Sound Stage Tuning

[JeremyC]

Lets tune with what you have and you can upgrade later if you want.

First thing go into your time delay page and turn off the sub and rear outputs.

Now disconnect your tweets.

So the only thing playing should be your mids.

Play some mono pink noise and adjust your time delay till the sound is centered.

Now swap the phase on the drivers side mid, and see if the sound is more focused to center, or did the center point fall apart.

If its better but shifted to one side dial back the time delay to recenter it in the car.

Up to about 500 hertz your primary method for determining staging are timing. Above 500 volume becomes more important, but time delay still plays a roll. Above 3 to 5K your primary method is volume and delay becomes less important. Thats why I had you set the time delay using your mid. Its the area that will be the most effected by it.

Now disconnect your mids and hook the tweets back up. Using the same mono pink noise track swap the polarity on the drivers side tweet. If it sounds more focused leave it, if it falls apart swap it back.

Now hook up both the mids and the tweets. Playing the same mono pink noise swap the phase on BOTH tweets. So if you were +/- R and - /+ L than you would be - /+ R and +/- L.

Basically what your doing is setting the phase between the two sets. Before you were setting phase between 2 speakers.

Once you get that done, toss in some of your favorite music and give it a listen. Now slowly bring the subs back in. Once you have them at a volume that is close to matching the output on your mids and tweets (not to overpowering) swap the phase on the subs. Did they relocate to the front of your car, or are they easer to notice behind you.

If they are easy to notice behind you both ways cut the output by a couple dbs and try it again. Same thing with swapping to mono from stereo. Try both and see what does better to make the subs blend with the front stage.

Once you figure out the best way to run the subs you can turn them back up. My daily driver tuning has my subs about 3 DBs hot. So they are more noticeable than they are with my true SQ tune.