Bit Tune Impressions

pentoncm

Yesterday I took my car to a great shop in Mesa, AZ that has been using the Bit Tune with success for a while so I had them run the system to tune my Bit Ten.

I would like to quickly summarize my impressions from this new auto EQ unit.

(1) Time delay calculations work great. Vocals are centered exceptionally well.
(2) Frequency balancing L/R. In terms of balancing the frequency response between the left and right sides, this was able to do a much better job than I was able to do. I'm very happy with this, stereo imaging is superb.
(3) EQ and tonality: This is the weak part of the Bit Tune in my opinion. I am surprised by the EQ curves generated by this piece. While the 100Hz to 2kHz areas were relatively similar to what I had set previously the unit decided to do a good deal of boosting to frequencies less than 100Hz and higher than 2kHz. This resulted in an overly bright sound in my opinion. While the height of the soundstage with these settings is great it just doesn't sound natural. After I got home yesterday I initially brought everything down by about -2.5 db to avoid boosting at all cost. Afterwards things sounded much better without the overemphasized highs. I am going to go back now and fine tune the 2kHz on up area now.

Bottom line, Bit Tune system awesome for level and EQ matching L/R and time delay. I attribute this due to the 5 mic unit that is used to calculate the FR which uses spatial averaging. But... there are major problems with how it calculates the EQ curves especially the lows and highs.

MacLeod

Good read. Don't know anybody that's used Bit Tune and wondered how it would work.

That's weird that it would boost anything at all much less below 100 Hz. Due to cabin gain and all that, those are usually the areas that need to be cut. 500 Hz almost always needs a small boost but most everything else needs cut.

Time alignment usually works well with auto tune configurations but the actual EQ part never does because microphones don't measure reflections the same way we hear them or something like that. You can really tell this to be true when using an RTA or SPL meter and test tones to level match. Some tones would be clearly much louder on one side but the RTA and/or SPL meter would show it quieter.

So yeah, don't feel like you shouldn't do fine tuning after a setup like that to correct for the way YOUR ears hear things as opposed to the microphones.

pentoncm

Still tweaking but I have it much better now. Main issues, bringing down 2k on up, raising the 160 -250 by a little, and raising the 800- 1.2k a little. Overall left right balance is spot on though so I still highly recommend the tune to set things up as it will save you a ton of time balancing the left and right.

As an additional note I have issues with the audyssey auto tune as well on my denon receiver at home. Flattens sound too much so vocals all sound too similar, takes out realism. I feel like the main problem with these auto tune programs is that they make the sound dull, instruments lack fullness- they don't sing anymore.