Tonality vs RTA

[BigAl205]

Also, you might see me at any one of these, so beware!

[Jdunk54nl]

How are you interfacing with your 2018 Nissan frontier (I am assuming that is the vehicle we are talking about from your info)? Does it have bass roll off at higher volumes?

[blockrocker]

How are you interfacing with your 2018 Nissan frontier (I am assuming that is the vehicle we are talking about from your info)? Does it have bass roll off at higher volumes?

I have an aftermarket headunit. The Kenwood DDX395. I'm not in love with it, but it does give me a full-flat-clean signal. In fact, my oscope arrived today, so I am going to test the unit out just to make sure.

[mattkim1337]

Get your hands on some band limited pink noise tracks. Play them at the volume level where you start experiencing this issue. They should easily reveal which areas have too much energy. Some will be annoyingly ear piercing. You can then more deeply analyze that area for timing/crossover/eq/install related problems.

[blockrocker]

Get your hands on some band limited pink noise tracks. Play them at the volume level where you start experiencing this issue. They should easily reveal which areas have too much energy. Some will be annoyingly ear piercing. You can then more deeply analyze that area for timing/crossover/eq/install related problems.

This is a good suggestion. I haven't used band limited yet, but I think I have some downloaded somewhere.

I have since finished a fresh tune which sounds much better. Still a touch high and harsh on certain songs, but the tone is starting to get close. I'm always curious what other sweeps, tones and pink noises folks use to finely tune there systems. So far I do 95% with full band pink noise and 5% by ear. I appreciate the tips.

[Brego]

BlockRocker........ did you fix that mid-range tonality problem? I having the same type of prob in my 3-way also. If you did, can you explain how you fixed it?

[blockrocker]

I have managed to improve the tones quite a bit. Maybe not exactly right, but much much better. I think the biggest thing I played with were my crossovers. I had them all matched before (and even played with overlapped) but eventually pulled them apart a little (underlap) and I found the tones softened up a little. Some of the best advice I got though, was not nitpick my response so much. I was smoothing to 1/12 and trying to get that as flat (to curve) as possible but never seemed to get the right sound. So I smoothed to 1/6 and flattened that to curve, and found the tones greatly improved. It might seem counter-intuitive, but not demanding my mids get soooo flat actually gave me back some natural nuance in the sounds. Instead of the compressed/harsh sound I was getting. Besides that, I tweeked my house curve just a little for better roll off into my woofs from the sub.

I think its as close as I can get without reinstalling my mids a different way. Right now they are in a 3d printed pod and they should be more open air or IB. So I may be short hanging them a little with what they can actually do.

Check out my tune #3 thread. I have some updated graphs in there and I received lots of great information and tips from really good people like Skizer, among many others. Hopefully there is some good stuff that will help you too. Keep me informed and I'd happily help as much as I can too.

[Brego]

Thank you for the update. I will check out the tune#3 thread. Good to hear your getting it worked out!

[preston]

I wonder how much of it is the curve you are matching ? One constant mystery to me is the natural response of my system isn't anything like the house curves I see. My systems all seem to tend towards flat from 20-120, then gradually tapering all the way to 1k, not tapering to 200-250 and then flat to 1k. Of course I still EQ the dips and peaks and get the smoothest response I can, but everytime I've tried to tune to a more standard house curve it sounds terrible, way too much high end sounds brittle and brassy. And while I don't have golden ears I certainly know what I like and I hear enough live music (jazz, classical, choir, band) to know I'm in the ballpark. Its gotten to the point where I sometimes wonder if there is some setting on REW that I"m missing that will change what I see on the screen to match more of these standard responses. Just a thought, maybe take another look at how the response curve looks without torturing it too much and work more to make it smooth and transition well rather than beating into some pre-defined curve.

[blockrocker]

I wonder how much of it is the curve you are matching ? One constant mystery to me is the natural response of my system isn't anything like the house curves I see. My systems all seem to tend towards flat from 20-120, then gradually tapering all the way to 1k, not tapering to 200-250 and then flat to 1k. Of course I still EQ the dips and peaks and get the smoothest response I can, but everytime I've tried to tune to a more standard house curve it sounds terrible, way too much high end sounds brittle and brassy. And while I don't have golden ears I certainly know what I like and I hear enough live music (jazz, classical, choir, band) to know I'm in the ballpark. Its gotten to the point where I sometimes wonder if there is some setting on REW that I"m missing that will change what I see on the screen to match more of these standard responses. Just a thought, maybe take another look at how the response curve looks without torturing it too much and work more to make it smooth and transition well rather than beating into some pre-defined curve.

I completely agree, the curve is a huge part of the overall tone. The reason I'm starting to feel that the pods/install are the last remaining culprit, is how many different curves I've tried along the way. My ears are also not considered golden, but there is an underlying flaw in my tone that I have struggled to even address, despite numerous (and sometimes drastic) curve changes. I have made large strides to minimizing the issue, but the speaker just seems to struggle maintaining a natural sound in a certain bandwidth. I can't see it on an RTA, but its like the entire level of the speaker, the higher you go, gets a shallow sound, then the tweeter picks up and sounds solid. The tweet can be a touch hot, which doesn't help the tone, but overall has a nice smooth sound.

It might just be me, but I'm convinced that the pod is preventing the speaker from producing the sound the way its trying to. It simply is not an ideal install of my mid, in my still learning opinion.

Thanks for the great input!