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I have a function on my deck called "Time Correction". It's so I can set slight delays on all my speakers to make up for the difference in distance from them. My question is, does this make a substantial difference to the quality? Or is it just some gimicky thing that the human ear could never differentiate anyways? Also, they have their measurements in steps, and I can't seem to find in the manual how long a "step" is. For 1 step its 0.1ms for 99 steps its 9.9ms.

It can help give better imaging. Try it for yourself, you've got what it takes to do it anyway. Try delaying the left side channel, just do it by ear and listen for vocals to be centered (assuming your music source is supposed to have vocals centered). Main thing is acoustic phase, in which time correction aids this. In midbass and midrange regions, we are more dependant upon pathlengths for imaging. Around 1khz, we are dependant on a combination of pathlengths and volume. Above about 6khz, we are dependant on volume only because of head related transfer function.

those things are like a loaded weapon....in the wrong hands they can do more damage than good but if you take your time and have proper source material it can be great......

I'd just stick with the basics, like Jonathan suggests.

Is it an Alpine deck?
Play with "bass focus", first - just play with it. You can always set it back to neutral, right? Close your eyes as you play with it, and listen for changes in the position of the sound. It's 100% an imaging adjustment.

Then, play with delaying the left front speaker. Close your eyes again.
Try to center things up just about under your rear view mirror.
I'd never touch the front right speaker.
And I don't run rear speakers, so they are no issue to me. It's a very complex adjustment trying to phase-align those as well - it gets ugly.
Even with a car that has rear speakers, I'd probably not try to touch that setting - fade them away so they are "just inaudible"... let them help out only ambiently, if you can get away with it (if you are missing midbass - there are lots of things to improve on the front speakers, mostly with regard to the install and preparation of their locations!).

Pioneers also have time alignment... no "bass focus".

I've got a Pioneer in my Civic, and an Alpine in my Pathfinder.
I don't touch the time alignment on either.

Even though I hardly ever have passengers (except my wife, and she sure doesn't commute with me ), I've always been anal about having a symmetrical soundstage... having it sound good from both seats.

See, if you make any tweaks - time alignment, balance, EQ - to specifically make improvements in SQ for the driver's seating position, you will inherently make a degradation to SQ in those same ways for the passenger's seating position.
And I've always thought I'd be embarrassed if I was so known for being into car audio and SQ, and then when someone sat in my car - just maybe for a casual drive, nothing to do with audio - and heard how BAD it sounded on the passenger side (because it sounded so good on the driver's side - which they'd never know), they'd just figure "this guy's full of crap, he doesn't know what he's talking about... my car sounds better", etc.

Just my neurotic hang-ups.
If you don't care - you can make definite imaging improvements with time alignment!
Don't fear it - you can always set it back to where you started.

geolemon wrote: I don't touch the time alignment on either.
Even though I hardly ever have passengers (except my wife, and she sure doesn't commute with me ), I've always been anal about having a symmetrical soundstage... having it sound good from both seats.

I'm the same way. I tinkered with mine at first, then grew to hate it. I tend to lean more toward the middle of my car for some reason when listening to music.

yea.. I'm prob just gonna leave it as is. Sounds fine for me, I'm never gonna do any Competitions so really why bother if it sounds good enuf for me. I will prob never ever notice that my left rear is .8 or whatever it is off. On a side note, yea it is a Alpine, I might just mess with the sub like u suggested just for shits and giggles.

"yea.. I'm prob just gonna leave it as is. Sounds fine for me, I'm never gonna do any Competitions so really why bother if it sounds good enuf for me."

Good enough..HA! tsk tsk tsk. It isn't good enough until you are trying to fight what you see and what you hear, since your brain is so fooled by the system that you swear you're in the actual concert.

*NOTE: I, nor anyone else I know, has ever experienced this nirvana for more than a few seconds, but audiophiles agree that the possibility exists for it to last the entirity of the listening session

It would also be nice if the sheer accuracy and tonality of the system were an aphrodisiac as well

Seriously, though, if you aren't concerned with passengers, it can really make a difference in imaging.

Hmmm... I dunno lol. MAYBE I'll give it a try when I get my kick panels made.. For now though, my doors are useless for sound and I dun wanna try anything with my rear since they are pointed straight at my window so really, whats the point til I have a sound stage thats actually pointing at my head. Though all this is a BIG maybe.

Jonathan wrote:"it would also be nice if the sheer accuracy and tonality of the system were an aphrodisiac as well

Or just the vibrations

1990 beretta gt with 2 kicker comp 12s, and a kicker impulse 1252. Had a girl swear she had an orgasim setting in the back seat.

Ok back to the time delay thing. When I first set up the accord I left mine alone. I didn't want the pasanger to hear something diffrent than I did. A few weeks later I said screw the passanger and set the time delays. Honestly they do make a diffrence, even in a setup like yours.

I messed with the Bass Focus today, and I have to say... It does make a WORLD of difference, everything sounds much better now.

On a side note. The Bass Focus is essentially the Time Correction but it just sets the Subwoofers at 0.0ms automatically. After I had set my Bass Focus to 22 in the Fronts and 12 in the Rears, I clicked over to Time Correction and it was 2.2ms on the fronts, 1.2ms on the rears, and 0.0ms on the Subs. I changed em back to 0 on all just to see if it would change the T.Corr, and they were all at 0.0ms. I tried setting em to 15 and 7 just to confirm, and again it was 1.5ms, 0.7ms, and 0.0ms respectively.