mentioned the frequency response differences between the left and right speakers in the listening position and how critical they are........

 

I had the same problem with staging. The left side sounded cut off and didn't sound as full as the right side. What I did was actually locate the center of my windshield at the percieved stage height, which is just below my mirror. If you draw a line from the center of your mirror at the top of the windshield,to the center of your dash at the bottom of the windshield and intersect a line at the height of your soundstage, you will find that the center seems to move to the right the higher your soundstage is. I adjusted my time alignment to center at this intersecting point. It moved my sounstage farther to the right but was actually at the correct center of my windshield at that height. It solved my problem. Not saying you don't know where the center of your windshield is, but for me I percieved it to be more to the left than it actually is at that height.

 

Well to start I've never truly play with time alignment. If good/ proper placement of speakers are done it kinda takes care of the problem. SQ is very well personal. I will here sound diferent than the next person. So that being said aren't judges giving personal referance to each system they listen to?

If Time alignment works for you great, then you have mastered another tool to be used in your SQ tool box. Then teach it to others so all can enjoy a more pure realistic sound.

I personaly was mentored by and eventualy compeated against Westec thus learned a great deal from him. I've never been steered wrong by his direction. I don't know you personaly Stearnzy but by Westec's history by results he will be allways correct in his "opinion". I believe his heart is for the greater off all in this sport and we all can learn by his example. How many systems have you listened to? How many world events did you capture? Didn't think so.