trying to use T/A

audiofiend

Ive been trying to manually tune my system and have had a little trouble with time alignment.

My setup:

Toyota Tacoma standard cab

Pioneer 880prs

SR6500 mids in stock door ,low, forward corner
SR6500 tweeters below the door's window as far forward as possible
mm104 svc 10" sub behind drivers seat in an MTX Thunderform pre-molded box

PA 500.4 working active with the Pio. to run the comps

Concept 2ch amp bridged for now with the sub

THOUGHTS:

1. I have the tweeters angled using the 15 degree mounting cups
I know tweeters are directional but how will this affect the phasing when the mids and tweets blend?


2. The mids are in stock loc.
The door panel looks kinda like a volcano with the top cut off so the mid is recessed about 3-4 in. from the surface due to cosmetics. How will this affect the SQ and the off axis response?

3. HEY MAC, I read you cut your tweets off at like 2500@24dB at one time.
Is this due to stock locations


4. does the 880 PRS Auto-tune for center stage of the car or center to the seat position?

The pio. has a center option but always asks for a specific seat?
Is this here as a manual tuning option only or do you center the mic between the headrests?

Thanks for replies

Im excited about tuning the worst vehicle for sq tomorrow cause i havent had any time off in so long ...............dont tell my wife.................shhhh...................

arun1963

audiofiend wrote: »

Ive been trying to manually tune my system and have had a little trouble with time alignment.
My setup:
Toyota Tacoma standard cab
Pioneer 880prs
SR6500 mids in stock door ,low, forward corner
SR6500 tweeters below the door's window as far forward as possible
mm104 svc 10" sub behind drivers seat in an MTX Thunderform pre-molded box
PA 500.4 working active with the Pio. to run the comps
Concept 2ch amp bridged for now with the sub

Measure the distance from your seating position to all 5 drivers. If possible, note and share your current settings. Xover / slopes / eq / gain etc.

audiofiend wrote: »

. I have the tweeters angled using the 15 degree mounting cups
I know tweeters are directional but how will this affect the phasing when the mids and tweets blend?

You have to get your tweets on axis, on both axis. The tweets have almost beam like dispersion and they need to be on axis at your ear level. So you need to watch both the horizontal and vertical angles.

The frequencies that the tweets play are affected less by phase and more by left / right intensity levels. Hence getting them on the right axis minimizes the L/R imbalance.

audiofiend wrote: »

.2. The mids are in stock loc.
The door panel looks kinda like a volcano with the top cut off so the mid is recessed about 3-4 in. from the surface due to cosmetics. How will this affect the SQ and the off axis response?

Is the door sealed behind the panel? With your mids you have to adjust both phase and l/R intensity. 50-200hz is largely about phase correction, from 300-1khz is about about both and above 2khz upwards is almost all l/r intensity. Approximate numbers, will vary a bit with your interiors.

audiofiend wrote: »

4. does the 880 PRS Auto-tune for center stage of the car or center to the seat position? The pio. has a center option but always asks for a specific seat? Is this here as a manual tuning option only or do you center the mic between the headrests?

Never really used the mic that came with the unit. You can set it for either left or right seat. I don't use the combined L+R cause with a given TA setting which I can flip for L/R seat, and two programs for the eq and my ghetto mount tweets where I can adjust angles for L/R seat, I've got both front seats covered.

With a more normal and permanent tweet install, I'd settle for better sound at the drivers seat.

audiofiend

I have had very little time to tune so this is what the autotune gave me

I tried my best to put the mic exactly in between my ears

gotta go to work, if you cant get to the attachment let me know

arun1963

Get the physical distance readings. That's a good starting point.

That hu has the potential to take your sound to a different level, from where it's at now.

MacLeod

Forget measuring. Its fine for a ballpark estimate and place to start but its no substitute for your ears and it doesnt take into account crap in your car like dashboards, seats and everything else.

Find a CD that has a male narrator talking like the Chesky Ultimate Demonstration Disc (narrator comes on between each track). Put that track on repeat or if you dont have one, tune in a AM talk radio station. You want a male voice because the average male voice runs from 80-3200 Hz pretty stoutly.

Turn off the sub and tweeters. Add delay til the guys voice centers AND focuses up well. Then turn off the mids and turn on the tweeters and repeat. Then turn mids and tweets on and fine tune so they blend well. Next balance all the way to the right and add delay to the tweeter and see if you notice the image either rising some or focusing in on the tweeter. After you do that, add the same amount of delay to the left side tweet (adding delay to the left tweeter has never made a difference in any of the 3 cars Ive competed in).

After you get all this done, turn on a rock CD that has a good, punchy kick drum. Play this part and add delay to everything BUT the sub until the sub seems to image up front and/or the higher frequency slap from the drum and the punch from the sub hit at the same time. 3 ms is a good place to start.

catch22atplay

Wouldn't you have the left tweet out of phase since it's so off axis? And the right in phase since it's more on axis? Know i used to do that with passive crossovers in the day. Can't remember if that applies to active as well.

MacLeod

catch22atplay wrote: »

Wouldn't you have the left tweet out of phase since it's so off axis? And the right in phase since it's more on axis? Know i used to do that with passive crossovers in the day. Can't remember if that applies to active as well.

No. You can play with polarity if you dont have time alignment but, TA affects phase as well so with the right adjustments, everything will phase up pretty good.

arun1963

MacLeod wrote: »

Forget measuring. Its fine for a ballpark estimate and place to start

Thats why I asked him for it. Currently his settings are defined by auto tuning using the el cheapo mic that comes with the unit........dunno how accurate that is with all the reflections etc.

DSkip wrote: »

How many speakers do you have in your truck catch? Am I counting right with 8 tweets, 8 mids, and 2 subs? Do you really have 18 speakers in there?

Bimmers and Mercs come with 16-18 speakers, so it must be good

catch22atplay

DSkip that would be 14 actually. 4 tweets get tossed. Only 8 would be used under normal conditions. 2 tweets, 2 mids, 2 woofs and 2 subs. I'll have to start my own thread on my install. Sure plenty of you dudes have some input. Almost nothing installed yet. Still waiting on stuff to arrive and i'm lazy.

Aaron, understood about TA effecting phase now, er sort of. Read that just a bit ago before i saw your post. I hadn't realized it did this. Good to know for when i get a TA unit.

So if the tweet is in phase and you use TA on that tweet it goes more out of phase as you increase TA. Consequently though if it's out of phase would TA now bring it from 180 degrees back towards zero as you increase TA?

Asking this to learn how to set up mine. If the above is the case should the right tweets be set to in phase as limited TA will be used. And the left maybe left in phase as you actually want it to be more out of phase which you'll achieve when adding the TA it needs? Or should the left be out of phase with TA bringing it back in phase?

Doh that's giving me a headache thinking about.

arun1963

catch22atplay wrote: »

DSkip that would be 14 actually.

14 frickin drivers in a car? :eek: You better learn up on getting speakers in phase. Also buy 2 processors so that you can control your drivers. No Hu is ever going to give you control over 14 drivers.

You really don't need more than 5 drivers. 7 if you want to run a 3 way. OK 8 if you want a 3 way with 2 subs .

But thats it. Anything more and you're killing the sound due to cancellations and phase issues that you won't be able to manage.

arun1963

catch22atplay wrote: »

would TA now bring it from 180 degrees back towards zero as you increase TA?

Everything, eventually comes back to zero. It's all an endless loop.

arun1963

Hey Audiofiend.

While we're waiting for you to come up with the numbers, just a few comments on your other settings.

1. Sub : You have your sub cut off at 80hz which is kind of high. You don't want to 'hear' anything higher than 60hz from your sub. Try setting the sub at 50 hz on a 36db slope. You have the gains down to -13/-14db thats really cutting it down. I think part of the reason is that the sub is physicallly closer to you and hence louder. Will cure this with the TA. By lowering the xover point to 50hz you may find that you need to raise the gains here a bit.

2. Mids : Your mids are high passed at 125khz which is waaay to high. It also leaves a gap between 80hz (sub cut off) and 125hz. Get the mid HPF to around where the sub cuts off. Try a bit of overlap i.e. sub 50hz / mid 50hz, sub 63hz / mid 50hz etc. I find that cutting the mids at a steep alope gives cleaner mid bass. Try HPF on the mid at 18-24db/oct.

For the mid LPF try setting it a bit higher 4-5khz again play with the slopes here. The idea is to play around a little and 'hear' the difference each change makes. You're also doing this to train your ears to hear and understand the impact of each setting change on your sound.

3. Tweets: If you move your mids to 4-5khz do the same with your tweets. generally when you set higher xover points for mids tweets, the tweets should be on a shallower slope than the mids. Again this is a general statement.

Not going to comment on your TA settings till I get the physical measurements. I just don't trust distances generated by a $ 2.00 mic, not with all the reflections going on around you.

All the other functions like loudness / bbe / comp / bmx / comp eq are junk and you wont need these. Keep them all switched off.

The only other function you will need is the excellent 16 band eq whcich we will get to once we have done the TA. Get a disk with the test tones better yet get the MECA disk or download the focal disks with tools. Get a basic SPL meter from rat shack, we will need this for setting the eq.

What are the settings on your amps? All filters should be bypassed and the gains should be around 10 o'clock. Enter the physical distance values and then follow macs post for setting the TA.

arun1963

MacLeod wrote: »

adding delay to the left tweeter has never made a difference in any of the 3 cars Ive competed in.

BUT, I bet setting the near mid and the far tweet to the same delay value makes a heck of a difference . Picked this up from your 08 finals sheet and its the key to TA for me. Always works like a charm. This is what links the mids and the highs.

audiofiend

Sorry if I am VERY slow to post replies. I have very little free time, so check in on me occasionally .

I was also curious to know the actual speaker distances, so first thing I did today was peel off the plastic panels.

next I wrapped a strap from a head lamp around my seat and used the buckle as a center point.

this will be a little different from where my ears are but close enough, its just a center point

I measured from all drivers center to the buckle on the headlamp strap.


High Left: 32.5"
High Right: 49.5"
Mid Left: 44"
Mid Right: 59"
Sub: 25.5"

I also tried to find the best Xover slopes except for the sub.
I tried to move the mid down to 50 @ 24 dB but it really rattled the panels so i tried 63 @ 24 dB but it didnt seem to focus or sound quite right.
Then I moved up to 80 @ 24 dB and it cleaned the sound up the best


So....rattling panels or bass


Next i tried to set the Xovers for the mid and high blend....

I found that I liked a shallow slope @ 4K and I kinda liked 5K but in the end I chose to go with 4K @ 24 dB

I didnt listen to the sub when I did these adjustments.

so I have the actual distances for the drivers but I didnt have time to adjust like Mac suggested,

and I have a vague starting point for the mids/ tweets

TakeTheTime

I have some T/A issues too, hope it's oket to post here.
A car audio expert helped me set perfect T/A for my SR's
a month ago, but now I'm trying new places for my tweets.
(I'm also trying some new tweeters as my SR1001's are broken )

Previous placement of the SR's:


New placement (pointing at the roof over
the middle backseat, avoids all reflections):


So they're a little further away now, especially the left,
so how am I supposed to set the T/A for the tweeters now!?
The setting was set to 2.0 (left) and 1.2 (right) ms - what shall I do?

By the way, those tweeters sounds GREAT:
Vifa Peerless V-line XT25SC90-04 ringradiators.

Sorry OT, dude...

MacLeod

So if the tweet is in phase and you use TA on that tweet it goes more out of phase as you increase TA. Consequently though if it's out of phase would TA now bring it from 180 degrees back towards zero as you increase TA?

It would bring it in and out of phase. If your tweeter is out of phase to begin with, TA can bring it into phase as you add delay but it can pull it back out of phase if you keep adding delay.

BUT, I bet setting the near mid and the far tweet to the same delay value makes a heck of a difference . Picked this up from your 08 finals sheet and its the key to TA for me. Always works like a charm. This is what links the mids and the highs.

That was actually by accident. That is the amount of delay that worked best in that location. When I moved them back to the corners of the dash, I added a few more ms of delay so they werent the same.

By the way, those tweeters sounds GREAT:
Vifa Peerless V-line XT25SC90-04 ringradiators.

Yeah those are pretty much identical to the SR tweeters but the baffle seems to not be as concave which should actually work better and help their off axis response. Check out the Morel MDT-12's. Madisound has them sometimes on sale for $20 each. They work nicely with the SR's.

audiofiend

Dskip.......man my truck is super old (1997). Im ready to get a newer one,with a double cab (and I think you know what else ill get when I have more room behind the seat).

You know it could have something to do with my constantly messin with sh!* that the door panels rattle.

How did you go about makin your baffle and mounting it
Thanks for the input

arun1963

TakeTheTime wrote: »

New placement (pointing at the roof over
the middle backseat, avoids all reflections): ...

RR's have a VERY narrow, almost beam like dispersion. You have to keep these babies as far on axis as possible. Both on the horizontal and vertical plane. With them firing to the top of your head, they would be out on the vertical axis even if though they look on axis on the horizontal plane. Try firing the tweets to a point between the front seats, at your ear level. You'll notice a huge difference.

TakeTheTime wrote: »

So they're a little further away now, especially the left,
so how am I supposed to set the T/A for the tweeters now!?
The setting was set to 2.0 (left) and 1.2 (right) ms - what shall I do?...

Set your mids first. Once you have done that, set your far tweet to the same delay as your near mid and then near tweet to the same lag as that between your mids. This works great for me and my tweets. You'll have to play around a bit to see what sounds best. The catch is to get the near mid and far tweet in sync. If you're running active try playing only these two drivers leave the near mid fixed and play around with the far tweet.

MacLeod wrote: »

That was actually by accident. That is the amount of delay that worked best in that location. When I moved them back to the corners of the dash, I added a few more ms of delay so they werent the same..

It worked great when the tweets were in the sails and now when they are on the dash. I'm thinking that, maybe as long as PLD between mids and tweets is simmilar this would work. Just guessing though.

Have been meaning to ask you this for a while but was kinda to ask:

Scenario : Running only the mids, tweets and sub turned off. Playing with the TA. Get the mids to the point where they sound right. Now I set the tweets based on the revised mid setting and the mids now sound more cohesive. The mids sound better when I tweak the tweets TA although the tweets arent playing.

Alternately same scenario as above, only mids playing. I change the xover points of the tweets or the sub (which are both not playing) and I hear the difference in the mids......

I've repeated the above many many times just to test it and make sure its not some placebo kind of effect. But I hear the difference everytime.

audiofiend

Mac, I would like to say that everything you told me IS spot-on.
You have a good head on your shoulders brother.

Arun, it was a great suggestion that I find the ACTUAL distances from all speakers to the focus point. This made a HUGE difference heping me tune.

I would like to mention that my tweeters are about 6" closer to me than the woofers, so I adjusted I adjusted for this.

Mac, I read your habit of 63, 24dB/oct. for crankin' em and 40 for SQ.

Well, I found that I like the way 40 or 50 Hz fills the stage but of course when I push the volume to the upper limits of the drivers capacity 63, 24dB/oct. seems like a good compromise.


I also messed with the blend of mids and tweets and I decided to stay with 4k @ 24dB slopes as this produced the best tone to me.


So I'm sitting here wondering about the SR line being dropped from Polk's line-up:eek: and it just wants me to make me cry......and I'm not that type but its sad when you have such an extroidinary blend of product, service, price point, and FAMILY that I just wanted to say that I mention Polk to everyone that I know that might care.

Anyway I need to match levels and finish T/A for the sub

audiofiend

Btw, Arun I also took your advice on cross-firing tweeters to ear levels between the seats and it seemed help a lot.

arun1963

Once you're done with the TA, you then need to work with the 16 band eq where you have to set L/R seperately. Thats another level of magic waiting to happen.

arun1963

audiofiend wrote: »

High Left: 32.5"
High Right: 49.5"
Mid Left: 44"
Mid Right: 59"
Sub: 25.5"

In your setup the sub is closest to you and the far mid is the furthest.

You want to hear the sound in a certain sequence. You first want to hear the sub followed by the mids together and lastly the tweets together. Your tweets define the stage height. Since your brain hears the tweets last, it will image all the sound up high.

Play only the sub and your far mid. Enter the measured values. Now add equal delay to both speakers till you reach a point where you hear the bass from the sub flowing out of your far mid. Now swicth off the sub and hear the two mids.

Leave the far mid at the distance you set it to and enter the actual value for the near mid. Now add delay to the near mid till you get to the point where is not located at the speakers but seems to come from the front. This gets your mids in phase.

Now play only the near mid and the far tweet. Set the far tweet to the same distance as your near mid and tweak the far tweet a bit. You want to near the sound from the mid and the far tweet meeting around the centre of the dash / wind screen.

Set the near tweet by keeping the tweets seperated by the same distance as the mids.......now play all the drivers together. How does it sound? You may have to do a bit of tweaking once you have all the drivers running.

TakeTheTime

MacLeod wrote: »

Yeah those are pretty much identical to the SR tweeters but the baffle seems to not be as concave which should actually work better and help their off axis response. Check out the Morel MDT-12's. Madisound has them sometimes on sale for $20 each. They work nicely with the SR's.

Thanks, but I already bought those Vifa's (I thought you'd see that?) and I love them.
They also work very well with my beloved midwoofers, cut them at 2.5k - tweets at 3.2khz...

arun1963 wrote: »

RR's have a VERY narrow, almost beam like dispersion. You have to keep these babies as far on axis as possible. Both on the horizontal and vertical plane. With them firing to the top of your head, they would be out on the vertical axis even if though they look on axis on the horizontal plane. Try firing the tweets to a point between the front seats, at your ear level. You'll notice a huge difference.

I got advice about this a while ago, that's why I moved them now.
The left tweeter fires in the middle of the roof over the back seats,
and is very much on axis to me. The right tweeter is also pointed
between the frontseat-headrests, hitting/reflecting at the roof
over the left backseat. It's not as much on-axis horizontal as
the one on my side, but with T/A it works very well in my car...

Demonstration

arun1963

TakeTheTime wrote: »

I got advice about this a while ago, that's why I moved them now. The left tweeter fires in the middle of the roof over the back seats, and is very much on axis to me. The right tweeter is also pointed
between the frontseat-headrests, hitting/reflecting at the roof
over the left backseat. It's not as much on-axis horizontal as
the one on my side, but with T/A it works very well in my car...

Everything that you shouldn't do with RR's, but if it works for you, thats great.

MacLeod

TakeTheTime wrote: »

Thanks, but I already bought those Vifa's (I thought you'd see that?) and I love them.
They also work very well with my beloved midwoofers, cut them at 2.5k - tweets at 3.2khz...

Yes but like most of us, we like to tinker and when you start looking around at all the very high quality tweeters available on Madisound or Parts Express, it becomes very tempting to play around.

TakeTheTime

arun1963 wrote: »

Everything that you shouldn't do with RR's, but if it works for you, thats great.

Can you explain why that's everything I shouldn't do please? 'cause yeah, it works well!

arun1963

DSkip wrote: »

Mac, how do the morels compare to the momo tweeters? I've been debating switching out the SR tweet for the momo tweets since I haven't put in the time to get those on-axis. I have them sounding quite nice now, giving me depth and layers in the sound, but there still are moments where I can tell there is work to be done.

I know you asked Mac, but hey I hope I'll do :).

If you're talking about the Morel Elate type tweets discussed earlier, then the momo's don't compare. 2" soft domes that can dig real low and stay clean. Makes the transition between the mids and highs much cleaner. Mac has a similar type tweet but from Morels home side. I'm sure there are several similar types of raw drivers that are good and don't break the bank. So you can swap out and try a lot of stuff.

The elates are like $1,200 speakers here. Just amazing when you feed them tons of power. The mids are 160watts rms and the tweets are 6ohm 130 watts rms. They sound average (compared to what they can) playing off 4x90 watts. This is first hand.

Can't end this without telling you to stick with the sr tweets for a bit. Keeping them on axis and sounding right takes a bit of work but it's very rewarding. All the bitching and moaning has more to do with the way I am. The sound is quite good really, it's just the desire to tweak it further that gets in the way . That and not listening when I should .

arun1963

Can you explain why that's everything I shouldn't do please? 'cause yeah, it works well! /QUOTE]

Then that's what counts.

arun1963

I can see some guy doing a search on the topic, 5 years down the line and coming up with this thread.

MacLeod

DSkip wrote: »

Mac, how do the morels compare to the momo tweeters? I've been debating switching out the SR tweet for the momo tweets since I haven't put in the time to get those on-axis. I have them sounding quite nice now, giving me depth and layers in the sound, but there still are moments where I can tell there is work to be done.

They're pretty excellent tweets. Theyre not as detailed as the SR's but they are as smooth. They sound pretty similar actually and while the SR's are better sounding, the Morels have excellent off axis response, play down lower and are easier to make work.

The LPG aluminum domes are pretty nice too. But you have to use a high crossover point with them.

I'm not saying you should use these instead of the SR's just that if you want to play around with some different tweeters, these are good choices in the under $50 range.

dudeinaroom

arun1963 wrote: »

In your setup the sub is closest to you and the far mid is the furthest.

You want to hear the sound in a certain sequence. You first want to hear the sub followed by the mids together and lastly the tweets together. Your tweets define the stage height. Since your brain hears the tweets last, it will image all the sound up high.

Play only the sub and your far mid. Enter the measured values. Now add equal delay to both speakers till you reach a point where you hear the bass from the sub flowing out of your far mid. Now swicth off the sub and hear the two mids.

Leave the far mid at the distance you set it to and enter the actual value for the near mid. Now add delay to the near mid till you get to the point where is not located at the speakers but seems to come from the front. This gets your mids in phase.

Now play only the near mid and the far tweet. Set the far tweet to the same distance as your near mid and tweak the far tweet a bit. You want to near the sound from the mid and the far tweet meeting around the centre of the dash / wind screen.

Set the near tweet by keeping the tweets seperated by the same distance as the mids.......now play all the drivers together. How does it sound? You may have to do a bit of tweaking once you have all the drivers running.

UM, I'm totally confused. I though you used TA to time align every thing so the sound from all drivers reached your ears at the same time. I want to hear all my speakers at the same time, not in a sequence. When I hear a male voice, I don't wanna hear the low part of his voice, then a gap as he switches notes, same with a female who is climbing up the scale. I know my mind receives all the sound at the same time, and all of it together at the same time is how staging is perceived.

Okay, okay, I see, you mean just for setting up.

got it.

I like to start with mids, and then the tweets to get a nice sound stage. I find it easier to dial in the subs last. If you have your mids set with a lower xover point (50 hz or lower)it makes it easier to set the subs. With the xover set low, and the volume to the subs set to at a similar level as the mids, as you play with the delay on the subs once you hit the spot when they are in phase, they disappear, it sounds like it is either coming from the front, or from a non-discernible spot in space.(the first is more preferable)