[perryinva]

Interesting, but the Z4 s “subs” are not the same enclosure at all and face forward, not up. Still, Dynamat or acoustic foam could be pit to great use (and has by others in this thread) to improve them, but it requires considerable effort in removing panels I’m kot ready to do at this time. The deeper bass available and clarity of it, as is, are immensely improved with the 8DSP. Literally night and day. If I ever have a reason to remove the trunk side panel again, I will definitely RTA the original system. I don’t know why I didn’t think of that before.

That reduced 260Hz dip is what I think I hear the best improvement with, top down. With top up, I have all full range speakers eq at 260Hz almost maxed out and that dip stubbornly remains. The dame thing with that 80Hz dip, though basically the subs are the only 80Hz source and it is just as stubborn. Boosted via eq makes it sound too boomy while I definitely don’t hear that huge rise at 45Hz either.

[perryinva]

Here is a copy of my last profile, for the Match UP 8DSP installed in the G29 HIFI system with stock speakers. Any louder and the speakers will distort at max volume. All head unit setting to default. I don't like, in my car, a sound stage in front of me, like I do in my home system, but instead, more of a headphone effect, being inside the music. To me, this provides better immersion with the overall high levels of outside noise. To each their own. After much listening and evaluation, I really believe that quality aftermarket speakers would be a solid upgrade from here, but I am still very pleased overall with the quality and volume improvements just he 8DSP provided. As hiild mentions, the subs and front speakers are the in the most need of replacement, with plenty of Dynamat/vibration absorbing material needed in the "sub" wall/cavities. Someday, perhaps. My Apple watch is always warning me of loud environments over 95 dB, LOL.

Like others, change the .PDF extension to .afpx to upload.

[eclz]

I finally had a chance to try this profile today -- it sounds excellent! Thank you for sharing all your hard work. I think if other people had a chance to hear what our cars can sound like with this system they would be VERY impressed.

I am going to set up my measurement microphone and try out the Audiotec-Fischer real-time analyzer this weekend. If I come up with anything worth sharing I will post it here.

[hilld]

Originally Posted by perryinva

Truthfully, because I have already spent way more than I wanted to, on a car stereo, and another $100+ for a decent mic that I would only use a few times, while I considered it, didn’t sit well with me. I bought the cheapest laptop I could find (Costco, on sale Lenovo Ideapad 1, final price about $180, upgraded to 12GB/500GB) but I can use that for lots of other things too, but I didn’t NEED one, except for this, we already had 2 Macbook Airs that were sufficient, but the DSP software is PC only.

The free iPhone RTAs are sufficient enough for me, for a car.

I am using my Rode microphone that I have attached to my computer as I spend all days on zoom/gmeet calls. No need to buy another mic (in my case).

[eclz]

Here's the result of using my calibrated measurement microphone with the DSP PC Tool RTA, then using the "Tune EQ" feature to generate the EQ settings. For this measurement the top was down and the car was in my garage. The resulting equalizer settings look crazy but it sounds pretty good. Depending on the source material you may find the bass a bit much but for the kind of music I listen to it's OK. The center channel was reduced in volume relative to the left and right front speakers because that's my personal preference.

[hilld]

Originally Posted by eclz

Here's the result of using my calibrated measurement microphone with the DSP PC Tool RTA, then using the "Tune EQ" feature to generate the EQ settings. For this measurement the top was down and the car was in my garage. The resulting equalizer settings look crazy but it sounds pretty good. Depending on the source material you may find the bass a bit much but for the kind of music I listen to it's OK. The center channel was reduced in volume relative to the left and right front speakers because that's my personal preference.

So walk me through the Fisher RTA. For the tuning mode, what did you use, an also for the Automatic EQ Tuning setting, which Outputs did you select. I tried finding stuff in the docs and came up with nothing. If you could post some screen shots that would be awesome.

Thanks.

[eclz]

I wrote up some of what I've figured out here:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1...it?usp=sharing

I am a total amateur at this car tuning stuff so at least some this advice may be misguided, and it just scratches the surface of what you can do with the amp.

[perryinva]

Well, it is ALWAYS worth trying someone elses, since it only takes seconds to swap profiles. I’ll try yours and see how I like it. Thanks for putting it out there!

[hilld]

Originally Posted by eclz

I wrote up some of what I've figured out here:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1...it?usp=sharing

I am a total amateur at this car tuning stuff so at least some this advice may be misguided, and it just scratches the surface of what you can do with the amp.

Thanks for this. I will give this a try in a couple of weeks when I am re-united with the car.

[perryinva]

eclz: check the file you posted. i deleted the zip extension, but it doesn't work.

[hilld]

Originally Posted by perryinva

eclz: check the file you posted. i deleted the zip extension, but it doesn't work.

I think the file is fine, it is an actual .zip file. Unzip it and the contents is the afpx file. Should work, but I haven't tried it yet.

[perryinva]

Doh!! I didn’t thinknof that, LOL!

[perryinva]

Well, you were right, it was simply zipped. Turns out to be a very nice profile, better than mine I think, but I haven’t had any top down time with it. The only things I changed on it were to crank down the 18kHz and up signal so the amps aren’t wasting power trying to send frequencies that will never be heard in a million years (not that there is much content there to begin with), and I found the bass to have a light boominess to it & noticed that every single speaker had a peak of 100Hz in the profile, many with the 100Hz slider maxed. I reduced that peak some, and that helped a lot. The sub is definitely better than what was in mine. Thanks eclz, nice job!!!

[Matthewstorm]

Originally Posted by OmegaSupreme74

Gladden, a German speaker company makes direct replacement for the two stock 8 inch woofers. Got a 500 watt JL audio pushing both and it sounds awesome. I think is was like 549 for the pair.

Do you have a link to these speakers?

[perryinva]

Finally had a warm enough day (with dry roads) to take the car out & try the new prifile while driving. It is excellent, definitely better than mine. If you have stock speakers you will be amazed at the difference. I even bumped the bass back up to almost where it was, so for many, his profile may be perfect as is. His profile really brings the vocals, male & female to a far better clarity, that I could not quite get in mine. The bass is smoother, which, looking at his eq , is obvious. The program basically put sliders a Hz apart almost. Obvious, in retrospect. It certainly appears that that mike used properly, really makes a huge difference! Lesson learned.

[eclz]

That's awesome that the profile is working for you! I haven't had a chance to try out your suggested changes to the bass EQ yet but what you were saying about it makes a lot of sense.

I get the sense that there's probably a way to switch EQ presets without having to ride around with a PC in your car, but I'm not sure what you need for that. I'd like to boost something like the 150 - 500 Hz region when the top is down just because the outside noise but that would probably not be ideal with the top up.

[perryinva]

The 8DSP has a way to allow switching between 2 profiles, but it requires an add on card and an external switch. The intention would be (like Miata used to have) that the switch could be used in a convertible to be automatically triggered with top down vs up to load a profile. While that would definitely be cool, it’s just not worth the extra cost and effort to me at this stage in my life. 20 years ago, I definitely would have done it! Today, I’m just really glad to get such an amazing improvement in the sound from the stock system with the DSP & your profile. I drove a Z4 and 4 series coupe, both with HK, and they didn’t even get close to what the 8DSP and stock speakers does, for just s few bucks more than the HK upgrade cost.