This is my 1000th post. To celebrate this obsurd occasion, I thought I'd delve into a bit of theory, philosophy, and fabrication.

My subject: We are limited by what we understand.

I think this a pretty universal statement, applying to everyone. In general, we all have vast amounts of information stored in our noggens. My point here, is that the value or usefulness of it is governed by our degree of understanding. It's great to know by heart the T/S specs of every driver in your car....but what do they MEAN. What do we UNDERSTAND about all those figures?

Recently, I was given a Eureka moment by a member of this board. Simply put, I had a bunch of knowledge, but didn't truely understand it. I'm betting a lot of you out there have this scenario going on. So the challenge is, to understand what we know. And this starts by questioning it...

I've been playing with my midrange mounting for quite a while. In fact, I've been using the mids as a learning tool for my whole system setup, including my electronics. I think at some point we all start with a menu of options and selectively narrow those down to figure out what we want to do. In general, I think we really "narrow" options down. That is, group like ideas together and toss the ideas that are substatially different away. I'm questioning this...

What if we flipped the whole process around! In other words, try to increase our options. Starting with a central idea or goal, we work on expanding the menu and opening issues up to be UNDERSTOOD.

I've been playing with my mids for while. Every time I come up with an idea, I file it in my mind as something to try. Never have my ideas been interconnected. Usually I've got some whacky idea that doesn't fit in with any other, and because of this, it get's tossed in favour of the collective group of common ideas that I'm formulating. Well this is going to change!

I'm starting from scratch. I'm taking everything I know, and forgeting it. I'm going to question everything...and when my knowledge path looks familiar...I'm going to change directions.

The goal: To reproduce Music in my car.

The obstacle: My car sounds like it has a stereo in it.

To get from point A (stereo in my car), to point B (music in my car) I'm going to have to make my stereo acoustically disapear.

The focal point: Midrange drivers.

Why?: Because they reproduce the widest and most important range of frequencies audible to the human ear.

Prepare to read about and see some of the whackiest and wierdest ideas ever introduced to car audio.

I am limited by what I understand, and I'm going to work on this.

Adam

uhh, thats too long for me to read. can you sum it up? ;) i'll read it tomorrow

wow, car audio really is your escape...

good for you man. [img]graemlins/thumb.gif[/img]

Sounds like good things to come... I can't wait!

BTW, I don't have a university degree, and I just about flunked out of highschool.

Adam

think outside the box, this is where our creative side lives, regadless of how impractical or just plain silly the idea is, its important to have this ability. without it there would be no, alpine civic/mini, no fishman creations, no eldriges/biggs. all of the vehilces/people mentioned constantly think outside the box, its there creataivity and crazy ideas that push the boudaries and create the standards by which all others will be judged, and raising the level

I 110% agree, think outside the box and trying to rise the level of your installs everyday. So many people get complaysent (sorry for the spelling) with car audio. You can always improve the system with very little money. It's a ton of fun...cheers Adam happy 1000th!

If noone thought outside the box... how would we know where the box ended? and are they really outside the box, or are they just finding another corner of the box that noone has been to? or did they create another box?

the philosopher in me is trying to get out... but noone has ever questioned my sanity... you can't question what you can't find.

Car audio is all about finding out what is the best way to get perfect sound, and then doing whatever it takes to make that reality.

We must all realize, as that bald kid did in the matrix (the first one): There is no spoon.

or in our case:

There is no box.

if there was a box, would it be ported or sealed?
talk amongst yourselves...

Definitely ported.

Anyways, remember that car audio as much as it is art is also science, and that yhose who forget the past are doomed to repeat its mistakes. So try lots of stuff, but there is no need to test the laws of physics that show without a doubt that some things are plain old bad ideas.