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Old 12-01-2003, 11:07 AM
lee lee is offline
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Another reason to love the SVX

This is a stereo system post so you can ignore the rest if your don't care about this topic.

There's two basic ways I know to get a good stereo soundstage image in a car.

1) Sit in the middle like in the McLaren F1 (anybody on this forum with enough money to buy one? If yes...can I be your friend ).

2) Time alignment. Several high-end head-units employ a signal processing scheme to electronically delay the signal so all the sound arrives at your ear at the same time.

So what does this have to do with the SVX? Of course this is dependent on how you sit in your car, but in mine the following conditions apply:

The cones of the two 10" woofers I use (back seat is always down in my car) happen to end up the same distance from my ears as the speaker in the passenger side door. It also turns out the tweeter has only about 1/2" different path length than the mid in the door.

So the only large correction that has to be made is for the driver's side, which surprisingly is less than a foot difference in path length.

Why should this matter? At least two reasons I can think of. Any sound coming from speakers at/near a crossover point will come out of more than one source - you want the paths to be equal to avoid muddying the sound. And two, even when not at a crossover point, you would like the sound of a chord spanning the various speakers to be in alignment, i.e., hit three or four widely spaced keys on a piano at the same time - it's nice to hear them at the same time too. Solo piano pieces always have been hell on stereo reproduction.

So all I have to correct is for the driver's side door and the sound stage magically appears directly in front of me instead of skewed over to the right - like I was sitting in the center vice on the left side at a concert.

Anyway, even if you don't have time alignment on your system, it's nice to know someone at Subaru seems to have spent a little time thinking about the quality of sound vice just sticking the speakers wherever there was room.
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Old 12-01-2003, 12:15 PM
manofmayo manofmayo is offline
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Do you have one of these head units? Which one? Are they expensive?

Couldn't you do the same thing (to a degree) with the fader and balance controls?

Just curious.
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Old 12-02-2003, 01:28 PM
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CigarJohnny CigarJohnny is offline
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Quote:
Originally posted by tdmi2002
Do you have one of these head units? Which one? Are they expensive?

Couldn't you do the same thing (to a degree) with the fader and balance controls?

Just curious.
Fader and balance will allow you to center the volume so it is balanced in all directions to your head but will not compensate for the minute delays in when the sound itself hits your ears when coming from speakers at unequal distances to your head. Sitting in the drivers seat, sound from the passenger door speaker hits your ears a fraction of a second after the same sound would hit your ears coming from the driver door speaker. The delaying head units would hold back the sound from the driver door speaker just long enough so it hits your ears the same time as the sound from the passenger door. It's a pretty slick trick and one I never knew they had. Something to look for if I ever upgrade the systems in my cars.
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Last edited by CigarJohnny; 12-02-2003 at 01:37 PM.
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Old 12-02-2003, 02:43 PM
lee lee is offline
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time alignment

mid-grade and up Alpines have it (I have the CDA-7995). The new model 9813 & 9815 can correct up to six speakers (stereo woofers). Mine just does a correction for a mono woofer, then 4 speakers, not too much diff unless you need it. The 9815 can use a burned CD-R to store all your setup data, the 9813 and mine forget the settings whenever the battery is disconnected.

If memory serves, the top end of Eclipse (top 2 models), Pioneer (top 2 & Premier top 2) and Clarion (top only) have it. Not sure about other brands.
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Old 12-02-2003, 02:53 PM
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GreenMarine GreenMarine is offline
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I like the Eclipse headunits myself... Porter has one... ***** I "used" to have one!!!!!
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